Three state ballot measures restricting abortion went down in flames on Election Day, largely because of a schism between abortion pragmatists and absolutists, reports The Tennessean (Nashville):

"Some of the strongest opponents of abortion may have been responsible for (the South Dakota) measure's defeat," said Bob Burns, a retired South Dakota State University political science professor. "South Dakota Right to Life made a public statement that they opposed the initiative because of the exceptions - they took an absolutist position. The Catholic Church had an ambivalent position."

Meanwhile, abortion-rights supporters cautiously celebrated their victory at the polls. In addition to the Colorado and South Dakota initiatives, California voters rejected a measure that would have required doctors to notify a parent before performing abortions on patients under the age of 18. According to NARAL Pro-Choice America, voters across America elected 16 more abortion-rights supporters to the House and three more to the Senate.

Forty-two percent of all House members in the new Congress will be abortion-rights supporters, up from 38 percent in the current Congress, according to the organization.

In SD, 55 percent voted against a ballot measure banning banned abortion except in the case of rape or incest or to protect the health of the pregnant woman; in CO, 73 percent voted against a measure granting all fertilized human eggs the same rights as human beings:

Hard-line anti-abortion groups like the American Life League opposed the South Dakota ballot measure because it had exceptions. Two years ago, South Dakota voters rejected a statewide abortion ban that did not contain exceptions.

Other groups like Americans United for Life and National Right to Life did not support the Colorado measure, questioning its timing and the wisdom of its all-or-nothing approach.

This is the second time voters in SD – a conservative red state that John McCain won by 8 points - rejected a ballot initiative to restrict abortion, which is likely to put the kibosh on future attempts to use this tactic.

So what’s next? The Wall Street Journal reports that “strategists are debating whether the way forward should be based on confrontation or cooperation with the incoming Democratic administration,” with absolutists, who call abortion “the civil rights movement's final battle”  favoring the former approach and pragmatists who have concluded that abortion “has settled into a status quo that polls show a large number of Americans can accept” favoring the latter approach: 

The Rev. Joel Hunter, an influential megachurch pastor in Florida, sees a new willingness among pro-life activists to cooperate with pro-choice forces in search of a middle ground. He traces that openness in part to the flourishing of crisis pregnancy centers. As volunteers meet women struggling with unplanned pregnancies, they begin to view abortion less as an absolute evil and more as a practical challenge: How do we get this single mother a job, or help that college student with child care so she doesn't feel as though abortion is her only option? …

The right, meanwhile, says working to reduce the number of abortions misses the point: "It's like saying, 'Let's work to make sure they kill fewer Jews in the concentration camps this year,"' said the Rev. Mark Dever, a pastor in Washington D.C. 

Any emerging cooperation could also be torpedoed, anti-abortion activists warn, if Mr. Obama follows through on his campaign pledge to sign the Freedom of Choice Act. In draft form, the act asserts abortion as a "fundamental right," and says no government can "interfere with a woman's right to choose." That would give pro-choice activists legal grounds to challenge every restriction states have put in place over three decades, from parental notification to waiting periods to mandatory counseling. 

Meanwhile - perhaps with the specter of the Freedom of Choice Act looming large - the Catholic Church, which was ambivalent on the CO ballot measure, has now decided it would rather fight than switch, reports The New York Times:

The president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops told his fellow prelates Monday that while they should “rejoice” at the election of an African-American president, they should confront him over his support for abortion rights.

“The common good can never be adequately incarnated in any society when those waiting to be born can be legally killed at choice,” the president, Cardinal Francis George, the archbishop of Chicago, said in an opening address to about 300 bishops gathered here for their national meeting. “Common ground cannot be found by destroying the common good.”

Cardinal George’s remarks were a repudiation of the “common good” approach to the abortion issue that President-elect Barack Obama and Democratic Party leaders, including some prominent Roman Catholics, honed in the recent election.

Advocates of the “common good” approach say that, rather than outlawing abortion - which has polarized the American electorate for decades - they will try to reduce abortions by strengthening the social and economic safety net to enable more women to bring their pregnancies to term.

Cardinal George said in a news conference that while the bishops supported “social welfare programs that come to the aid of the poor,” they also would continue to lobby for legislative and legal restrictions on abortion.

According to exit polls, 54 percent of Catholics voted for the Obama-Biden ticket, but the bishops are unsure whether they were rejecting the church’s position on such matters as abortion and embryonic stem cell research, or were merely voting their pocketbooks like so many of their fellow Americans.

Some argue that the guide for Catholic voters issued by the church, “Faithful Citizenship” confused voters even though it stated that “the direct and intentional destruction of innocent human life is always wrong and is not just one issue among many.” But the takeaway message was it was OK for Catholics to vote for Obama, since the church’s unequivocal stance on abortion was counterbalanced - and muddled - by religious “guidance” that could have passed for Obama campaign talking points on other issues, such as war, global warming and illegal immigration.

Why The Supreme Court May Be Obama-Proof

At her law clerks' reunion last June, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg put the word out in no uncertain terms.

“If anyone asks you, ‘When is she retiring?’” Ginsburg said, according to several who were there, “tell them I have a great role model in Justice Stevens, who is going strong at age 88.”

Apparently, not enough people asked, so tucked away at the end of a speech at Columbia University on Oct. 25, she made the point again. Referring to the legendary Justice Louis Brandeis, Ginsburg said he “became a justice at age 60, as I did. He remained on the bench until age 83. My hope and expectation is to hold my office at least that long.” …

[A]s Ginsburg's broadly dropped hints suggest, justices don't always follow political timetables for their departures. …

“I don't think justices retire strategically, by and large,” says University of Missouri-Kansas City political scientist David Atkinson, author of a book on why justices retire. “As long as they are in good health and feel happy and indispensable, they tend to stay.” …

Stevens, too, still is sharp and agile at 88 and, according to former clerks, has made comments similar to Ginsburg's about staying on the Court as long as he still enjoys writing his own opinions - which he clearly still does.

Even if one or more justices wish to step down, their departures would likely be staggered so that the Supreme Court loses no more than one per term – and experts say that they would avoid retiring during a presidential election year so the vacancy does not become a political football. Assuming Ginsburg and/or Stevens remain hale and hearty, if either is contemplating retirement the decision would have to be made between 2009 and 2011 –which means that Obama may not get the opportunity to make a Supreme Court appointment unless he is re-elected.  

Hopelessly Changeless: Broken Campaign Promises Watch

Barack Hussein Obama (it’s OK to use his middle name now; The New York Times says so) hasn’t yet hung up those Oval Office drapes he’s been measuring for months and he’s already broken a promise he repeatedly made on the campaign trail: that lobbyists “won't find a job in my White House.”

The Boston Globe reports that lobbyists will be allowed to join the Obama transition team “as long as they work on issues unrelated to their earlier jobs”:

Obama's transition chief laid out ethics rules - which also bar transition staff from lobbying the administration for one year if they become lobbyists later - and portrayed them as the strictest ever for a transfer of presidential power.

But independent analysts said yesterday that the move is less than the wholesale removal of lobbyists that he suggested during the campaign - and shows how difficult it will be to lessen the pervasive influence of more than 40,000 registered lobbyists.

“That is a step back and there is no other way of seeing it,” said Craig Holman, who lobbies on governmental affairs for the watchdog group Public Citizen. …

Brian Pallasch, president of the American League of Lobbyists, said yesterday that … [t]he change of administration and the prospect of dividing up billions of dollars to bail out Wall Street firms and to stimulate the economy are bound to create more business for lobbyists.