Abortion fight is 'enduring divide'

WASHINGTON -- During confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., asked whether she believed court rulings on abortion had ended the national controversy.

In a departure from the oblique answers that marked the hearings, Sotomayor paused, then answered bluntly: "No."

The incendiary debate over abortion rights endures and can be jarring, as when abortion opponents interrupted at several points the Senate Judiciary Committee session with Sotomayor. The controversy has boiled up in other ways in the days since then.

Thursday, a day after President Obama's prime-time pitch for an overhaul of the health care system, Americans United for Life and other abortion opponents accelerated their resistance to Democratic proposals. A day earlier, abortion rights supporters presented members of Congress with a report, tied to the killing of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller in May, documenting harassment, threats and physical assaults on physicians who provide abortions.

Nearly four decades after the Supreme Court made abortion legal nationwide and nearly two decades after the justices reaffirmed the right, the political saliency of abortion persists.

"The enduring divide represents the reality that there are fundamental religious differences on the issue of abortion that do not exist on, say, campaign finance or even on health care," says Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which issued the report Wednesday about threats at clinics that provide abortions.

From the other side of the debate, the health care deliberations and the Supreme Court nomination are particularly energizing.

"Judge Sotomayor represents the future of the Supreme Court," says Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, which would like to win reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal nationwide. Yoest testified against Sotomayor, who would be President Obama's first appointment and the first Hispanic justice.