2 sides tout favorable trend on Roe

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Tomorrow's 35th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling finds both pro-life and pro-choice supporters confident that national opinion is turning in their direction.

"Now we have three generations fighting this battle," said Troy Newman, who leads Operation Rescue, a pro-life activist group in Wichita, Kan. "Victory is near. Our side has never been more aggressive, prepared, organized and funded."

Others see a different victory.

The United States has a "new political climate" and it leans pro-choice, said Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center (NWLC).

Evidence is everywhere, Ms. Greenberger told a press briefing at the NWLC: A survey from Hart Research Associates finds that 60 percent of Americans want Roe — the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion — upheld.

Tomorrow, thousands of pro-life activists are expected to gather for the 35th March for Life in Washington. Organizations on both sides of the issue have events scheduled across the nation to mark the anniversary.

Americans United for Life and NARAL Pro-Choice America have released major reports on the issue, and both have key issues to promote during the presidential campaign.

Pro-choice leaders want more attention on pregnancy prevention.

Congress has boosted Title X family planning funds by $17 million, which should go a long way to help couples avoid unintended pregnancies, Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told the NWLC briefing. Also, she said, federal and state officials should take steps to replace abstinence-until-marriage education with health-based curricula — "real sex education," she said.

Research from Lake Research Partners and others shows that most Americans want to "broaden the discussion" from abortion to stem-cell research, end-of-life decisions and a vaccine for the human papillomavirus virus, Kathy Bonk, executive director of Communications Consortium Media Center, said at the NWLC event.

A small contingent of voters who are "religiously motivated," "vocal" and "hard right" have raised opposition, she added, but the American public is "moving in our direction."

Meanwhile, pro-life activists say state restrictions have helped reduce the prevalence of abortions — 2005's 1.2 million abortions were the lowest in 30 years, the Guttmacher Institute said last week — and they are eager to see more such laws passed.

The Supreme Court's Gonzales v. Carhart ruling last year upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 "opened the door" for states to enact "strong legal fences around the abortion license," Clarke D. Forsythe, president of Americans United for Life, said in the group's new book, "Defending Life 2008."

"We believe that if enough states take advantage of this opportunity, new state regulations could reduce abortions by tens or even hundreds of thousands, per year, across the country," he wrote.

Said Wanda Franz, president of the National Right to Life Committee: After 35 years of abortion on demand, public views have changed, "and that change is most clearly seen in the fact that abortions are continuing to drop and decline: the numbers, the rate, the ratios are all going down."