...It was just like the Quayle-Bergen thing all those years ago. But people's views have evolved and Portman is younger/better looking than Bergen was at the time-not to mention that unlike the Quayle criticism this is actually a real live woman being attacked and not a fictional character...
Wasn't going to mention that but since you brought it up....
I always thought Quayle's criticism of the Murphy Brown baby thing was justified...in part because it WAS complete fiction, written solely for entertainment. Here you had a wealthy, prominent, over-40 single career woman who suddenly found herself pregnant...and actually didn't know who the father was!! It wasn't even as though real life pregnancy needed to be written into the show...the whole thing was simply made up.
What Quayle was saying was that it was sending the wrong message and he had a point...unfortunately it all came about during an election year and was very skillfully used against him by the show. Murphy's son was born in the 1992 season finale, Quayle promptly delivered his criticism and they absolutely TROUNCED him in the September season premiere...exactly 2 months before the election.
Not saying that Bush would've won re-election over Clinton had it not been for that...but it certainly didn't help and it REALLY irrepably damaged Dan Quayle, who up to then was already getting very little respect.
Qualye was not media savvy imo and misjudged the cultural capital that was invested in saying that decisions like that of the fictional Murphy Brown or some very real mothers were a-ok. I think that ideally children should have both parents but it seems that there are enough people who disagree with that that it is now on the verge of becoming a minority view.
The other thing which Qualye got reamed on was that it's difficult at best to draw any correlation between the actions of a fictional character and the decisions that many women and girls make IRL. As you mention this was seized upon with vigor by his political enemies despite the fact that they themselves likely had art or literature which they thought sent the wrong message.
But anyway as far as oow births go I don't really see a way to put the genie back in the bottle -short of reversing 40-50 years of feminism,the social safety net, the media culture, our understandings of individual autonomy and so on. While there are a few people who would like to do just that
I don't think they have that kind of muscle anymore. For better or worse times change.
I do think if Portman were older and uglier
perhaps Huckabee could have gotten away with it. But attacking a beautiful young woman that just won an Oscar and is thanking her fiancee just seems really really petty.
