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Republicans Could Lose on the Abortion Question
After watching the Republican primary debate, I realized that Republicans don’t know how to talk about abortion. That would not necessarily be an issue, except that the Democrats will almost assuredly take advantage of their ambivalence or confusion (or however you wish to describe their attitudes) and do their best to make it a significant campaign issue. Floundering around on how to address the question is not going to help the Republicans one bit.
So, I’d like to discuss the sources of the problem and suggest how the Republicans might find a way to position it. I’m going to count on the input of readers on how to best move forward.
Focusing on the Republicans who, at this point, are the most likely to be running (because they were in the first debate) will help us narrow the discussion. These are the areas that I think those running need to clarify for themselves and for the public:
- How important will the issue of abortion be for this election? Should Republicans try to downplay the question or make it a high priority?
- Whom should Republicans target in stating their positions? The general public? Conservatives? Independents?
- Can they effectively state their personal positions versus the positions that a state might take?
- Should they promote the federal government getting involved in the legislation or should they state that each state has the right to address abortion?
- Or should they keep trying to avoid the question or continue to obfuscate?
After watching most of the first debate (as much as I could tolerate), I realized the potential candidates were “all over the place.” Here’s a summary of what I think I heard (or, in some cases, did not hear that night):
Donald Trump, when asked in April whether he would sign a measure banning abortions after 15 weeks, Trump told New Hampshire’s WMUR that he would ‘look at it.’ ‘It could be on different levels, but we’re going to get it done,’ he said. ‘I know the issue very well. I think I know the issue better than most and we will get that taken care of.’
Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill that prohibits abortions after six weeks of pregnancy in April, with exceptions for when the life of the mother is at risk. The measure also allows abortions up to 15 weeks when the pregnancy is the result of rape, incest or human trafficking. After Trump criticized the law, DeSantis defended the ban and said he was ‘proud’ to sign it.
Vivek Ramaswamy has said, ‘unborn life is life’ and describes himself as ‘unapologetically pro-life.’ He told CNN in May that he does not believe a federal abortion ban ‘makes any sense.’ ‘This is not an issue for the federal government. This is an issue for the states. I think we need to be explicit about that,’ Ramaswamy said. ‘If murder laws are handled at the state level and abortion is a form of murder, the pro-life view, then it makes no sense for that to be the one federal law.’
Tim Scott, Scott, a South Carolina senator, originally favored a federal ban on abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, but in June, he wrote an op-ed in the Des Moines Register stating that if he were elected president, he would ‘sign the most pro-life legislation the House and Senate can put on my desk. We should begin with a 15-week national limit.’ He co-sponsored the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which establishes a criminal offense for performing or attempting to perform an abortion after 20 weeks. The bill states that the woman who undergoes an abortion cannot be prosecuted.
Nikki Haley, during a campaign swing through New Hampshire in May, said she would sign into law a federal abortion ban, but declined to specify after which point in a pregnancy abortion should be prohibited. The former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations added that any legislation faces steep odds to pass the House and Senate, where 60 votes are needed for bills to advance.
Doug Burgum told CNN in June that he would not support a similar measure at the federal level and, if elected president, he would not sign a nationwide ban into law. ‘I think the decision that was made returning the power to the states was the right one,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a lot of division on this issue in America, and what’s right for North Dakota may not be right for another state, Minnesota, California, New York.’
Stated bluntly, what a mess. (Keep in mind that I didn’t include all of the debaters.)
The question that immediately arises is whether the Republicans need to agree on one position regarding abortion at this stage of the primary process. Or do we benefit from having this diversity of opinions before the field becomes narrowed? How important is it to have a position that will be widely accepted by the voters, even if it compromises one’s values?
Here are my two cents, and how I think a potential candidate should outline his or her position:
I think that abortion should be in the hands of the states; it is not the business of the federal government and the last thing we need are the feds interfering. I think a candidate can state his or her personal opinion and frame it in compassionate language towards the mother and baby; that means you can say abortionists are taking a life, e.g., as opposed to murdering the baby, and that action regarding the pregnancy should be taken within the laws of the ruling state. I would not address the question of exceptions for allowing abortion, since each state will decide whether exceptions are made or not, and what those exceptions will be. It’s extremely important to emphasize that the president will not have the power to create abortion law.
* * * *
Many of you may have much better ways to clarify the political position on abortion. More important than the specific stance a politician takes might be how articulate he or she is on the question.
I look forward to learning your thoughts!
Published in Politics
Steven Hayward has the number on this:
Refuse to answer the press until they ask Democrats about Late Term Abortion or Partial Birth Abortion.
