"Pro-life" identity politics: GOP's sudden support of abortion shows it was never about policy
Amanda Marcotte
Thu, October 3, 2024
SALON
JD Vance Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Before Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, the Supreme Court decision that ended abortion rights, it was a truism in the Beltway press that Americans were "bitterly divided" on abortion. Driven by polls that mostly asked people if they are "pro-life" or "pro-choice," journalists portrayed Republican voters as strongly opposed to abortion for moral and religious reasons. So it's quite the shocker to see recent polls show that a plurality — and in many cases, the majority — of Republicans plan to vote for abortion rights in various state ballot initiatives this November.
Polls show "GOP support for abortion rights measures outpacing states that had similar ballot measures in recent years," Aaron Blake of the Washington Post wrote Monday. Just a couple of years ago, state polls showed Republicans only backing abortion rights by 14-18%, he reports. Now "2024 ballot measures show Republican support between 28 and 54 percent" supporting abortion rights.
It turns out that "pro-life" conviction was only an inch deep.
What's going on here isn't especially confusing. Prior to Dobbs, calling yourself "pro-life" was a low-cost way for Republican voters to tell a story where they are morally upright heroes while casting feminists, urban liberals, college kids, and racial minorities as oversexed heathens. When abortion is legal, it's easy to condemn other people's abortions as a matter of "convenience" or say they're "using it for birth control" or employ other euphemisms for promiscuity, while quietly believing the abortions you and your friends get are justified.
We saw this shell game in action during Tuesday night's vice presidential debate, when Donald Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, talked about a friend who had an abortion. "She felt like if she hadn't had that abortion, that it would have destroyed her life because she was in an abusive relationship," he said, falsely implying that he is fine with keeping these kinds of abortions legal. In reality, as the fact-checkers lamely noted, both current and proposed abortion bans, which Vance has backed wholeheartedly, do not make exceptions based on the reason a patient seeks an abortion.
Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.
It was an outrageous lie by insinuation, but why he lied is not mysterious. Vance understands that his voters want to hear a pretty story where people like themselves will get to have abortions, but those other people — imagined to be "sluts" and "welfare queens" — will not. The problem for him and Trump, as this polling shows, is that the cold, hard reality of abortion bans is hard to ignore, now that they're law and not just an abstraction. Post-Dobbs, "abortion" isn't just a way for MAGA voters to gloat about their self-defined moral superiority. Instead, they realize that the bans apply to MAGA and non-MAGA alike. It's shifted from cheap identity politics to real-world impacts. As these polling changes demonstrate, their actual policy preference has started to eclipse what used to move them, which was culture war nonsense.
Republican politicians win by keeping their base voters focused on phantasms and symbolic, ego-driven identity politics, rather than real world issues. It's why Trump and Vance are laser-focused on immigration. It's not just that it has no material impact on their base voters, but because it doesn't. For the average MAGA voter, stories about Haitian immigrants eating cats feel like a low-stakes way to wallow in a sense of racial superiority. Many of them don't even pause to consider how these ego-fluffing lies harm real people. To them, "Haitians" are a largely imaginary group — like the "sluts" of anti-abortion mythology — that they can feel safe hating, without considering the consequences. But suppose Trump is successful in deporting millions of people from the workforce, which economists believe would trigger an economic depression. It's safe to say these voters would not enjoy that outcome.
We can see this tension playing out in the battle over union endorsements. Regarding the brass tacks of policy, the difference between Democrats and Republicans is vast. President Joe Biden has been regarded by experts as the most pro-worker president since FDR. He's aggressively defended unions, made organizing much easier, and sent law enforcement after companies for union-busting and other shady tactics. Trump, on the other, can barely conceal his contempt for workers, and especially for unions. He praised Elon Musk for firing workers for going on strike, which is illegal. He bragged about cheating workers out of overtime pay, which is also illegal. This is why United Auto Workers endorsed the Democratic ticket, with the president Shawn Fain calling Trump a "scab."
