After writing my last post about Sarah Palin's odd lack of knowledge about Supreme Court decisions that are considered critically important by anti-abortion activists, I ran across a fascinating analysis by Beliefnet editor Steve Waldman of the segments of the Katie Couric interview that are directly about abortion policy.

I won't reduplicate the whole thing here, but basically, Couric keeps trying to get Palin to clarify whether her hard-core pro-life position means she actually wants to make nearly all abortions illegal, and Palin keeps retreating into vague language about the "culture of life" and abortion as a "choice." She finally does say she wouldn't want to jail women who have abortions, though that's not really relevant, since the Right to Life movement's strategy for eliminating abortions has always relied on making them unavailable by cracking down on providers. Palin also at one point suggests that overturning Roe would simply return the issue to the states, which is true, but doesn't deal with (a) the question of whether, as a governor, she'd support a state prohibition, or (b) the language of the Republican platform, which endorses a federal constitutional amendment to ban abortions, or (c) the fact that Congress could, if Roe is overturned, preempt state laws with a federal statutory abortion ban, much as it's already done on so-called "partial-birth abortions."

There's nothing new about tactical duplicity among anti-abortionist extremists, who've always tried to act as though they are motivated only by shock over late-term abortions, even though they support policies that would restrict or ban the vast majority of abortions that occur very early in pregnancy. But Palin's language in this interview is so incredibly evasive (as pointed out repeatedly by Waldman) that you might be left with the impression that her pro-life self-identification is just some sort of personal preference that has no impact on what she thinks the law should say on this subject. Indeed, what she really sounds like is one of those "personally opposed to" pro-choice Catholic politicians that anti-abortionists have so thoroughly excoriated over the years.

Best I can tell, right-to-lifers are confident enough that Palin's "one of us" that they'll let her get away with this sort of talk, as a way to reassure swing voters and help get her into office. But for such a brave maverick, she sure doesn't seem to have the courage of her convictions.