They need to attack the bias in the press instead of playing their games.
That’s an excellent idea! But I see that accompanying our statements, not instead of…
The scary part is that enough of them are bold enough to say they are all for both of them…
My personal opinion is abortion is evil and it should be illegal across all the states.
My voting position is that the battle belongs in the states.
Therefore, the position I want to see articulated is that they will support states in the passing of their own laws and will support all challenges brought before SCOTUS by the left and resist efforts to make it a national issue. The nation is divided on the issue and so it makes more sense to allow states to enshrine different views in their own laws than for a national governing body enforce onerous laws on half the country.
I think we agree, and you stated it well. Whether a Republican has the courage to say they’d support challenges to the Left on abortion–we’ll have to see.
Ah, the wonders of federalism, a theory under which our political opponents impose nationwide requirements when they are in charge, and we don’t do so when we are in charge.
It is a great theory for steering the country gradually, but inevitably, to the Left.
Liberals who think of themselves as conservatives seem to like it. I’m not entirely sure why. I imagine that they like feeling tolerant and upholding Liberty!, and perhaps they hope that the Leftists will reciprocate when in are in power, putting off the day of reckoning for those living in red states.
My impression is that such Liberals (who think of themselves as conservatives) are usually accommodate such changes gradually, as they did with no-fault divorce, widespread premarital sex, and homosexuality.
I guess that I should answer Susan’s questions.
I’d like to see a moderately restrictive federal ban, probably at around 15 weeks, which seems to have some chance of passing if the Republicans can gain control of both Congress and the Presidency. This seems like a good campaign position, to me.
I’d leave the states free to adopt further restrictions, if they wish.
The right hasn’t believed in states rights ever in my life… not from politicos. And the left began their march through institutions in the states and courts.
Subsidiarity is a friend to the righteous. It protects them from the wicked.
I don’t think that this is true.
If there’s a national majority of the wicked, they enact wicked policies, right? So then, you have to live under those wicked policies.
If there’s a local majority of the wicked, but a national majority of the righteous, then what? Well, if the righteous follow the doctrine of subsidiary, then the wicked prevail locally. If not, then the righteous prevail nationally.
So it turns out that subsidiary protects wicked local majorities from a righteous national majority.
We were all holding our breath.
For diehard devotees of the “all fertilized eggs are sacred” doctrine to have credibility, here is what needs to start being realized:
One) There must be a conscious movement away from blaming the woman, and only the woman.
Why? No woman gets pregnant on her own. The egg must meet up with sperm and unless you have a truly hermaphrodite human involved, equipped with a turkey baster, a pregnancy involves a man.
Growing up as a Catholic, abortion was deemed so evil that it came across as equivalent to pushing a button and causing thermonuclear war. Now it has come out that for decades, priests got women pregnant and paid for the matter to be “taken care of.” Were the priests excommunicated? No of course not. If anything happened at all, it was a simple transfer of the guilty priest to a different parish.
So I am never convinced of the sincerity of the men who are all about declaring their allegiance to the concept they proclaim, that “all fertilized eggs are sacred”, because I am old enough to realize that hypocrites must always make more of a show to their devotion to any declared idea than the non-hypocritical.
Two: an acknowledgement of the fact that 50% of all abortions now come about not through a pregnant female showing up at an abortion clinic but because a pregnant woman, or a possibly pregnant woman, simply obtains the morning after pill.
This pill can be procured at a local pharmacy or through the mail. Short of denying USPS, FedEx or other mail deliver service to all American women holding the status of being of procreation age, abortion is going to continue.
This fact should indicate to people that going over and screaming at women or waving banners in their faces at some abortion location is not all that effective. That energy might be far better put into helping pregnant women out than demonstrating one’s righteousness.
Three: What makes the pro-life movement have a shine to it rather than being about self righteous people who hate women: I offer up the example of a friend of mine who is as ardently pro-life as anyone else I know. She commits a certain percentage of her family’s income to a collective where the monies obtained are used to allow a small number of women to continue going to college and get their degree, or continue working so the mom-to-be has income, while bringing a baby to full term.
There is no insistence by that collective that such a pregnancy involve offering up the resulting real live baby to an adoption agency.
Fight in the states until there are enough states to pass an amendment. But you can’t pass anything in congress without that. So I don’t know what you are fighting for. Right now, I want to defang the left and protect the right. The best way to do that is to remove the incentive to control the federal.
Change things through the states.