But while UAW did the right thing, the same cannot be said of the Teamsters, who refused to endorse this election. The Teamsters are whiter and more male than other unions, and subsequently 60% of their members are voting for Trump instead of Vice President Kamala Harris. It's easy for white, male union workers to live in the world of fantasy politics, where they're more focused on protecting their ego against admitting a Black woman could be president, rather than the real world, where the white male candidate is coming for their job protections. They are, in the internet parlance, in the "effing around" period. But if Trump gets elected and unleashes Project 2025's plans to dismantle organized labor in the U.S., it will be a finding-out season. But, as Republican women learned after the Dobbs decision, by the time you get there, it's too late to stop it.
Democrats are often accused by the pundits of being the ones who practice "identity politics," usually when they note the real world impacts of sexism, racism, and homophobia on real people. But what Republicans do is pure identity politics, a politics about ego and identity that is disconnected from material implications. Their propaganda apparatus encourages white people to wallow in sick urban legends about cat-eating immigrants, which creates the temporary thrill of feeling superior without doing anything substantive to improve their lives. Or to complain about imaginary "loose" women who use abortions as "birth control." Or to get mad about "cancel culture" or make-believe slights from liberals.
As long as they aren't feeling palpable consequences for their votes, it is more fun and satisfying for some voters to live in the constant ego-reinforcement chamber of GOP propaganda. It's a cheap thrill, to be told you're morally, intellectually, and physically superior to various "others," simply by being part of the MAGA tribe. On abortion, reality has eclipsed fantasy, as the polls show. Unfortunately, Trump's neck-in-neck race with Harris shows that far too many Republican voters have not yet received their wake-up call.
Why Some People Will Vote for Abortion Rights—and Trump
Melissa Gira Grant
Wed, October 2, 2024
NEW REPUBLIC
Ever since voters in red states like Kansas and Ohio turned out in droves in 2022 and 2023 to protect abortion rights in their states, some in the Democratic Party have hoped abortion ballot measures in swing states might increase turnout and shift the course of this year’s election. Ten states have abortion measures on the ballot this year—including swing states like Florida and Arizona. But last month, a New York Times/Siena College poll from Arizona disrupted this narrative: Likely voters’ support for Harris, at 45 percent, seemed to be trailing support for the state’s abortion rights ballot measure, at 58 percent. These numbers may seem surprising to those who hoped ballot measures would boost Democratic turnout, but they reflect a broader reality: Legal abortion is more popular than Democrats are.
For those who research and run ballot measure campaigns, the Arizona polling is not an unusual finding. Since 2021, Benjamin Case has led ballot initiative research at the Center for Work and Democracy, a labor-funded research center at Arizona State University. “Pretty consistently, we see results where people will vote differently when they’re allowed to vote on a policy versus when they have to vote for a politician as a proxy for all their views on different policies,” said Case. “The conventional wisdom was that abortion was this polarizing issue that splits the country down the middle,” said Case. But “one of the things that allowed that misperception to survive was the fact that voters weren’t really asked very often directly.”
Kansas broke this dynamic open when anti-abortion groups working alongside the Republican-led state legislature rushed a ballot measure ending abortion rights in front of voters, months after Dobbs. Kansas voters rejected it firmly; and in some counties that Trump had won in 2020, though the ballot measure lost, the margins were much closer than Trump’s margin. Then came Ohio in 2023: Voters passed, 57 to 43 percent, a constitutional amendment to protect legal abortion. “The scope of the victory for the Yes side suggests that a significant number of Republicans voted in favor,” according to an AP analysis. It wasn’t universal: 44 counties Trump had won by 70 percent or more in 2020 voted against protecting abortion rights. But nine out of the 10 counties where Trump won by 60 percent or less in 2020 voted “yes” on the abortion rights measure. It appeared that some Trump voters were “flipping.”
