Memo to the Media: Abortion is a Non-Issue in Presidential Elections

In the most recent debate among Republican presidential primary candidates, CNN reporter John King asked each prospective president a "this or that" pop-culture question "... to see if they laugh. Do they have a personality? How do they handle a stupid question?" King told Mediaite. Predictably, King and his colleagues also variously asked each debate participant his or her position on abortion. For the reasons that follow, these quadrennial abortion questions are as vacuous as the one asking former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich whether he prefers American Idol or Dancing with the Stars.

Pundits and journalists regularly question whether presidential candidates have a "frame of reference" sufficient to qualify them as future leaders of the free world; yet, I have rarely seen a presidential debate media panelist with even a high school level frame of reference when it comes to the abortion issue.

To belabor the obvious, no legislation proscribing abortion can be enacted into law unless and until the U.S. Supreme Court overturns its seminal decision of Roe v. Wade. Moreover, if Roe is someday overturned, abortion is not a federal issue because even the most expansive reading of Article 1, section 8, of the U.S. Constitution does not authorize Congress to legislate with respect to matters like abortion. Instead, just as it had for a century before Roe, the abortion issue would be decided by the individual states pursuant to the Tenth Amendment; thus, hypothetical questions regarding abortion should be reserved, if at all, for gubernatorial and state legislative races.

Similarly, if abortion is eventually put to a constitutional amendment, a president plays no formal role in the amendment process under Article V.

Asking presidential aspirants if they would use the abortion issue as a litmus test when appointing justices to the Supreme Court is equally pointless; that is, no president would ever ask a prospective justice how he or she would rule on a particular issue--especially abortion-- because that conversation would doubtless be disclosed during Senate confirmation hearings.

Finally, stances on abortion set forth in party platforms do nothing to alter anything written above.

Where abortion is concerned, members of the so-called fourth branch of government need a basic primer on America's first principles, not the least of which is the concept of federalism. Meanwhile, Gingrich favors American Idol and Representative Bachmann has Elvis on her iPod.

Source(s):

Mark Joyella, "Knocked By Some, Dubbed 'Amazing' By Others, CNN's John King Tells Mediaite GOP Debate Went Well Even If He 'Could've Been Better," MEDIAITE (accessed June 19, 2011).