Andrew Sullivan on Abortion and Freedom

This week's New Republic features a short essay by Andrew Sullivan, "Life Lesson," in which he discusses what he calls Senator Clinton's "superb speech earlier this week on the politics and morality of abortion." 

This speech was widely characterized in the press as suggesting a "move to the center" on the abortion question, though I'm not sure why.  At no point in the speech does she retreat from her absolutist, abortion-on-demand, for any reason, at any time position.  What does it say about our politics that her willingess to concede that abortions are undesirable, and that not all abortion opponents are monsters, is hailed as significant political shift?  In any event . . .

There is a lot to cheer in Sullivan's essay.  It would be good if his audience (e.g., New Republic readers and leaders in the Democratic Party) listened.  Still, at the end, I'm not sure I get his point.  Sullivan interprets -- remakes? -- the Senator's speech as setting out a powerful "pro-life, pro-choice" position.  He concedes that "Democrats can still be, and almost certainly should be, for the right to legal abortion."  Two sentences later, though, he states, "abortion is always wrong."  But why does Sullivan think this (i.e., that "abortion is always wrong").

To be clear -- I understand, and might even concede the force of, the argument that, given political realities, it is not possible, or even desirable, to ban abortion altogether.  But this does not seem to be Sullivan's argument.  Instead, Sullivan appears in his essay to link the Democrats' present abortion-rights position with the requirements of a "free society."  What notion of "free[dom]" is doing the work in Sullivan's argument if the nature of a "free society" (and not the fact that we live in a second-best world) requires permitting (without limitation, apparently) something that is "always" -- and gravely -- "wrong"?

Rick