"At conception? Should the day-after pill be illegal?"
Yes. Yes. Refer to the GOP Platform or, if you are Catholic, the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church.
Do you have any evidence of that? Women are actually more pro-life than are men. The people have not been allowed to vote on this issue.
Also --- the generations growing up now are abortion survivors --- they are born to mothers who were obviously willing to suffer the inconvenience and cost of giving birth and raising children. The abortion side has been killing their children --- so you can expect some big shifts to the pro-life & Conservative side.
I'll answer your questions, but they aren't relevant to the current issue. So I will discuss the current issue first.
There was massive turnout on a number of issues.
A particular piece of that turnout, an important electoral shift, was that the religious Catholic vote went solidly for the Republicans this time.
That segment did so because of abortion. Rome practically told Catholics, in so many words, that voting for a pro-choice candidate was a mortal sin when there is a pro-life candidate on the ballot.
Catholics voted for the Republicans in unprecedented numbers because the Republican party has held itself out as pro-life, and as far as anyone knows, IS pro-life.
But Specter suddenly cast all of that into doubt practically on Election Day itself! The obvious thing to do is to cast Specter aside, but the Party might not do that.
This will be a rather strong indication that the pro-life credentials and platform of the Republican party is not SINCERE, and will evaporate even for internal rules issues of term limits on committee chairmanships imposed by the Republicans themselves!
The way that lots of those pro-life voters are going to read Specter's elevation is as the party not being sincere about being pro-life. This will not just turn them off, but will actually free Catholics from the burden of conscience on abortion, specifically, which caused them to alter their historical voting patterns in this election.
Now, maybe the Republicans will pull it out in the end by actually putting the pro-life judges on the bench. Maybe Specter will prove to be harmless.
But in leadership, one has to lead. That means making choices. The choice, now, to keep Specter in spite of a mess caused by Specter himself, and thereby discouraging millions of pro-life voters, is a strange choice.
Perhaps folks like Howlin are right, and the pro-life vote is not as important as it seems. In that case, why bother have a Republican Party pro-life plank at all? The trouble for the Republicans is that the ASSUMPTION of pro-lifers that the party really IS pro-life is being tested, here, now. And if the Republicans fail this test, the assumed pro-life credential will be lost.
Now, as to the rest of your questions and comments.
Reagan lived in a different time, when Congress was controlled by the Democrats and there were fewer Republicans. Back then, the majority of people supported abortion on demand, and partial birth abortion was not an issue. 20 years later, and now the younger generations tend to be more pro-life than pro-choice, and the debate has become much more nuanced, with partial birth abortion emerging as a wedge issue.
As far as your final question...where exactly is the legal line for pro-lifers?...neither I nor anyone else is in a position to answer that. Different pro-lifers have different opinions.
I can only tell you what I think, personally.
My faith tells me that life begins at conception.
And if I were King, there would be no legal abortion at all, except to save the life of the mother.
Since I am not King, I understand that the status of the law is a matter of the political process. I think Roe was bad because it removed a core issue from the democracy, and decided in the wrong direction.
Now, unlike many pro-choicers, I do not believe that human life is a state's rights issue. I think that life is protected by the equal protection and due process clauses of the Constitution, and think that the Supreme Court should overturn Roe by enforcing a complete constitutional ban on abortions. Note that this too removes the issue from the democracy. But since the direction is right, I would be well satisfied with such a decision.
But it ain't gonna happen in a million years. The Republicans speak of strict constructionists. The hypothetical Supreme Court decision I have spoken of is judicially activist. What Republican judges might do is overrule Roe, returning the issue of abortion to the democracy.
That does not perforce mean the States alone. There are commerce clause and civil rights issues that, in my opinion, give Congress every bit as much authority to rule on abortion as it did on partial birth abortion. I prefer a federal law banning abortion, after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, over a simple return to the states, where half of them will legalize abortion. But that federal law is very unlikely to pass, because most Republicans, again, are federalists, and would view such sweeping legislation as an encroachment on state's rights.
So, what I envision would be possible would be the federal ban on partial birth abortion in the latter two trimesters, and state laws that would either allow, or prohibit, abortion in the first trimester.
Since I believe in the doctrine of lesser evils, in those states hellbent on first term abortions, I would argue that the line after which abortion becomes particularly monstrous is the point at which the nervous system has developed and the baby feels pain, which is at about the 10 or 11 week mark, perhaps a little before.
Accordingly, I would seek to persuade, through political literature showing ultrasounds of abortions in the early term, that the point abortion on demand should end in those states insisting upon it, ought to be after two months, not three, so that the aborted children feel no pain before their deaths.
Obviously I don't want to compromise at all.
But if a temporary compromise will save many thousands of babies, I will make it, and then persist in driving for the full ban.
I hope that answers your question.