Blast From the Past: NYTimes, July 10, 1981

This morning, at the library doing some research, I came across an article from the New York Times entitled "Senate Unit Votes Ban On Abortions." What it shows is two bad things, first, the pro-life community has been getting little more than lip-service from the GOP for almost thirty years now, and second, that by 1981, even conservative Democrats had caved on the abortion issue. Here is the lede:
"A Senate subcommittee today approved legislation that could allow the states to prosecute abortion as murder, a first Congressional setp toward overturning the 1973 Supreme Court decision that a woman has a right to terminate her pregnancy. By a vote of 3 to 2, the Senate Judiciary's Subcommittee on the Separation of Powers approved a measure that said 'the life of each human being starts at conception,' thus giving fetuses rights under the Constitution."
Alas, that is not how the Constitution works and we are still, thirty years later, faced with the daunting task of changing the culture, not just the make-up of a Senate panel, if we are ever to convince our countrymen and women that abortion is wrong and should not enjoy legal sanction.