Such results helped fuel the notion that abortion rights ballot measures were good for Democrats: They might increase Democratic turnout, benefiting not only the presidential race but downballot Democrats. The numbers looked strong after Ohio and heading into the 2024 election. “The abortion rights position has over-performed Democrats’ presidential vote share by an average of nine points since 1970,” noted a Washington Post story on a recent Ballotpedia analysis. “But in 5 of 7 cases post-Roe, it has over-performed by double digits.” Another way of looking at those figures is that abortion rights were more popular than some Democratic candidates for president.
“The very existence of my organization,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, “is evidence that there is a gap between people’s partisan affiliations and how they are willing to vote on specific issues when they’re brought to them as ballot measures.” The group is nonpartisan, and provides strategy and communications support to state-based ballot measure campaigns. Given what they have seen, Hall said she’s “pretty dubious of those turnout arguments” about the measures boosting Democrats. Those arguments get a lot of attention because the press focuses on the Republican and Democrat horse race, Hall said. “They try to fit everything in the political landscape into that box.”
The Arizona poll showing Harris at 45 percent and the state’s abortion rights ballot measure at 58 percent, while a good reality check, isn’t necessarily a reason for Harris supporters to panic: To start, the poll has a margin of error of 4.4 percent, meaning the Harris support might be nearer to the 50 percent support for Trump. It’s also just one poll; a new one released this week puts Harris just two points behind Trump in the state.
The Arizona case is particularly complex, and not easy to capture in polls. Overall, two-thirds of the state’s women voters say they support abortion until presumed fetal viability, as the ballot measure proposes, according to a KFF poll of women voters published in June. That includes 68 percent of independents in a state where voters who list no party affiliation have at times outnumbered those registered Republican or Democrat. Six in 10 Democratic women voters said they would be more motivated to vote with an abortion rights measure on the ballot, along with 52 percent of independent women voters—indicating some potential impact on turnout.
It’s not just independents; there’s substantial support for the ballot initiative among Republicans. About four in 10 Republican women voters in Arizona said they support the ballot initiative—perhaps not that surprising, since nationwide, about half of Republican women voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. (The Harris campaign has also been courting Republicans, for example sending surrogates out to “Republicans for Harris” campaign events in Arizona, specifically on the issue of abortion rights.) What this reflects is that when voters are asked directly to vote on a policy, their votes don’t necessarily align with those of the politicians they also vote for.
But what should we make of the four in 10 women voters in Arizona who said they would vote for Kari Lake for Senate and yet also support the ballot measure? Lake has backed laws banning abortion over the course of her political career, has praised a near-total abortion ban, and still denies that she and Trump lost their last elections. At first, these numbers can seem shocking, or lend themselves to hopes that those Lake voters could be flipped if only they had the “right” information.
“The shocking thing to me,” Kelly Hall said, “is the number of Arizona voters who believe that Joe Biden was to blame for the fall of Roe, because it happened on his watch—the number of folks who do not pay attention to this for a living, who don’t fundamentally understand that there is a major difference between the parties on this issue.” In Arizona, according to a May 2024 Times/Siena poll, around 16 percent of registered voters said that Biden bears a lot or some responsibility “for the Supreme Court ending the constitutional right to abortion.” (Fifty-six percent said it was Trump’s responsibility.) On this question, the Arizona voters were in line with those in other swing states, where on average, 17 percent of voters blamed Biden for the end of Roe, including 12 percent of Democrats.
“There is actually not as deep and well-worn a connection between ‘Democrats are good on this issue and agree with me, and Republicans are not’ as folks in D.C. and the coast would like to believe,” Hall continued. And some Republican candidates, including Donald Trump, who claims he merely “returned abortion to the states,” are working to muddy that distinction. “It is the job of the Democratic Party, if they want to take it on, to draw that distinction,” Hall said.