Both sides on the issue of abortion frame their ideas in ways that make compromise difficult and counterattack easy. I choose to frame it in the thorniest way possible: justifiable homicide. It is a taking of life, but our society accepts the taking of life under certain circumstances, e.g., self defense, defense of others, judicially authorized execution, under life-threatening coercion, lawful combat. We struggle with how to fit or not a homicide into these justifiable categories. And so it is that we should struggle with how and when a pregnancy should be terminated. We do not say there is no such thing as justifiable homicide. So, too, we should not say there is no such thing as a justifiable abortion. It is simply struggling with the circumstances (including timing) that justify it. Clinton was not wrong with his slogan “safe, legal, and rare”. But “rare” is not an element of the progressive agenda. It should be a state and not federal issue only because our system is based on the 10th Amendment. There is no logic that says I get to be born in Florida, but not California. But it is our system and it is a system that best assures maximum support for the rule of law. The ability to move within the country to jurisdictions whose laws comport more with your personal viewpoints is a strength, and not a weakness. I encourage as many progressives in my area to move to California or other Deep Blue states and help me maintain rule of law cohesion in my state, rather than be ruled from Washington DC.
Excellent goal!
I like all your points, CarolJoy. Especially the third one. That’s putting your money where your mouth is.
I’m a big believer in the separation of the nations was to prevent an evil from one nation infecting the entirety of the human race.
This is the foundation in my adherence to subsidiarity. There is only one I trust to enact moral law universally and he’s not merely human. The USA is too big and too diverse at this point for moral governing to be done from the center and that should be the fight of every single one of our nationally elected officials while allowing states to do what they wish on a cultural front.
That’s dealing with reality as it exists.
So you’re suggesting calling it justifiable abortion in states that permit it. Is that right?
The urge to kill babies runs strong in the human heart. It always has. The fact we have arguments about it is progress.
I listen to a lot of vid podcasts on various topics.
One woman was detailing her decision to have an abortion. She described how much it hurt her, but she already had 3 kids and now she had no idea of how to handle having a 4th. She claimed if any single one of the banner thrusting men at the abortion site had instead of jeering at her had come up to her and offered her even a token offer of help, she might have changed her mind.
These activities only make an already troubled individual more scared than before and then put into a defensive loop.
No. I am simply framing the topic as requiring the same type of thinking that goes into justifiable homicide. Our preference is not for people to die, but we don’t criminalize killing in any and all circumstances. I am arguing against zealotry either for or against. We need to define circumstances for terminating pregnancies in ways with which most people accept that the physician and the woman acted either correctly or within their discretion. Me? I think 15 weeks is ample to be aware of and make a decision, with the ability to terminate later based on medical need. Incest and rape (IMO) are justifiable reasons to abort. I am unpersuaded by the ability to adopt out a child of rape or incest.
My opinion, as a jaded old man, is: As long as contraception is available, there is absolutely no excuse for abortion.
Abortion is a murderous result of convenience.
Systems, whether they are governments or electrical grids or communications networks, need to be designed so that faults originating in one part of the system do not run rampant through the whole thing. See my post Coupling.
Edit:
I should re-phrase the last sentence above:
Abortion is the killing of another human being for convenience.
Thanks for clarifying, although we aren’t in agreement.
There is no popular position on abortion which is why we always fight over it.
The best we can do is an averaged position which would be something most people can live with.
“I’ve Got Ideas You Can Live With,” would not be my go-to campaign slogan, however much people claim to want centrists.
There can be no compromise on abortion. It must be banned.
There is no “leave it to the States to decide on slavery” compromise.
I don’t know the law but there must be a federal law banning child sex trafficking. Or if not, there should be. This is an issue that can’t be left to the States.
The same with child genital mutilation aka gender-reassignment surgery. There should be a federal law banning this. This is an issue that can’t be left to the States.
Why oh why do we cave on abortion – the killing of our own children?
The Left is monstrous on this issue.
This is what we are fighting – lead by our “Catholic” President:
More evidence of the evil on the Left with respect to abortion. They offer no compromise, why should we?
But we can come to agreement. All we have to do is leave behind any insistence that no compromise be reached. But that isn’t a good campaign slogan for either side: if elected, I will compromise.
A couple of things, Scott, that I’d like to clarify. First, if they were finally willing to compromise, would you feel the same? For example, if they agreed to the 15-week deadline and approval for abortion if there is rape or incest, would that make a difference? I’m asking that of others on this post who feel there is no compromise from your perspective.
For me Susan, there can be no compromise. Would you ask me or anyone else to compromise on slavery, or child sex-trafficking, or child genital mutilation? I can’t do it. There is no compromise.
Okay. I asked because you pointed out that they weren’t willing to compromise, as if you might consider it. Thanks for clarifying.