Anniversaries
A confluence of noteworthy anniversaries, sheer coincidence; and all of them bearing on Arkansas.
Start with a 50th, a semi-centennial that elicits expressions of remorse from both sides of the issue: abortion. A half-century ago the U.S. Supreme Court declared, in Roe v. Wade, that a woman had a right to terminate a pregnancy for whatever reason during the first trimester, and on a more limited basis during the second. The Court’s opinion, in a 7-2 vote, was authored by Associate Justice Harry Blackmon, a lifelong Republican, and published on January 22, 1973 — approximately 186 years after the Arkansas legislature, in the first full year of our statehood, prohibited abortion except in instances when pregnancy endangered a woman’s life.
With varying levels of intensity and touching four consecutive centuries, the debate, pro and con, would continue. Polls in the 1980s and ‘90s found Arkansas to be pro-choice, if reluctantly — enough so that the fervency of abortion opponents, with religious conservatives in the forefront, turned public opinion around. But totally? Not hardly, not according to the UA’s latest Arkansas Poll, which found substantial majorities favoring abortion in circumstances — egregious fetal flaws, pregnancies threatening the life or health of the woman or that resulted from rape or incest — that more nearly approximated the standards of Roe than the restrictions enacted in recent years by the General Assembly. Those statutes, many of them, were either enjoined or jettisoned entirely by courts under the Roe rubric but revived last year when a different sort of Republican and a different sort of Supreme Court majority reversed their predecessors.
But if a majority of Arkansans are in fact at odds with current state law on abortion — perhaps the most restrictive in the nation, permitted solely to save the woman’s life — would legislation to broaden the procedure’s availability succeed? With this governor, this General Assembly? Consider that the only bill involving abortion introduced in the legislative session thus far would appear to expose to homicide charges anyone, male or female, who merely discussed the subject.
Remorse? Yes: pro-choice advocates despairing of Roe’s reversal, anti-abortion activists lamenting that Roe was ever the law.
As for 50th anniversaries: Blackmon’s decision was announced only two days after another signal event, the death of Lyndon B. Johnson. In seeking the presidency at the head of the Democratic ticket in 1964, John F. Kennedy having been slain the year prior, Johnson strove mightily to win his native region. It was not the Solid South of his younger years; the first sweeping civil rights bill of modern times had been enacted only four months prior to the election, and social conservatives, animated by the race issue, were already trending toward the GOP. Indeed, five of the six states Johnson lost in November had seceded a century earlier. Johnson won Arkansas against Barry Goldwater with 56 percent of the vote, a smaller share than the Democrat’s margin nationwide.
Arkansas would not give its six electoral votes to another Democrat until 1976 and Jimmy Carter, but rejected him four years later for Ronald Reagan. Then rose a native son, who — here’s the anniversary — was inaugurated 30 years ago. And just as historians are re-evaluating Johnson, assigning his tenure higher marks than the Vietnam War previously seemed to prohibit, they are taking a fresh look at Bill Clinton’s time.
Daniel Stid, who twice voted against Clinton and who worked in the GOP congressional leadership during the Arkansan’s White House years: “Much has been written — given what we have witnessed since, likely too much — about his shortcomings and character flaws. But for all Clinton’s weaknesses, he was a masterful and multi-faceted political leader. He brought a unique blend of talents to the White House, one that none of his successors have quite managed to replicate.
“(H)e reoriented the Democrats to face political reality and rallied coalitions encompassing not only liberal but also moderate and even some conservative voters. Beyond the usual liberal bastions, Clinton won twice in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana, states where Republicans had prevailed since 1980.”
The 30th anniversary of the accension of the 42nd president comes as the fourth man to succeed him wrestles, as did Clinton — and as did the second man to succeed him, Barack Obama — with a Congress balking at raising the debt ceiling. Speaker Newt Gingrich and his revolutionaries twice forced a government shutdown. Clinton, as quoted by columnist Joe Conason, who covered that epoch, believed he had the better message, and that Gingrich and Co. knew it.
“(T)hey figured I'd be smart enough to explain to the American people that they (Republican members of Congress) were refusing to pay for the expenses they had voted for when Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were president," Clinton recalled.
Everything old is new again.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Steve Barnes is a columnist with Editorial Associates in Little Rock.)