It's the money

Abortion-rights groups like NARAL are not what they seem. To say that they are solely about women's rights to an abortion is like saying that the Gun Owners of America are unconnected to the profitable gun-retail business.

Roe v. Wade is not just the source of a right; it's a business license for abortion clinics. This comes best into focus when we consider that in the next term the Supreme Court is likely to hear cases involving not the right to abortion but laws regulating parental consent and notice of abortions for minor girls. These are laws that, according to a Los Angeles Times poll, over 80% of Americans support.

In September 2002, when Democrats first blocked Justice Priscilla Owen from a circuit court nomination over a Texas Supreme Court ruling that upheld a parental notice law, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah put it this way:

I fear the opposition to Justice Owen from the abortion lobby is not at all about abortion rights, because abortion rights are not affected by a mere notice statute. The opposition to Justice Owen is not really about abortion rights, it is about abortion profits. Simply put, the abortion industry is opposed to parental notice laws because parental notice laws place a hurdle between them and the profits from the abortion clients--not the girls who come to them but the adult men who pay for these abortions. These adult men, whose average age rises the younger the girl is, are eager not to be disclosed to parents, sometimes living down the street. . . . At nearly one million abortions per year, the abortion industry is as big as any corporate interest that lobbies in Washington. They not only ignore the rights of parents, they also protect sexual offenders and statutory rapists.

You've never heard this? Surely that is no surprise. Mr. Hatch's statement was reported in only one news story, by Newsday's Tom Brune. He noted that there was an audible gasp among the abortion lobbyists in the back of the Judiciary Committee room. I remember that gasp.

What Mr. Brune did not record is that no Democratic senator responded to Hatch's charge. Something very unusual. Not even Dianne Feinstein of California, who, as she always notes, ran for the U.S. Senate to protect abortion rights. Or was it abortion profits?