The problem of voter information goes deeper than just what voters know or don’t know about where candidates stand on abortion, though. In a state like Arizona, where the legality of abortion has remained in flux—bans came into effect, and were blocked—many voters this year may not know if abortion is legal or not. (It is—up to 15 weeks.) Another KFF survey, conducted this spring, found that among women of reproductive age, only 21 percent knew that in their state abortion was legal, but only earlier in pregnancy. In light of this, the ballot measure campaigns might also serve as political education, and in a way that electoral campaigns do not. Abortion ballot measure campaigns are a way to let people know what the status quo is, and what would change if the measure passes.
Mobilizing voters for abortion rights is a different project from electing Democrats. In fact, ballot measures give voters an opportunity to divorce their vote for abortion rights from their votes for any particular candidate; that opportunity may be precisely what motivates them to turn out and vote in an election where they aren’t enthusiastic about their candidate options. Having both approaches open to voters—the ability both to elect candidates they hope will do right by them, and also the ability to directly vote for the policies they want—Hall said, is “a net positive—a very good thing.”
Your guide to the presidential candidates' views on abortion
Ever since voters in red states like Kansas and Ohio turned out in droves in 2022 and 2023 to protect abortion rights in their states, some in the Democratic Party have hoped abortion ballot measures in swing states might increase turnout and shift the course of this year’s election. Ten states have abortion measures on the ballot this year—including swing states like Florida and Arizona. But last month, a New York Times/Siena College poll from Arizona disrupted this narrative: Likely voters’ support for Harris, at 45 percent, seemed to be trailing support for the state’s abortion rights ballot measure, at 58 percent. These numbers may seem surprising to those who hoped ballot measures would boost Democratic turnout, but they reflect a broader reality: Legal abortion is more popular than Democrats are.
For those who research and run ballot measure campaigns, the Arizona polling is not an unusual finding. Since 2021, Benjamin Case has led ballot initiative research at the Center for Work and Democracy, a labor-funded research center at Arizona State University. “Pretty consistently, we see results where people will vote differently when they’re allowed to vote on a policy versus when they have to vote for a politician as a proxy for all their views on different policies,” said Case. “The conventional wisdom was that abortion was this polarizing issue that splits the country down the middle,” said Case. But “one of the things that allowed that misperception to survive was the fact that voters weren’t really asked very often directly.”
Kansas broke this dynamic open when anti-abortion groups working alongside the Republican-led state legislature rushed a ballot measure ending abortion rights in front of voters, months after Dobbs. Kansas voters rejected it firmly; and in some counties that Trump had won in 2020, though the ballot measure lost, the margins were much closer than Trump’s margin. Then came Ohio in 2023: Voters passed, 57 to 43 percent, a constitutional amendment to protect legal abortion. “The scope of the victory for the Yes side suggests that a significant number of Republicans voted in favor,” according to an AP analysis. It wasn’t universal: 44 counties Trump had won by 70 percent or more in 2020 voted against protecting abortion rights. But nine out of the 10 counties where Trump won by 60 percent or less in 2020 voted “yes” on the abortion rights measure. It appeared that some Trump voters were “flipping.”
Such results helped fuel the notion that abortion rights ballot measures were good for Democrats: They might increase Democratic turnout, benefiting not only the presidential race but downballot Democrats. The numbers looked strong after Ohio and heading into the 2024 election. “The abortion rights position has over-performed Democrats’ presidential vote share by an average of nine points since 1970,” noted a Washington Post story on a recent Ballotpedia analysis. “But in 5 of 7 cases post-Roe, it has over-performed by double digits.” Another way of looking at those figures is that abortion rights were more popular than some Democratic candidates for president.
“The very existence of my organization,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, “is evidence that there is a gap between people’s partisan affiliations and how they are willing to vote on specific issues when they’re brought to them as ballot measures.” The group is nonpartisan, and provides strategy and communications support to state-based ballot measure campaigns. Given what they have seen, Hall said she’s “pretty dubious of those turnout arguments” about the measures boosting Democrats. Those arguments get a lot of attention because the press focuses on the Republican and Democrat horse race, Hall said. “They try to fit everything in the political landscape into that box.”
