RALEIGH – “Abortion is one of those issues where there is no middle ground.”
There are few 20-year-old statements made in my presence that I’d put quotation marks around, but this one qualifies. That’s how much of an impression it made on my when I heard it, out of the mouth of one of my favorite journalism professors back in school at UNC-Chapel Hill. The class was discussing the interpretation of opinion polls, specifically the danger of forcing respondents to answer questions they haven’t thought much about and then treating the answers as deeply meaningful.
His statement stuck with me for a couple of reasons. First, it was evidence that even the brightest and most experienced teachers I knew could have an obvious blind spot. You see, my professor was completely, embarrassingly wrong. Of course there is a “middle ground” on abortion. Millions of people simultaneously believe that abortion is used too frequently for purposes of sex selection or convenience and that some abortions should be legal. Careful study of opinion polling on abortion reveals this and other elements of a “mixed” position in between the pro-life and pro-abortion rights camps.
The second reason I think occasionally about his statement is that I run across similar debates where, going in, it appears there are only two clearly demarcated sides, destined to grapple for supremacy, but later it turns out that a middle-ground position is not only possible but also the plurality view among policymakers or the general public.
I submit that we are at just such a place on the issue of capital punishment in North Carolina. For years, groups seeking an end to the death penalty – let’s be frank – devoted substantial time, energy, and resources to promoting a moratorium on carrying out executions while a study is commissioned on possible errors and injustices in the criminal justice system. The bill finally passed the NC Senate a while back, leaving the ball in the House’s court.
A spirited effort to push the bill forward this year has apparently stalled. It was comparatively easy for some senators with qualms about the legislation, either for policy or political reasons, to say “yes” in the expectation that it would never become law. The House, more closely divided between Democrats and Republicans, was never as likely to sign on. Neither was it seen by many that Gov. Mike Easley, a longtime death-penalty proponent, would necessarily sign anything seeming to advance its eventual elimination.
Rep. Joe Hackney, a Chapel Hill Democrat, favors a moratorium. Actually, I think he favors abolition. But the House majority leader wants at least to make some progress on an issue that he and much of his constituency care passionately about. So, according to The Charlotte Observer, he will introduce Tuesday a new bill that will not suspend all executions while a study is conducted. Instead, it will create a process under which death-row inmates whose appeals might potentially be affected by the specific findings of the study can seek a stay in their executions during the two-year study period.
Given that opponents quite properly have criticized moratorium proponents for wasting time they could have spent studying and reforming the system (if that’s really the goal here), Hackney’s compromise sounds like the something that might well please enough members on both sides to reach a majority.
Talk about bridging a chasm.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.