NYT Op-ed on "Why Pro-Choice is a Bad Choice for the Democrats"

From today's op-ed by journalist Melinda Henneberger:

Over 18 months, I traveled to 20 states listening to women of all ages, races, tax brackets and points of view speak at length on the issues they care about heading into ’08. They convinced me that the conventional wisdom was wrong about the last presidential contest, that Democrats did not lose support among women because “security moms” saw President Bush as the better protector against terrorism. What first-time defectors mentioned most often was abortion. . . .

Many of them, Catholic women in particular, are liberal, deep-in-their-heart Democrats who support social spending, who opposed the war from the start and who cross their arms over their chests reflexively when they say the word “Republican.” Some could fairly be described as desperate to find a way home. And if the party they’d prefer doesn’t send a car for them, with a really polite driver, it will have only itself to blame.

The title that the editors chose overstates what the op-ed actually claims, which is only that the Democrats should respect pro-lifers and should give some on things like partial-birth abortion bans (and maybe some other regulations? -- it's unclear) because of the widespread public support for them.  But what the author found about the importance of abortion as an issue for the women to whom she talked looks interesting.  The book based on these interviews is available here.

Tom