William Saletan, author of "Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War," suggested in his Slate.com column at the time that Clinton was repositioning her party to win the abortion war.
Perhaps so, but I don't care why she's saying it. I'm just glad someone is speaking up. I've always maintained that you eliminate abortion by treating the subject honestly through education. If we can graphically describe or depict sexuality to high school kids, we shouldn't shy away from an equally graphic treatment of abortion.
If sickened girls and boys dash for the restroom, good. Maybe they'll slip a quarter in the condom machine on their way out.
I'm half-joking, but you see my point. Abortion is, indeed, a sad and tragic choice for many, and that's the way we ought to talk about it - not as a continuum between extremes of "choice" or "murder," but as an endpoint of last resort that we want to work strenuously against.
While President Bill Clinton said he wanted abortion to be "safe, legal and rare," his senator wife seems to prefer a more aggressive approach with a goal of "never." Politically motivated or not, Hillary Clinton's shift parallels that of a growing number of Americans who have become less comfortable with abortion and who seek a way out that doesn't criminalize women.
Politics is often a tedious, tendentious debate that leads nowhere good and fast. This may be one of those rare instances where politics leads somewhere important, if belatedly.
Clinton's position on the war has earned her enemies within Democratic ranks; shifting to the right on abortion will, too. But the vast middle in America, the millions of voters who yearn for that erstwhile "third way," will be watching to see if Clinton can stay the course of what's brave and right and needed.
And whether she has the guts to be the stateswoman she aspires to be.
(Correction: In a previous column, I incorrectly wrote that Fox News dominates ratings over the networks and other cable programs. Fox leads only the cable news shows.)