Deadly Inaccurate
The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard
for Human Life
by Ramesh Ponnuru
Regnery Publishing, 2006
(320 pages, $27.95, hardcover)
reviewed by Jennifer Roback Morse
The mainstream media do not look very good in Ramesh Ponnuru’s account: They look more like cooperative lapdogs for the abortion lobby than objective reporters of truth. The overwhelming theme of The Party of Death, written by a senior editor of National Review, is that sustaining the Party of Death has required a massive amount of denial and outright fraud about abortion and its impact on society.
The title has generated more controversy than the contents. It is meant to indicate that the pro-abortion position has gradually morphed into a more general position in favor of the legally permissible killing of the innocent, and that the book traces how the pro-abortion constituencies became so dominant within the Democratic party.
All Lies
In the introduction, Ponnuru states flatly: “Everything you think you know about Roe v. Wade is a lie.” And the lies are not only those of the mainstream media, but those of the abortion lobby and pro-abortion politicians as well, with the media often serving as the conduit for the lies of those with a financial or ideological interest in the promotion of abortion.
The lies began with Roe v. Wade’s plaintiff. Jane Roe, the pseudonym of Norma McCorvey, later revealed that she had not been raped as she stipulated in her case trying to obtain an abortion. Whether her lawyers knew this at the time, Ponnuru does not say. He does report that her lawyer said in retrospect that “she would have picked a different plaintiff, who might have better represented the case,” once McCorvey apostatized from her pro-abortion position and became a Catholic Christian.
Roe v. Wade did not simply legalize abortion in the first trimester, as is often said; it required that any ban on later-term abortions include an exception allowing abortion to protect a woman’s health. But Roe’s companion case, Doe v. Bolton, defined the health exception so broadly that it removed any possibility of restrictions at any time during pregnancy.
Similarly, “everyone knows” that Roe v. Wade was a moderate ruling, well in line with public opinion at the time and today. The fact is that Roe instituted abortion on demand and struck down more restrictive laws in all fifty states.
Only a few states, notably New York and Hawaii, had significantly liberalized their abortion policies in the decade before Roe, and even those states only changed, but did not repeal, their abortion laws. Other states, including Montana, New Mexico, Iowa, Minnesota, Maryland, Colorado, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Ohio, and North Dakota, considered and rejected abortion liberalization laws. The Massachusetts House voted by a landslide to bestow full legal rights on fetuses from the moment of conception. All this was swept away by Roe.
Ponnuru also discloses the well-kept secret that America’s abortion laws offer less legal protection to the unborn than those of any other Western democratic country. The United Kingdom limits abortion on demand to the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, Sweden to 18 weeks, Denmark to 12 weeks. After this, doctors or hospital committees must approve the request for abortion. France requires counseling and a one-week waiting period, even for women seeking abortion in the first 14 weeks.
Jennifer Roback Morse is the author of the recently published Smart Sex: Finding Life-Long Love in a Hook-Up World and Love & Economics, both published by Spence Publishing. A research fellow at the Acton Institute, she is also founder of Your Coach for the Culture Wars, a business helping organizations take a stand in the culture wars. She can be contacted through her website: www.jennifer-roback-morse.com.
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