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What is going on with Republicans and abortion?
Republicans are like the dog that caught the car when it comes to abortion. Kari Lake backtracks on her support of the 150 year old Arizona abortion law, which embodies the goals of much of the pro-life movement. Trump tries to avoid the issue by saying that it has been returned to the states, thereby avoiding a commitment to a federal ban. In fact, as I understand it, the Dobbs decision merely said that there is no right to abortion and that nothing prohibits states from restricting it. That alone doesn’t preclude a federal ban.
Even if you think the Arizona law goes too far, there just doesn’t seem to be any inspired leadership here. How hard would it be for Trump or some other Republican leader to call on Biden or Harris to compromise on the issue? “Republicans believe in exceptions to their position. Will you agree to exceptions to yours? Will you agree to reduce your 39-week protection for abortion rights to 24, unless it is necessary to save the mother’s life?” I’d love to see them choke on that one. Put them on the spot for once. They will never agree to any exceptions to their commitment to abortion on demand for any reason until the moment of birth. This should make it very easy for any Republican politician to paint them as extremists. And yet, it just doesn’t happen.
All that’s required is to move the poll numbers by just a little, to get the pro-life position back in the majority. It shouldn’t be that hard.
“Do you want reasonable restrictions on abortion? Or no restrictions at all, for any reason, up to the moment of birth? There isn’t ONE national Democrat who supports ANY restrictions at all on abortion. If you vote for a national Democrat, that’s what you’ll get. If you vote for a Republican, you’ll get reasonable restrictions.”
It’s like Republican politicians don’t really believe or care about the ideas that they are supposed to be defending. With an issue this easy, we should be hearing them challenge the Democrats every day with arguments like this. Instead, it’s all defense.
Published in General
Yes.
Many, maybe most- but not all.
The abortion issue was always two problems. One is the killing of innocent human life. The other is who the Hell do Sandra Day O’Connor and these other robed nobles think they are?
The Court has corrected its error, being constructed of better people for the time being. So now we’re down to one problem.
But people’s minds have inertia. The question of how much abortion to allow will settle out geographically, given time. I say let us move very slowly.
THIS is the correct conservative political view on something this divisive. It removes the central government from being a polarized bone on this issue.
The problem conservatives are having is they don’t know how to fight locally. It is going to take readjustment and politicians need to stop flaking in their states. But also, first commenter is correct – the (R) politicians never actually cared that much.
This is a good sentence. So much there. First, “pro-life” will not be a majority opinion for a least a generation. Second, what does “pro-life” mean? Under, Roe, the GOP did have to have a position, it was good enough to be against Roe. Third, changing the culture is very, very hard. It 200 years to ban slavery and that is an obvious choice. Fourth, the Dems cannot compromise. The DNC is run by extremists and there is no crossing them.
Kari Lake is get destroyed by the Right-wing media, because she flipped to a 15 week ban. Anybody proposing a 24 week ban is going to be driven out of the GOP.
Trump is close to a workable position. Leave it up to the states. Say that killing babies is wrong and that most people agree that killing a baby with a beating heart is too late. Then vow to help moms.
In a way, the whole debate kind of misses the trend. The Dems have basically put abortion pills in every pharmacy and mailbox in the country. Planned Parenthood is going to be replaced with a website to order DIY pills.
The GOP needs to commit to changing culture. Taking away a right drives out opposition voters. Be the party of promoting motherhood instead of the party of taking away choices. Play the long game. Technology is going to improve and help people realize that a baby is a baby at 40 weeks and 15 weeks and 8 weeks …
FYI, the Catholic position is that birth control is wrong, but 95% of people would strong oppose any restrictions on birth control.
Every Democrat seems to support the nationalization of their position. But not Republicans. Maybe this is a wise choice for Republicans given the political climate now. But it also highlights long term lack of leadership among Republicans here. I actually do think a national ban could succeed, not from the moment of conception but from some other later point, if some conservative leader who actually believes in the issue could act like a leader. Polls have consistently shown most Americans actually do support restrictions. When presented as a binary choice, Americans seem to back abortion rights. But not when it’s presented more realistically. That’s where a real leader could focus to change hearts and minds.
And the trans issue is one of the biggest “gimmes” I’ve ever seen, and yet once again Republicans seem tongue tied. Destroying children’s lives in order to create a new minority so that your party can champion their cause? And all Republicans can think of, when addressing this issue on a debate stage, is just to mumble something uninspired about parental rights (which almost concedes the issue because it implies that parents have a right to transition their children). Pathetic.
Imagine a debate between a Dem and Republican where this issue comes up. A leader who really cared would cite the fact that there has been a huge increase in “trans youth” in recent years (which makes no sense unless it’s a social contagion), point out that all children have anxieties associated with adolescence, and that Democrats and their proxies in medicine and education are using them for political advantage by convincing them that they need sex changes. Say that this is obviously evil and then declare that their debate opponent should fall on their knees and ask forgiveness for what they’re doing to children.