The Arizona poll showing Harris at 45 percent and the state’s abortion rights ballot measure at 58 percent, while a good reality check, isn’t necessarily a reason for Harris supporters to panic: To start, the poll has a margin of error of 4.4 percent, meaning the Harris support might be nearer to the 50 percent support for Trump. It’s also just one poll; a new one released this week puts Harris just two points behind Trump in the state.
The Arizona case is particularly complex, and not easy to capture in polls. Overall, two-thirds of the state’s women voters say they support abortion until presumed fetal viability, as the ballot measure proposes, according to a KFF poll of women voters published in June. That includes 68 percent of independents in a state where voters who list no party affiliation have at times outnumbered those registered Republican or Democrat. Six in 10 Democratic women voters said they would be more motivated to vote with an abortion rights measure on the ballot, along with 52 percent of independent women voters—indicating some potential impact on turnout.
It’s not just independents; there’s substantial support for the ballot initiative among Republicans. About four in 10 Republican women voters in Arizona said they support the ballot initiative—perhaps not that surprising, since nationwide, about half of Republican women voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. (The Harris campaign has also been courting Republicans, for example sending surrogates out to “Republicans for Harris” campaign events in Arizona, specifically on the issue of abortion rights.) What this reflects is that when voters are asked directly to vote on a policy, their votes don’t necessarily align with those of the politicians they also vote for.
But what should we make of the four in 10 women voters in Arizona who said they would vote for Kari Lake for Senate and yet also support the ballot measure? Lake has backed laws banning abortion over the course of her political career, has praised a near-total abortion ban, and still denies that she and Trump lost their last elections. At first, these numbers can seem shocking, or lend themselves to hopes that those Lake voters could be flipped if only they had the “right” information.
“The shocking thing to me,” Kelly Hall said, “is the number of Arizona voters who believe that Joe Biden was to blame for the fall of Roe, because it happened on his watch—the number of folks who do not pay attention to this for a living, who don’t fundamentally understand that there is a major difference between the parties on this issue.” In Arizona, according to a May 2024 Times/Siena poll, around 16 percent of registered voters said that Biden bears a lot or some responsibility “for the Supreme Court ending the constitutional right to abortion.” (Fifty-six percent said it was Trump’s responsibility.) On this question, the Arizona voters were in line with those in other swing states, where on average, 17 percent of voters blamed Biden for the end of Roe, including 12 percent of Democrats.
“There is actually not as deep and well-worn a connection between ‘Democrats are good on this issue and agree with me, and Republicans are not’ as folks in D.C. and the coast would like to believe,” Hall continued. And some Republican candidates, including Donald Trump, who claims he merely “returned abortion to the states,” are working to muddy that distinction. “It is the job of the Democratic Party, if they want to take it on, to draw that distinction,” Hall said.
The problem of voter information goes deeper than just what voters know or don’t know about where candidates stand on abortion, though. In a state like Arizona, where the legality of abortion has remained in flux—bans came into effect, and were blocked—many voters this year may not know if abortion is legal or not. (It is—up to 15 weeks.) Another KFF survey, conducted this spring, found that among women of reproductive age, only 21 percent knew that in their state abortion was legal, but only earlier in pregnancy. In light of this, the ballot measure campaigns might also serve as political education, and in a way that electoral campaigns do not. Abortion ballot measure campaigns are a way to let people know what the status quo is, and what would change if the measure passes.
Mobilizing voters for abortion rights is a different project from electing Democrats. In fact, ballot measures give voters an opportunity to divorce their vote for abortion rights from their votes for any particular candidate; that opportunity may be precisely what motivates them to turn out and vote in an election where they aren’t enthusiastic about their candidate options. Having both approaches open to voters—the ability both to elect candidates they hope will do right by them, and also the ability to directly vote for the policies they want—Hall said, is “a net positive—a very good thing.”
