COLUMN RIGHT/ GEORGE WEIGEL : Women Reap the Rewards of ‘Roe’ in Abuse : Twenty years of ‘freedom’ to abort, 20 years of escalating sex crimes can’t be a coincidence.

The sexual harassment charges swirling around Sen. Robert Packwood have ignited a firestorm of questions about Olympic-class political hypocrisy.

How could a U.S. senator famous for his advocacy of women’s rights have so blithely and aggressively pursued adulterous sexual adventures?

Did feminist leaders--who surely had heard the stories circulating for more than a decade about Packwood’s philandering--make a Machiavellian bargain to look the other way so as not to jeopardize a dependable pro-feminist vote in the Senate?

Tantalizing as these issues of personal and political responsibility may be, the Packwood affair should raise an even deeper public question about the relationship between the abortion license that the Oregon Republican and his erstwhile feminist allies championed, and the cause of equality and justice for women in the United States.

The orthodox feminist understanding of this equation has been set in concrete ever since Roe vs. Wade: Abortion, available everywhere, anytime, and for any reason whatsoever, is essential to securing women’s rights. Among these rights is the right to be free of sexual harassment in the workplace. Packwood’s affairs behind closed doors blatantly contradicted his public support for women’s rights, as putatively exemplified by his vehement and long-standing defense of Roe. Therefore, Packwood is a hypocrite.

It sounds very simple and persuasive. And at one level, it is: Aggressive sexual harassment is very bad news, and if the senator engaged in it, he committed a serious abuse of office. But there are other questions begging to be asked in the wake of this affair. Is the feminist orthodoxy on abortion not itself riven with cultural contradictions, precisely because it takes an entirely instrumental or pragmatic view of abortion law? And haven’t those contradictions helped create a cultural situation conducive to sexual harassment and a host of other sorrows?

The hard sociological fact is that abortion on demand (the regime established by Roe) has been the greatest deal for irresponsible or predatory men in American history. Why? Because whatever else it said, Roe freed men from responsibility for the sexual conduct they consensually enter.

Roe is alleged to have empowered women; in fact, Roe legally disempowered women from holding men accountable for their sexual behavior where that behavior had unplanned results.

Roe’s cultural message has been even more potent than its legal impact, for it effectively eliminated any real-world consequences for men who use women as mere instruments of male sexual gratification. Those who do not understand the extraordinary temptations that this has created ought to think again about the dynamics of male sexuality, and about the ancient and ongoing struggle to discipline those dynamics through culture, moral standards and law.

In sum, Roe not only changed our law; it changed the moral culture of America. And it did so to the great disadvantage of women.

Many American women instinctively understand this, which is why, in survey after survey for the past 20 years, women have opposed Roe’s abortion license in far greater numbers than men. And while there can be no algebraic certitude in these matters, is it so implausible to suggest that many of the current pathologies in relations between the sexes in contemporary America--spousal abuse, rape, “trading in” older wives for younger models, the feminization of poverty--have something to do with the cultural climate since Roe?

Every one of these phenomena has drastically increased since Jan. 22, 1973, the date the Supreme Court issued its supposed Magna Carta of women’s rights. Is the suggestion of a linkage here, at the level of public moral culture, really so far-fetched?

The new Congress and President will soon be faced with demands--by the same feminists who were once among Bob Packwood’s strongest supporters--to pass the “Freedom of Choice Act.” This would “nationalize” Roe through federal legislation and give the United States the most radically permissive abortion regime in the Western world. But it would do more than legally extend Roe’s reach into every nook and cranny of state and local law: It would go a long way toward institutionalizing the cultural revolution launched by Roe.

Those who are rightly distressed by the image of Senate offices as sexual free-fire zones might consider what this son-of-Roe legislation could unleash on the country as a whole.