HOW SHE SEES IT Looming threat to Roe

By CAROL TOWARNICKY
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Even now, with religious Rumpelstiltskins claiming their payback for spinning the Bush campaign into gold, some analysts say reproductive rights are safe.
They claim Roe v. Wade will stand despite a hailstorm of pray-ins against Sen. Arlen Specter's suggestion that the Senate might actually fulfill its responsibility to "advise and consent" -- and even when Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatens to "go nuclear" and eliminate the filibuster if Senate Democrats raise objections to judicial nominees.
These analysts say: Don't get excited. Nothing's going to change immediately. I say: Get excited, be worried, get ready.
It still is possible that President Bush will stiff the religious right and appoint justices who will keep the right to choose abortion as it is now: burdened in some states with waiting periods but still obtainable.
It's also possible that they fear that returning abortion decisions to the states, as overturning Roe would do, will jeopardize the GOP's current majority. After all, some polls show that a wide majority of Americans still believe abortion should be "generally legal" in the first trimester of pregnancy. (Ask the question differently, as the anti-choice crowd likes to do, and the majority evaporates.)
Extreme right
But if this election showed anything, it was that Bush paid no price for governing from the extreme right in his first term, including several appalling nominations to the federal bench. At this point, the only hope to save our privacy rights may be to plan for Roe's eventual demise.
If Americans finally understand what's at stake, they might oppose the minority now calling the shots from their pulpits (religious and bully).
X Carol Towarnicky is chief editorial writer for the Philadelphia Daily News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.