At high noon, we walked across the store to the paneled event room at the back. The stuffed animal heads gazed down from the walls, watching with feigned indifference. The room was already crowded when we arrived. The women all wore suits, as did around half of the men. The others wore flannel shirts and cowboy boots.
Reynolds steered me toward a tightly coiffed woman in her late fifties. “Hey Sally,” he said, “I’d like to introduce you to Michelle Oberman.”
Representative Sally Kern, who a week earlier had abruptly canceled our appointment, turned and took my hand. “Oh yes, I’ve heard your name. . . .” Suddenly she dropped my hand, her pink-lipsticked lips almost disappearing as she swung away from me.
The Pro-Life Movement Politician
I’ll confess that I was as smitten as I was dumbfounded by my conversation with Reynolds. Like him, I aim to live in accordance with my moral compass. Like him, I feel badly when I fall short of the mark, which is often. Like him, I have a hard time understanding those whose lives seem out of sync with their professed moral sensibilities.
At the same time, I was troubled by his moral vision and, even more, by his willingness to use his office to impose it on others. He was convinced he had the truth, and he understood his election as a mandate to align the law with that truth. He had no patience for lawmaking by consensus and compromise. He was a political gadfly.
I gathered that the majority of his colleagues who had canceled their interviews with me belonged to what he termed “the so-called pro-life movement.” And over the course of my time in Oklahoma, it became pretty obvious who controlled that movement.
Reynold’s comments about the negative consequences of his rift with Lauinger over the Personhood Bill in 2012, when Lauinger changed his position and opposed the bill, weren’t entirely surprising. He wasn’t the only one to suggest that “with Tony, it’s always ‘my way or the highway.’” Nor was he the only one to allude to the power Lauinger had to influence which bills were introduced, whether they progressed, and even which legislators were denied key committee assignments. Or worse.
Former Democratic Representative Ryan Kiesel remarked that Lauinger could “use the fear of retribution in a way no one else can.”15 He recalled the 2010 debate over the Personhood Bill—the one that Lauinger supported, not the one he later lobbied against: “Tony sent letters to all the legislators saying that a vote against the bill would ‘put their seat in jeopardy.’”
In spite of Lauinger’s efforts to keep those in his pro-life network from talking with me, I found a solution in my interview with a former Republican legislator. He asked me not to use his name, so I’ll call him Tom Smith.16 Smith served over fifteen years in both the state House and Senate, and anticipates a run for higher office in the future. Hence, his desire for anonymity.
Smith ran for office on a job-creation platform, an interest he pursued over the long course of his career in public office. That said, Smith also noted that he is active in the Southern Baptist church. “I knew I was pro-life when I ran for office,” he said. “I campaigned as such, and my voting record is perfect.”
When I asked Smith how he understood the purpose of abortion law, his response was layered. The foundation was familiar: a core moral belief that abortion was murder, and a belief that the law should reflect this conviction. He said, “The purpose of the law is to stop abortion. To send a moral message. To get the message out via the law, to spark a debate in the population. The government’s responsibility is to give people education. It is up to the government to tell them that abortion is wrong. It’s not an acceptable solution.”
Like Reynolds, Smith saw the law as somehow communicating to a hypothetical woman facing an unwanted pregnancy. The law sends her a message that abortion is wrong. But unlike Reynolds, Smith was a career politician. He had his own set of priorities that were unrelated to abortion. He was happy to show his loyalty to the pro-life cause by supporting the party’s abortion agenda. He was able to list the issues, yet he had given little thought to the question of what might happen if the agenda actually became law. Indeed, I was struck by the lack of details in Smith’s vision for what might happen if abortion became a crime.
Smith said the ideal replacement for Roe would be a law just like the one that existed in most states before Roe. (And, incidentally, just like the one that El Salvador had before the ban in 1998.)
“I’d favor making it a crime,” he said, “but not under all circumstances. Maybe it would be banned entirely after the first twelve weeks. Or maybe it would allow abortion in the first twelve weeks only in cases of rape and medical necessity and fetal anomaly. And I think the doctors and the state would have to be serious about enforcing these exceptions. If a woman wanted an abortion on the grounds of rape, then they should make sure she actually filed criminal charges.”
Yet Smith tossed out the alternatives as if they were interchangeable, like competing options in a political platform: “Make it a crime.” “Keep it legal for the first twelve weeks.” “Exceptions for rape.” My sense that he was speaking in slogans, rather than actually thinking about how a change in abortion laws might work, was underscored by his list of the exceptions he’d permit to an abortion ban.
The list itself wasn’t a surprise; he’d simply reverted to familiar old state laws. But the way he talked about closing the “maternal health exception” caught my attention. Many of the pro-life individuals I met talked about the need to close the maternal health loophole, inferring that, before Roe, women had obtained abortions by fabricating claims of mental distress or threatening suicide if they were denied an abortion.
I have not found any data confirming this claim, but I was struck by how often it was invoked over the course of my interviews in Oklahoma and elsewhere. It suggests the power of the pro-life movement to shape the imagination of its members, thereby dictating the terms of the legal landscape.
