OK, you’re sick of abortion. The mere mention of “prochoice” and “prolife” is enough to make your eyes glaze over. You’ve read too many stories, heard too much of the endless debate. You know more than you want to know. So the answer to this one little question should be easy:
(b) Legal only during the first three months, and only when the mother’s life or health is threatened.
Who’s asking? The brain trust of the right-to-life movement known as Americans United for Life, or AUL. This little-known, single-issue organization has been fighting for nearly two decades to overturn Roe v. Wade in the courts, operating most of that time from a nondescript headquarters in the Fisher Building on South Dearborn. Now, with victory in the courts almost at hand, with the Supreme Court handing abortion control back to the states, AUL is turning their attention from the justices to the general public. They think if they educate you, they’ll win you over, and they’re gearing up to do it.
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AUL’s style is the antithesis of Scheidler’s placard-carrying, chain-yourself-to-a-building theatrics. Its approach is intellectual, its demeanor coolly professional. But behind their unflappable veneers, these buttoned-down, briefcase-toting young lawyers, flacks, and fund-raisers are crusaders, every bit as committed as the street activists. Out to protect natural life from conception to death, they have an agenda that goes beyond abortion: they are also opposed to right-to-die initiatives and any birth control method that takes effect after conception, including low-dose birth control pills, IUDs, and the French abortion pill, RU 486. They’ve been active in all 50 states, drafting antiabortion bills, helping to get them passed, then defending them all the way to the Supreme Court. They orchestrated 30 of the 45 right-to-life briefs submitted to the Court in the 1989 Webster case, which gave the states more freedom to regulate abortion, and conferred with the Justice Department on its recent successful defense of the gag rule (Rust v. Sullivan), which prohibits any talk of abortion in government-supported clinics. They sponsor local and national meetings, publish a raft of well-edited newsletters and books, and function as a legal resource, clearinghouse, and strategic planning center for the national right-to-life movement.
Ramsey’s media strategy is one aspect of the expanded role AUL is readying itself to play. Since 1988, it has doubled in size. It now takes up an entire floor of the south Loop building where it used to occupy only a small suite. It employs a full-time staff of 31, including eight lawyers, and reports a 1991 budget of $2.5 million, raised from 6,000 individual and foundation donors through its own direct-mail and personal-solicitation program. In the last year it’s made two strategic additions to the team: it opened a four-person Washington office headed by Grant, and spun off an expanded education department from its public affairs arm. While AUL’s lawyers continue to draft legislation and battle in the courts, the education department, using sophisticated marketing and hard-sell techniques, will be working through church groups and other grass-roots organizations to build a winning case with the public. According to AUL’s patriarch and chairman, Northwestern University law professor Victor Rosenblum, this kind of activity takes the organization back to its roots.
The fledgling law firm struggled along for the better part of a decade with a tiny staff, a shoestring budget, and a reputation as fanatics. Lois Lipton, a lawyer for the ACLU Reproductive Rights Project in the late 70s and early 80s, says AUL, in its first attempts to defend laws that would restrict abortion, “had very inexperienced lawyers in the lower courts, in many instances so blinded by their zealous beliefs they made statements that were laughable.” Her successor at the ACLU, Colleen Connell, has faced off against AUL numerous times, and says their tactics continue to “leave something to be desired.” As an example, Connell cites a case in which AUL not only lost but was scolded by the court for “recalcitrance” and–adding injury to insult –was forced to cough up $235,000 for the ACLU’s legal fees.
The first stone in Condon’s “flying buttress of public conviction” is the multiple-choice question on what Roe v. Wade made legal. It is one of some 200 questions in an Abortion and Moral Beliefs survey AUL designed and had the Gallup Organization conduct in 1990, and is hyping this year. Along with the question on Roe and many others, the survey included queries about the circumstances under which respondents do or do not approve of abortion. AUL is offering the results as proof that Americans don’t know what’s going on–and that if they did know, they wouldn’t approve and would want to change things. Condon says the survey shows that the American people are “grossly deceived” about abortion, “victims of the most powerful propaganda campaign ever experienced in our national history.” Writing in a recent AUL newsletter, he said people who consider themselves prochoice actually have “pro-life convictions,” and “if Americans simply knew the truth about abortion, we would experience a transformation in public attitude overnight.” AUL says the survey is “the most comprehensive and ambitious study of public opinion on abortion ever released,” and will be used to “map the prolife movement’s educational and legal strategies for years to come.”