Your guide to the presidential candidates' views on abortion
Seema Mehta
Thu, October 3, 2024
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Abortion rights have become a crucial election issue since the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade two years ago. (Patrick Semansky / Associated Press)
Abortion rights, always a polarizing issue in American politics, became an electoral tinderbox in 2022 after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, the landmark decision to create a federal right to abortion access. Democrats have seized upon the issue of women’s bodily autonomy, notably in the 2024 presidential election, in part because it could motivate the critical bloc of suburban women voters in swing states.
The prospect of women not having access to abortion was theoretical in many voters' minds until the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which set in motion a domino effect of widely varying laws about abortion in the states. As of June, 14 states had enacted total bans on the medical procedure, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research organization that supports abortion access.
Read more: What's on the November ballot in California?
Other states have enacted restrictions at various stages in pregnancy. The end result of all of the laws is many American women traveling to receive reproductive care, more than 171,000 in 2023, according to the institute. ProPublica reported on Sept. 16 that two Georgia women died after being unable to access legal abortion and timely medical care there, including a 28-year-old single mother who traveled to another state to obtain a prescription for a medical abortion, but then had rare complications because the fetal tissue was not fully expelled from her body.
Care that is routinely provided in such situations was significantly delayed, resulting in Amber Nicole Thurman getting a sepsis infection that caused her blood pressure to plummet and her organs to fail, according to the ProPublica report. Twenty hours later, after doctors decided to operate, her heart stopped. A state committee focused on pregnancy-related fatalities concluded that her death was "preventable."
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris weighed in the day after the report was published, saying that such tragedies are the direct result of former President Trump's Supreme Court appointees who voted to strike down Roe.
“This young mother should be alive, raising her son, and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school," the vice president said in a statement. "In more than 20 states, Trump Abortion Bans are preventing doctors from providing basic medical care. Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to ever have children again. Survivors of rape and incest are being told they cannot make decisions about what happens next to their bodies. And now women are dying. These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions."
There have also been multiple reports of woman suffering miscarriages and other medical emergencies who struggled to get care.
The 'execution' of babies
Republicans, including Trump, have claimed that Harris and running mate Tim Walz support allowing babies to be killed after they are born. Trump repeated that false assertion during the September presidential debate.
“It’s an execution,” Trump said, claiming that Democrats support allowing babies to be killed in the final months of pregnancy and after they are born.
Read more: Abortion quickly emerges as a flashpoint between Harris and Trump
It is illegal to kill babies after they are born in every state, and extremely rare late-term abortions typically occur because the baby's health is severely compromised and the baby is not viable, or because of threats to the health of the woman.
Abortions after 21 weeks, considered late-term pregnancies, account for less than 1% of abortions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 80% of abortions occur in the first nine weeks of pregnancy, and 6% occur during the second trimester.
A federal abortion ban
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, questions immediately arose about whether Congress would enact legislation protecting abortion access across the nation or a federal measure prohibiting such rights.
Trump has vacillated on whether or not he would sign a federal abortion ban, but he has said that he would support a federal prohibition after a certain length of pregnancy. The former president has also stated that Americans broadly support the issue being decided by the states, which is decisively refuted by all reliable public polling.
“Look, this is an issue that’s torn our country apart for 52 years,” Trump said during the debate. “Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican ... they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote, and that’s what happened.
“Each individual state is voting. It’s the vote of the people,” Trump said.
Read more: Trump would veto legislation establishing a federal abortion ban, Vance says
Harris argues that Trump is untrustworthy on the issue, and she vocally supports federal legislation allowing abortions until a fetus could survive outside the uterus, and later if required for medical reasons. The first White House official to visit an abortion clinic, Harris has called Trump's actions on abortion “unconscionable.”
“It’s insulting to the women of America,” Harris said. “Understand what has been happening under Donald Trump’s abortion bans. Couples who pray and dream of having a family are being denied IVF treatments. What is happening in our country, working people, working women who are working one or two jobs who can barely afford child care as it is, have to travel to another state, to get on a plane, sitting next to strangers to go and get the healthcare she needs.”