Lawmakers as Moral Messengers
For all their differences, what Reynolds and Smith had in common was a shared vision of the purpose of abortion law: the law is intended to make a moral condemnation. For example, here’s how Smith responded when I asked him about why he would permit abortion at all, given his convictions: “What is it about rape that makes it OK for a woman to have an abortion? Do you see abortion as somehow less of a murder in those cases?”
“These exceptions reflect my value system,” Smith explained. “‘Judge not lest you be judged.’ I’m OK with saying to a woman that abortion is wrong, but I’d leave room for a remedy in these cases.”
Smith was far from the only person I met who spoke of an unwillingness to judge women who seek abortion under circumstances they viewed as extenuating. What interests me is the tacit willingness to pass judgment on women who seek abortion under all other circumstances.
Both Smith and Reynolds were relatively uninterested in my questions about the law’s likely impact. When I asked Smith how abortion laws should punish violators, and about whether the law would actually deter abortion, these details struck him as secondary concerns. He was resigned to the idea that women would attempt to break the law.
“Well, I’d predict there would be a lot of girls and women who would travel,” he said. “Those who could afford to would go someplace else. And there would be medicine abortions. It’s hard to stop that from happening.”
He seemed nonplussed by these shortcomings; the fact that some people would break the law was not a reason for legalizing the practice. From his perspective, the purpose of the law was to send a clear message about the wrongness of abortion.
MOVEMENT POLITICS AND ABORTION’S LEGISLATIVE AGENDA
I learned three things when I asked people what would happen if Roe were reversed and abortion could once more be outlawed. The first was that the terms of the debate would likely be set by the pro-life movement, rather than by individual, impassioned lawmakers. The second was that those who identified as pro-life wouldn’t yet have a consensus about how the law should loo
k. Finally, I learned that this lack of consensus wouldn’t stop the movement from demanding unwavering loyalty from its members.
Lauinger taught me each of these things.
Lessons from Lauinger
Due to Lauinger thwarting my efforts to meet with pro-life lawmakers, I learned that the pro-life movement in Oklahoma is run by elite outsiders, not by elected officials and not by community organizers. With a single e-mail, a never-elected activist could police the ranks of state officials against an outsider like me. More interesting was the way lawmakers anticipated that Lauinger and the Right to Life movement would shape the legislative agenda if Roe fell and abortion became a crime.
One of the questions I asked everyone I met was what they thought would happen in Oklahoma if Roe v. Wade fell.
Ryan Kiesel, who had served ten years in office fighting for reproductive rights, had a cynical response:
The right doesn’t want to win. They don’t want Roe to fall. Opposing Roe is their template for running for office. It’s their political touchstone. It avoids the need to talk about anything else. If that’s taken away from them, they’re going to have to deal with splits in coalition.17
Smith’s prediction evoked similar concerns about fragmentation. “If Roe falls? I’ve honestly never considered it,” he said. He paused for a moment, then added, “There’ll be a huge fight on the right. The activists on the far right will want a complete ban, but the majority would want the exceptions I mentioned (rape, incest, life of the mother). The game of politics will dictate which exceptions make it into the law, because the control of special interests over this issue will be profound. It’s not enough to please the 90 percent who identify as pro-life. You’ll lose office because the 10 percent who are more extreme will organize to defeat you. That’s what happened to Kris Steele.”
Several of the people I interviewed in Oklahoma had mentioned former House Speaker Kris Steele in this tone, as if he’d somehow fallen from grace. Jordan of the Southern Baptist Convention invoked Steele as an example of a politician who was “maybe too collaborative,” noting that he was “certainly seen to have been less reliable on pro-life issues.” Democratic Senator Constance Johnson was more candid in her assessment. “Kris Steele had his lunch fed to him,” she said, “because they didn’t think he was conservative enough. He started to question Tony Lauinger. That was his sin.”
Through the story of what happened to Steele I came to understand both the way in which pro-life movement elites set the agenda for lawmakers and the remorseless manner in which they punish those who deviate from the lockstep obedience they demand from members.
Kris Steele’s Story
Former Oklahoma House Speaker Kris Steele’s office is literally on the other side of the tracks, in an old brick building on the torn fringes of Oklahoma City. He runs an organization called The Education and Employment Ministry (TEEM). It provides job training, counseling, and housing for a lucky few of the hundreds of women who are released from Oklahoma prisons each year. Steele founded the nonprofit after he left office in 2012.
“We have the highest number of female inmates per capita in the world,” Steele told me as he ushered me into the conference room, swinging his lame leg with grace. “They’re here for drug-related crimes—theft, passing bad checks, all secondary to addiction,” he said. “And there’s a 70 percent re-incarceration rate for their children. But it’s impossible to pass even evidence-based sentencing reform without being called soft on crime.”18
I pulled out my papers. Steele asked if I’d mind if his intern joined us.
“I’ve been so eager to talk with you,” he said, cutting off my introductory thank-you. “It’s like The Big Sort, you know?”
