Is Jim Lehrer Pro-Life?

On the March 21 edition of the Lehrer Report, Jim Lehrer moderated one of the greatest debates I’ve ever seen, pitting Jay Alan Sekulow of the religious conservative American Center for Law and Justice, and Harvard prince Laurence Tribe, considered by many to be the most influential constitutional theorist in the country. (Of course, I haven’t seen that many great debates, as opposed to shouting stalemates. But this was great. I won’t call it Ali-Frazier great for the simple reason that it lasted less than 15 minutes rather than 15 rounds, but the fighters were going at a furious clip.) At one point, Lehrer said to Tribe, “You came down on the wrong side” of the issue, before correcting himself and saying, “other.” Each antagonist was essentially taking positions identified with his opponents: Sekulow was arguing for the federal government to take over a matter that had been decided by a state, while Tribe was defending state’s rights. Ah, rhetoric. Actually, things weren’t quite as simple as that. Social and religious conservatives have traditionally supported the idea of the state, including the federal government, enforcing morality. And Tribe, who is a socialist, nonetheless has a libertarian side. I know that that sounds odd, but there you have it. Tribe, who has a pretty plastic interpretation of the Constitution, can play any issue any way he likes. Left libertarianism means that the state has maximal obligations to the individual, but the individual has no obligations toward the state. That position is morally obscene, but not illogical, if you leave the terms intact. But when you realize that the state is merely the representative machinery of society, and society is merely people, it becomes illogical, as well. If every individual has absolute license, then all freedoms cancel each other out. My license negates your freedom. But since you also enjoy license, how can I make any demands on you? In any event, even if Lehrer does support reinserting Schiavo’s feeding tube, that would not necessarily make him an opponent of abortion. Although anti-abortion forces have sought to link the Schiavo case to their movement, there is no necessary moral or logical connection between opposing abortion and supporting the reinsertion of Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube.