Given the apparently intractable American ambivalence about abortion, isn't it time for an entirely different approach to the subject? That is the conviction of William Saletan. Mr. Saletan, author of "Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War," is an abortion rights defender. In a provocative article on the Op-Ed page of this newspaper last month, he wrote: "It's time to shake up this debate. It's time for the abortion rights movement to declare a war on abortion."

"You can't eliminate the moral question by ignoring it," he wrote, calling on abortion rights advocates to take an unambiguous stance: "Abortion is bad, and the ideal number of abortions is zero." But "by conceding that, you don't end the debate," he continued, "you narrow it. Once you agree that the goal is fewer abortions, the only thing left to debate is how to get there."

# posted by Squach : 7:10 PM   |