Embarrassed, I confessed that I did not.
Steele was referring to Bill Bishop’s book, The Big Sort, which describes the increased homogeneity of American communities over the past four decades—precisely the era since Roe v. Wade was decided. The provocative 2008 book called attention to the fact that we increasingly live in communities that reflect our values, places where we seldom encounter those who hold different viewpoints on core issues.
Bishop and others demonstrate the forty-year migration into valuesegregated communities by tracking the number of counties that give landslide victories to either Democratic or Republication candidates. He begins with the 1976 election—a close race even at the county level—when just over 26 percent of American voters lived in counties that voted overwhelmingly for a particular candidate. By 2004, an equally divided electorate revealed a different pattern: 48.3 percent of Americans lived in “landslide” counties—places where the victors won by a margin of 20 percent or more. By 2012, over half of Americans lived in such communities.
The result, according to Bishop, is not simply a cultural sorting, but also an intensification of our differences. Citing research by social psychologists, he explains how, as people hear only their own beliefs reflected and amplified by those around them, they become more extreme in their thinking.
It suddenly hit me: I was as much a mystery to Steele and his intern as they were to me. How often did they meet someone who self-identified as a “liberal Democrat”? Somewhat self-consciously, I turned to my questions.
“Could you tell me about how you got involved with the abortion issue in Oklahoma?”
“As an ordained minister, my faith shapes my beliefs,” Steele began.
I wondered when he became a minister; he looked no more than thirty years old.
“I’d been active in the pro-life movement prior to entering legislative service,” he told me. “I was used to sharing my convictions, having lots of conversations, doing grassroots work on the issue.”
“When did you join the House?”
“I was a representative from 2000 to 2012,” he said, “and I served as speaker during the last two years. I was in the House when it turned Republican. You can skip most of your questions, I bet, because my record shows it: I’m a conservative, pro-life Republican.”
“What was your goal in terms of abortion law reform?” I asked. “What sort of laws did you want to pass?”
Steele answered, “If you call a law pro-life in Oklahoma, it passes. No one has time to read all the bills, so the debate is reduced to, ‘If you’re pro-life, you’ll support this bill.’ Take the ‘Safeguards for IVF’ bill. It banned compensation for donating eggs. Somehow the money triggered fearmongering about women’s exploitation, and we thought it was OK to bring the government into the lives of infertile couples. It was hard, in retrospect, to see how the bill was pro-life. Perhaps it was just pro-Catholic.
“It was my biggest regret in office—voting ‘yes’ on that bill,” he added. “I only understood when one of my loyal constituents confided in me that his two precious children would not exist had they been unable to pay their egg donor.”
“After that vote,” Steele continued, “I realized the complexity of these issues and I started working for systemic change. I spent two years revamping Medicaid so it was a transparent, efficient, well-run program. It’s the thing I feel most proud of.”
I learned later, from those to Steele’s right and left alike, that he’d responded to his constituent’s story by campaigning against the 2010 in vitro fertilization bill in the State Senate. He succeeded, and the bill was voted down.
Steele left government in 2012, when he had reached the term limits, but my conversations with others suggested there was a more complicated story behind his departure.
One senior Republican lobbyist, speaking anonymously, tied Steele’s fall from grace to the 2010 Personhood Act—the one Lauinger supported. “When Steele kept the 2010 Personhood Bill from reaching the House floor,” he said, “he took the blame, even though the entire caucus voted with him.”
Steele told me that out-of-state advocates had been pushing the 2010 Personhood Bill, wanting to use Oklahoma as a test case: “We already had a law saying life begins at conception. Why did we need one sayin
g ‘Constitutional rights attach at conception’? It’s not possible to give the unborn the right to vote, so it seemed redundant to me.”
In one of his final acts as House Speaker, Steele facilitated the 2010 Republican caucus’s vote not to schedule the Personhood Bill for a hearing. He told me that the majority of the caucus had supported his decision to defer consideration of the bill, noting that it made sense in view of the proximity of the controversial vote to the general election. But in its aftermath, he alone took the blame for having scuttled the pro-life bill.
After the bill died, Steele said, “Church folk sent e-mails to me saying things like, ‘I wish you’d never been born.’”
Lessons from Steele’s Story
What are we to make of the way pro-life advocates regarded Steele’s opposition to a single bill—one that the movement itself rejected in the very next legislative cycle—as a sign that he was not “reliably pro-life”?
The story sheds light on the ways in which single-issue advocates achieve their goals. It is a great example of what happens in state legislatures in response to many highly charged issues. Those who care most deeply are willing to invest time and money to influence their lawmakers. Those whose interests are more diffuse don’t bother to raise their voices or to advocate loudly for a contrary position unless and until they too begin to care deeply about the issue.
It’s called public choice theory, and it takes as its starting point the observation that, on any given issue, there are those who care deeply about it, and those who don’t care as much. In the abortion context, those who are most motivated to make legislators hear their voices are those who believe that abortion is murder and should be banned. Their sense of urgency fuels the pro-life movement, giving it an outsized influence on the legislative process.
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