The importance of Supreme Court appointees
A president's power to reshape the Supreme Court took on greater importance when Trump narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016. Senate Republicans refused to even consider President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the seat of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia after Scalia died in February 2016 — nine months before the election.
That set the stage for Trump to fill Scalia's seat and two others — the last of his picks, Amy Coney Barrett, was confirmed just a week before the 2020 election — paving the path to Roe being overturned, which the former president frequently boasts about.
"Now it’s not tied up in the federal government,” Trump said. “I did a great service in doing it. It took courage to do it, and the Supreme Court had great courage in doing it, and I give tremendous credit to those six justices" who voted to overturn the landmark abortion ruling.
Read more: In her own words: Amy Coney Barrett on faith, precedent, abortion
Harris has lashed out at Trump for appointing the justices who supported overturning federal protection for abortion rights.
“Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe vs. Wade — and they did exactly as he intended,” she said.
TRUMP LIES!
Donald Trump Claims He Would Veto National Abortion Ban If Elected
Alanna Vagianos
Updated Wed, October 2, 2024
Donald Trump said Tuesday that he would veto a federal abortion ban, after months of dodging questions on his abortion stance.
“Everyone knows I would not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances, and would, in fact, veto it, because it is up to the states to decide based on the will of their voters (the will of the people!),” Trump wrote in an all-caps post on social media.
This is the first time the GOP presidential nominee has fully and directly answered the question of whether he would support a national abortion ban since the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade in 2022. During the presidential debate last month, Trump refused to say whether he would support a national ban despite being pressed several times by moderators and Vice President Kamala Harris.
In the social media post, Trump reiterated his support for exceptions to abortion bans including for rape, incest and life of the mother. He added that he does not support “the Democrats radical position of late term abortions” including in the “7th, 8th, or 9th month” and “the possibility of execution of the baby after birth.” Trump has repeated the false rhetoric that Democrats support murdering newborns; homicide is illegal in all 50 states and no Democrats are calling for that to change.
The former president posted the message as his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), was asked about his stance on reproductive rights during the vice presidential debate Tuesday night. Vance straight-up lied about his record on abortion, telling moderators that he never supported a federal abortion ban, although he did as recently as 2022.
It’s hard to take Trump at his word when he has such a long history of extreme comments on abortion care. It was reported earlier this year that Trump would not support a total national abortion ban, but possibly a 16-week national abortion ban. He later denied the report and told a group of reporters that he would not sign a federal abortion ban.
But Trump has repeatedly boasted about his role in reversing federal abortion protections after nominating three of the conservative justices who were critical in overturning the historic 1973 Roe decision. The former president also once endorsed punishing women who get abortions with jail time. He’s surrounded himself with some of the most extreme anti-abortion advocates in politics, including Vance who has called for federal restrictions on traveling for abortion care and advocated for the surveillance of women’s menstrual cycles to prevent them from getting abortions.
“Donald Trump is scrambling to try and clean up his disastrous debate performance, when he refused three times in front of 67 million viewers to commit to vetoing a national abortion ban,” Sarafina Chitika, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign, said in a press statement.
“Trump clearly knows his record of ripping away women’s freedoms and his Project 2025 plans to ban abortion nationwide will cost him this November ― now he’s trying to rewrite his record, words and actions. It won’t work,” Chitika continued. “Women are living the consequences of the nightmare Trump created ― and too many are losing their lives to extreme Trump bans. They will hold him accountable this November.”
Project 2025, an extreme policy agenda for a possible second Trump term, includes several draconian anti-abortion policy proposals including enacting the Comstock Act, a 150-year-old anti-obscenity law that if enforced would criminalize sending abortion pills by mail and effectively create a backdoor national abortion ban. Although Trump has attempted to distance himself from the plan, many of his longtime allies are responsible for the 900-page document.
No comments:
Post a Comment