Do Republicans really want to ban abortions?

In South Dakota, where fewer than 1,000 abortions are performed annually, Republican leaders voted to ban all abortions except to save a mother's life. Nine other state legislatures have followed suit with their own attempts to directly overturn Roe vs. Wade.

You might think this would be a big priority in Florida, where roughly 90,000 abortions are performed annually and where Republican leaders regularly tout their "prolife" credentials.

You might think so, but you would be wrong.

"I've had no discussion about that at all. It hasn't come up," said state House Speaker Allan Bense, a self-described "prolife" Republican who many party leaders hope will jump into the U.S. Senate race. "The debate can sometimes get very personal on those issues so I'm not inclined to head there."

Mobilized Christian conservatives played a key role ensuring George W. Bush won Florida and a second term in 2004. But the Republican agenda in Tallahassee this year has been less about megachurches than about megabusinesses.

It's a safe bet that few people sporting "I Pray and I Vote" bumper stickers are praying for corporate defendants to pay less in negligence damages.

But when Gov. Jeb Bush last week signed the repeal of joint and several liability, so many lobbyists wanted to watch that they had to hold the ceremony in the Cabinet room to make space. Asked at the ceremony why Republican leaders in Florida opted not to take South Dakota's aggressive tack against legal abortions, the governor said lawmakers never pursued it.

"I'd sign it if they did," Bush said.

Orlando-based personal injury lawyer John Morgan is a self-described "prolife, social justice Democrat" who raises big money for Democrats across the country. His wife, Ultima Morgan, is former general counsel for Florida Right to Life. He lamented that, like countless voters across the country, she consistently votes Republican strictly on the abortion issue.

"I told my wife you've wasted your money and your vote, because they're all liars. If they believed what they say, they'd do in Florida what they did in South Dakota," said Morgan, whom you've probably seen hawking legal services in TV ads.

"All they have done is protect and make the rich richer and make the poor poorer and give all the benefits to insurance companies and the HMOs. I challenge them to give as much effort to passing the South Dakota initiative as they did to saving Terri Schiavo after 50 or 60 judges had said no, or to repealing joint and several."

Liberals and plenty of Republicans have long questioned whether conservative leaders really want to make abortion illegal. Removing it from their culture war arsenal would be a blow to the GOP get-out-the-vote playbook.

In his 2004 bestseller, What's the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank argued that Republicans have convinced working class and middle class Americans to vote against their own self-interest based on cultural wedge issues to which the GOP ultimately only pays lip service.

"Their grandstanding leaders never deliver, their fury mounts and mounts, and nevertheless they turn out every two years to return their right-wing heroes to office for a second, a third, a 20th try," Frank wrote. "The trick never ages: the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation."

Don't tell Stephanie Grutman, executive director of Planned Parenthood in Florida, that Republican leaders haven't delivered for antiabortion activists. From parental notice requirements to no public funding for abortion except in cases of rape and incest, to extensive state regulations, Florida leaders have done a lot to restrict access to abortion.

Still, no one's talking much about the big enchilada - directly challenging Roe vs. Wade with a full ban. Maybe it's because people remember how Gov. Bob Martinez in 1989 called the Legislature into special session to pass a sweeping abortion ban - and how he never won a second term. Maybe the backlash from trying to intervene in the Schiavo case has Republicans skittish.

"If they were ever to attempt to enact a ban in Florida and legislators were forced to go on record, that's when you'd see many legislators in Florida no longer legislators," said Grutman.

Of course, the political risks are huge. So is that estimate of annual abortions in Florida: 90,000. How long will the Christian conservative base let Republican leaders nibble cautiously around the edges?

"There was a time when values voters could be patted on the head and they would show up at the polls and be pacified, but I think that is coming to an end, and elected officials are going to have to be more accountable," said Matt Staver, general counsel of the Liberty Council conservative advocacy group.

Staver predicted that a sweeping abortion ban for Florida will be a big topic in the 2007 legislative session: "I do know that there's going to be a lot of movement toward that in the coming months."

That's not necessarily welcome news for Florida's Republican gubernatorial candidates, Tom Gallagher and Charlie Crist, who are all over the map on abortion. Both are longtime abortion-rights Republicans, but Gallagher has now cast himself as a staunch abortion foe who would hope to overturn Roe. Last year, Crist said he would not want to overturn Roe, but recently said he would sign a abortion ban much like South Dakota's. We can't tell where he stands.

Even if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade, Florida will be among the toughest states to make abortion illegal. Since 1980, the Florida Constitution has mandated that "every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into the person's private life."

In 1989, that clause led to the Florida version of Roe: In re T.W., which found a law requiring parental consent for a minor's abortion to be in violation of the state Constitution's right to privacy.

For those looking to ban abortions in Florida, there are two main options: amend the state Constitution to clarify that the privacy provision was not meant to protect abortion rights, or overturn In re T.W. through another challenge. After all, none of the T.W. justices of 1989 are still on the court, which just this month upheld a state law requiring doctors to tell women about the risks of an abortion.

Some of the savviest legal and political minds in the antiabortion movement in Florida are consumed with ensuring that the state pass a constitutional amendment in 2008 banning gay marriage. But a far-reaching abortion ban is in their sights.

"I'm going to lead the charge on this very topic if no one else does in the next session. ... We are going to turn very quickly to this being our No. 1 priority," said John Stemberger, a trial lawyer who heads the Florida Family Policy Council and is leading the effort to ban gay marriage.

He said it won't be long before activists start demanding action from state leaders: "Right now we're talking about the marriage amendment. We're not talking about Roe vs. Wade. Once the Supreme Court erodes the legal construct for Roe vs. Wade, we're going to see states all over the country act on this."

Like it or hate it, put up or shut up time could be looming for Florida Republicans on abortion.