NYT: Senate has become more pro-life

First, be sure to vote for the Daschle v. Thune blog HERE.

The New York Times has an article in today's edition headlined "Changing Senate Looks Better to Abortion Foes" which contains a photo of Senator-elect John Thune conversing with Senator-elect Tom Coburn outside Majority Leader Frist's office on Capitol Hill:

Here's an excerpt from today's story:

But the strengthening of Republican control and the addition of senators for whom the abortion issue ranks very high, like Mr. Coburn, Representative David Vitter of Louisiana and former Representative John Thune of South Dakota, could have a deeper effect on the Senate than a simple vote count suggests.

In fact, several leaders of the abortion-rights movement indicated in interviews that they felt very much on the defensive these days, both in terms of fending off new legislation and in dealing with the prospect of a Supreme Court nomination fight, given new urgency by the illness of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.

This article in today's edition of the NYT is a marked contrast from an article that appeared in the NYT shortly after Senator Daschle's election to the Senate in 1986 headlined "A turning point on the abortion issue?"  Here's an excerpt from the 1986 NYT article:

After long years on the defensive, advocates of abortion rights are cheering the results of last week's elections. They say that the victory of pro-choice candidates for the Senate and House of Representatives, as well as the defeat of several anti-abortion measures on state ballots, strengthens their movement not only to resist further erosion, but to regain the initiative on such issues as public financing of abortions for poor women. ...

Kate Michelman, executive director of the National Abortion Rights Action League, says the pro-choice side picked up at least three seats in the Senate and five in the House, while no pro-choice incumbent was defeated for any Federal office.

The three Senate seats, all won by Democrats, are in Georgia, with the substitution of Wyche Fowler Jr. for an anti-abortion Republican freshman, Mack Mattingly; South Dakota, where Representative Tom Daschle defeated James Abdnor; and North Carolina, where the Senate seat was held by one of the chamber's most committed abortion foes, John P. East, until his suicide last summer.

It's interesting to observe the pendulum swing on the issue of abortion over the decades.  In 1986, the Times was gleeful at the prospect of a "turning point" for abortion rights with the election of Tom Daschle to the Senate.  Today, the Times glumly notes that abortion foes now have more friends in the Senate, due in part to Daschle's defeat at the hands of Senator-elect Thune.