The Abortion Issue Isn't Complicated
And Democrats shouldn't stop talking about it, even for a day.
Politics is complicated, which is why it’s interesting, and also why so many smart people who pay a lot of attention to it make predictions that turn out to be wrong. But sometimes, things get very simple.
That’s what is happening now on abortion. Republicans have already outlawed it in the half of the country they control, with devastating consequences for millions of women and their families. And they’re eager to make it illegal everywhere. The more voters understand this, the more likely it becomes that Joe Biden wins reelection, and Democrats take back the House and hold on to the Senate.
Republicans are trying to make the issue more complicated, to convince voters there are layers of nuance that must be appreciated and therefore the GOP’s intentions are not quite as menacing as they appear. Everything they’re now saying is geared toward that end: to spread the belief that they aren’t trying to do what they very much are trying to do, that they’re more moderate than they appear, and that you shouldn’t worry about what they’ll do with complete power in Washington should they achieve it.
When dealing with this issue, Democrats need to fight against two tendencies that so often undermine them. The first is their appreciation for nuance, detail, and complexity. The second is their propensity to bend over backward to show an appreciation and understanding for the beliefs of people who are never going to vote for them.
This is not a time for any of that. If they pound on this issue in the simplest way possible, they’ll win. If they don’t, they’ll lose.
Don’t be fooled by what just happened at the Supreme Court
Earlier this week the Supreme Court unanimously rejected a lawsuit seeking to effectively outlaw medication abortions, which made up 63% of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023, according to the Guttmacher Institute. While the suit itself was one of the most cynical and dishonest legal efforts one could imagine, what matters for this discussion is the reaction to it.
Legal analysts have pored over their thesauruses to find words to describe what a gigantic turd of a lawsuit it was. To summarize: Antiabortion advocates incorporated an organization in Amarillo, Texas so they could file suit in a federal district whose only judge is Matthew Kacsmaryk, who made a career fighting abortion rights before Donald Trump put him on the bench. The suit claims that FDA approval for mifepristone should be withdrawn because some antiabortion doctors and dentists (yes, dentists) are uncomfortable with the hypothetical idea that one day, they might have to treat a patient who took it and had a rare complication, thereby making them “complicit” in abortion. Kacsmaryk issued a nationwide injunction against mifepristone and was upheld by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, the most radical right-wing appeals court in the country.
The Supreme Court ruled that the doctors had no standing to sue, which of course they didn’t. But the fact that it was a unanimous decision shows that this suit was so dangerous to the antiabortion cause that even Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — who would be happy to see any woman who gets an abortion paraded through the streets while townsfolk pelt her with rotten fruit while shouting “Shame! Shame!” — didn’t want to touch it so close to an election.
Conservatives are using that ruling to say See — our Supreme Court supermajority isn’t crazy! You don’t have anything to worry about! “So much for the left’s denunciations of the Court as ‘Christian Nationalist,’” harrumphed the Wall Street Journal editorial board. “The current Court majority is putting the law first, even if it means a policy defeat for their political beliefs.” So principled.
No one should fall for what Trump is saying
Meanwhile, the news media is once again falling into the trap of treating Donald Trump’s words on a subject he cares nothing about as though they have some meaningful connection to what he will do if he becomes president. Trump has been saying that abortion should be left to the states — even as he assures radical antiabortion groups that he’s still their guy — but there is precisely zero reason to think that he will do anything but follow the lead of the Republican Party and the conservative movement on this issue. His executive branch will be stocked with antiabortion zealots, his judicial appointments will be prescreened to ensure they oppose reproductive rights, and if Republicans control Congress and pass a nationwide abortion ban, there is no way he’s going to veto it.
And make no mistake, Republicans will be continuing a multipronged effort to make abortions illegal or impossible to obtain — through Congress, through state legislatures, through the courts, and through harassment and intimidation of providers. In fact, opposition to all birth control is on its way from the fringe to the mainstream of conservative opinion. The same thing is happening with in-vitro fertilization: When the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children, Republicans rushed to assure the public that they don’t want to outlaw IVF, but now they’re warming to the idea. Republican senators just blocked a bill to protect IVF (just as they earlier blocked a bill to guarantee access to contraception), and the Southern Baptist Convention, which is highly influential in Republican circles, voted to oppose it. Don’t be surprised if more and more Republicans come around to the idea that being “pro-life” means you have to want to ban IVF.
Public opinion couldn’t be clearer
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, we’ve seen again and again how politically potent this issue is, and how terrified Republicans are of it. According to new data from Gallup, the number of Americans who say they will only vote for candidates who agree with them on abortion has never been higher — and among those who say that, pro-choice voters outnumber anti-choice voters by almost three to one.
Overall, the proportion of Americans who believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances — which is essentially the GOP position — is now just 12%. Parties don’t get many issues that are skewed that heavily in their favor.
In addition, there will be abortion initiatives on the ballot in multiple key states this November. Initiatives have already made the ballot in Florida, Maryland, Colorado and South Dakota. There could also be initiatives in the battleground states of Arizona and Nevada, along with a few others including Montana, where Democrats desperately need to hold on to Jon Tester’s Senate seat.
This is not a hard issue to communicate; we’re not talking about complex trade negotiations or an intricate health reform plan. All you have to say is Trump and the Republicans are trying to ban abortion. They want 12-year old rape victims to be forced to carry their rapists’ babies. They want to keep medical care from women suffering life-threatening pregnancy complications.1 Not only that, after they’re done they’re going to try to ban IVF and birth control. And say it over and over and over again.
That runs up against the way Democrats have traditionally approached this issue. They had in their head an imagined median voter, one who was basically pro-choice but found abortion morally suspect and just plain icky, so to speak to that voter Democrats were always a little apologetic about the position they took and eager to communicate that they too are uncomfortable about the whole thing. That’s still true of many (especially older) Democrats, including Joe Biden.
But that picture of the median voter isn’t true now, if it ever was. The median voter wants abortion rights maintained, and the thing they find morally suspect and icky is the Republican desire to police women’s bodies and choices.
I’m not saying this is the only issue Democrats should talk about in this campaign; there are many other important ones. But a day shouldn’t go by when Democrats aren’t reminding voters about what’s at stake on abortion. Do that, and they just might pull this election out. It’s not complicated.
Please, don’t talk to me about “exceptions” Republicans support. The exceptions are invariably written in ways that no one can actually take advantage of them, in states where doctors are convinced, with good reason, that they stand a good chance of being prosecuted if they give any woman (or girl) an abortion for any reason. The exceptions are meaningless.
You’re right to flog this. But the Dems have shown a willingness to wave the bloody shirt (literally) on what has to be THE transcendent issue of our time.
I am frankly gobsmacked that, sheer decency aside, the GOP hasn’t figured out that forcing educated, middle class, often white suburban women to jeopardize their lives or health when WELCOME PREGNANCIES go bad is not a smart play.
Bravo.