And then say that every teenager within the sound of their voice should stop listening to anyone who tells them that they need a sex change. They need to find help with someone who cares about them for more than just gaining a political advantage. Now that would get liberal heads exploding. And just keep saying it over and over every time you’re on TV. But that would require leadership and vision (as well as not caring about being invited to cocktail parties) and no Republican has it.
I would be against as national ban even then. We have far too much nationalization of our laws as it is.
The idea being that if you’re against legalized abortion, it can only be because you think it’s taking a life. The Constitution does require states to protect everyone with equal protection. So the rationale of being against abortion does allow and arguably even require a federal role. It may not be politically feasible now, but it certainly should be something that every pro-lifer would want given the underlying rationale of their pro-life beliefs.
Laws against murder vary by state without running afoul of any equal protection provisions.
In some future, I absolutely hope a national ban would succeed. But that time is not now or anywhere in the next 10 years. When we are making progress in a majority of states, then bring it nationally. Right now, the country is very solidly split on this issue, with the vast majority being in the zone of “it should be legal but absolutely not in third trimester!” But the liberals bury the lead and conservatives are purity-spiraling.
They need to get consistent messaging going forward, embrace the “what we can save now and work for the next redoubt”, and stop letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I would love to see a full, unequivocal ban on murdering babies, but you have to convert the population on that. Right now, they are solidly converted on “it’s unreasonable to force a woman to carry a baby and it’s unreasonable to kill a baby if it can survive outside the womb”. We can embrace that culturally reasonable position and count it a battle victory in a long term war.
Also, some states have populations that are more conservative than the national average and if their population supports more restriction, lack of nationalization helps them.
I think sex robots should be used to minimize the number of abortions. The people who get lots of abortions (mostly single moms with illegitimate children) won’t stop having sex so we should redirect their sexuality into robots.
So, repeal the 13th Amendment?
We tried that and it didn’t work. People could cross state lines, and slaveowners weren’t willing to leave it up to state laws. In the case of abortion, the fact that people can cross state lines may be what makes it work to handle it at the state level.
There were state-boundaries involved with slavery too, resulting in the Fugitive Slave Act and eventually the Civil War. How is it that “nationalizing” a ban on slavery is okay, but not for abortion?
How is it that having local variation on any laws is OK? Why not do away with the states altogether? For that matter, why shouldn’t laws be uniform world-wide?
Equal protection means that laws must be applied equally. Not that laws need to be created to protect people. Show me in the Constitution where Congress must pass a law against murder/arson/rape.
You should instead argue that murder laws need to be applied to the unborn (law applied the same). The problem there is that abortion is a sanctioned killing (not murder) under the law. The law has several areas of sanctioned killing (self-defense, death penalty, …).
Amend the Constitution. We have a process for that. There is a proposed Personhood Amendment that would end abortion.
That’s what I favor. But we have the “States Rights” people among us.
That’s what I meant. That amendment was passed when laws against murder weren’t protecting blacks. The same argument could be made about unborn babies.
Despite what we’d like to believe, the modern American public does not favor banning abortion. Restrictions yes. But in the wake of Roe getting overturned we overplayed our hand. Instead of taking a lesson from Democrats whose relentless incrementalism has carried them from success to success, we went hole-hog and it backfired. Reagan famously quipped “If someone offers you half a loaf, take it.” We could have gotten abortion restricted in most states and painted Dems as the extremists. But we went for the whole loaf and have come up empty. Now, seeing defeat, some are trying to establish a fallback position. Too late.
Thats a non-starter for most Americans. If that’s the take it or leave it option presented, America will leave it.
it’s called stepping on your d-/k.
So all those conservatives who claimed to favor federalism and decried the centralization of everything were faking it? Seems much like the way the liberals who claimed to favor free speech and many other Bill of Rights provisions were faking it.
So I am states right in 50/50 battleground territory or when there is no agreement on type of law.
There’s this weird idea that as the people change, the law should reflect that, but the law is sufficiently difficult to repeal that it builds in stability. The enshrining in the constitution needs to be reserved for where there exists widespread agreement.
On this subject, there is no widespread agreement – so the best place for it is in the states – where laws are put into practice in the laboratory of democracy and serves as a launching point for further persuasion.*
When a majority of states are enshrining consistent laws, then you go for an amendment.
*A properly functioning Senate that represents states would make this more possible.
How is that? Since the Dobbs decision, I have seen nothing but Dem passed bills and referendums. The overplaying was done in the past with lots of trigger laws passed, when they seemed moot.
Yep, nailed it. Part of that (a large part) is not that they support or don’t support abortion, it’s that they want to be able to count on a section of voters who will vote for them because of their stated position on abortion. They also want to raise money on the issue while never doing anything about it. Wow, this sounds like a LOT of GOP positions doesn’t it? Abortion, immigration, balancing the Budget…the list goes on. They want an issue that their voters support without question, but also one that they will never have to actually do anything about.
Sounds like an argument for term limits.
Since 2022 there have been 7 statewide abortion initiatives :
VT, MT, MI, KY, KS, CA, OH
We lost every one.
Well, maybe, but I’d rather support a 10-year maximum term limit for working for the gov’t in the bureaucracy as opposed to limits on elected officials.