In her post this past weekend, Rebecca made a few astute and important points that I'd like to fortify below. But first, let's take a look at a question political analysts have been debating since the Dobbs decision dropped in late May: Will the abortion issue throw a political lifeline to Democrats ahead of the midterms? My initial analysis was that we would see a familiar pattern play out, based on the trajectory we witnessed after that ruling was released to the public via a shocking leak, weeks earlier. In short, abortion would vault into the top echelon of issues – with many Americans falsely believing that the uprooting of Roe meant a national ban on abortions. Democrats would exploit the situation to raise money, energize their adamantly pro-abortion base (more on that in a moment), and perhaps nudge some moderates back into their column. For the moment, at least. Then the issue would subside in the public's consciousness (already happening), beyond people on both sides who already prioritized this policy area. The fundamentals of the election cycle, which are positively dreadful for the ruling party, would reassert themselves.
There is some evidence that Dobbs boosted Democrats on the generic ballot, but we'll see if that shift has any staying power. Some surveys have shown Democrats gaining ground, while others have resulted in virtually no movement, or even a slight swing toward Republicans. In other words, a mixed bag. Let's check back in after Labor Day. The Democrats' messaging seems to boil down to, "women won't stand for this," echoing a long-standing but dubious trope on the politics of abortion. In a widely-shared clip last week, President Biden pulled a Ron Burgundy as he labored through a teleprompter speech:
NOW - Biden: "End of quote. Repeat the line. Women are not without electoral... or political power."pic.twitter.com/1B09zEM94F
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) July 8, 2022
Let's ignore the humorous gaffe and focus on the points he's trying to make: First, that women wield outsized power in American elections due to their relatively higher turnout rate – and second, that because women support legalized abortion, they can rise up over the issue this fall. Is the second premise sound? Most of the news media, heavily populated with abortion activists, believe so. But as usual, their narrative doesn't reflect Americans' views. It's true that only a small fraction of the country favors blanket abortion bans. But a similarly tiny sliver holds the opposite stance: Unrestricted abortion. According to a new Harris/Harvard national poll, roughly half of the country supports a ban on most abortions after six weeks (similar to a recently-passed Texas law), while a super-majority supports a (Florida-style) 15-week ban. These results more or less mirror a Fox News survey taken shortly before the Dobbs leak this spring:
New polling data out on #Dobbs:
— Leo O'Malley (@LeoTOMalley) July 4, 2022
1) Overturning #RoeVsWade: 45% Support/55% Oppose
2) 37% would ban abortion entirely w/ only rape and incest exceptions
3) 49% support abortion ban after 6 wks
4) 72%!! support abortion ban after 15wks https://t.co/SA1t369bL3
The plurality, but still minority, position is that nearly all abortions should be illegal, except under the rare circumstances of rape, incest (and all abortion restrictions in the US also protect the life of the mother, despite aggressive lies to the contrary). The Dobbs case was about Mississippi's 15-week ban, a mainstream global position, that attracts the support of more than seven-in-ten Americans. This policy preference is labeled "extreme" and "anti-women" by the abortion lobby, which subsumes the modern Democratic establishment and most journalists (whose credibility is in outright freefall). It is, by definition, not extreme at all. And as for the claim that it's hostile to women's rights, note the gender gap in this survey:
New Harvard/Harris poll: Huge super-majority of Americans favor 15-week abortion bans in states. Women more likely than men to favor such restrictions; men more likely to support no limitations. Just 10% of respondents agree with federal Dems' 9-month-abortion radicalism: pic.twitter.com/wyOzUPg9uE
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) July 10, 2022
Women are more likely than men to support abortion limitations, not less – while men are more likely to hold fringe, abortion-permissive views than women. Other polling shows some variance on this, but there's generally very little "expected" (under the prevailing narrative) gender disparities on these questions. Biden's underlying assumption is wrong. He and Congressional Democrats are again calling for a "codification" of Roe, but the bill they're offering (supported by every single Congressional Democrat, save two) does nothing of the sort. It's a wildly extreme measure that would essentially eliminate all common-sense, widely-backed limitations on abortion, enshrining taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand through the moment of birth. It's grotesque. And as National Review's John McCormack has pointed out, Democrats chose not to even attempt to pass (more moderate) Roe codification legislation when they had the opportunity to do so:
From April 2009 to January 2011, Democrats held either 59 or 60 Senate seats. In 2009, every Senate Democrat, with the exceptions of Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania, supported a right to abortion. Democrats in other conservative states, including Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, had voted in favor of a resolution expressing support for Roe in 1999.* Harry Reid had voted against that resolution but subsequently made his peace with progressives in order to become majority leader. Democratic senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas said of his position on abortion that he was “somewhere … in the middle of that issue.” Even if Pryor, Nelson, and Casey had defected on an abortion vote, there were three Republican senators who supported Roe: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Olympia Snowe of Maine. Their votes would have gotten some federal abortion bill the 60 votes it needed to overcome a Senate filibuster. (Another pro-Roe Republican, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, filled the Senate seat formerly held by Democrat Ted Kennedy in January of 2010.)
They didn't even try. Why? The Vice President tried to answer this question, as only she can:
did past Dems fail by not codifying Roe v. Wade over the past five decades?
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) July 8, 2022
Harris: I think that, to be very honest with you, I do believe that we should have rightly believed, but we certainly believe that certain issues are just settled.
pic.twitter.com/4eF9M2Jvw6
What a characteristically awful answer. Allahpundit snarks, "it's astounding that Harry Reid never tried to find out. Since the Reagan era, Republicans made it crystal clear that they were engaged in a long-term project to remake the Court with conservative justices who would overrule Roe. Democrats had 40 years to plan accordingly. Oops." Here's a more coherent and accurate response to the question posed above: A bill that could have won 60 votes in the Democrat-dominated Senate would have needed to resemble a Roe framework, allowing for increasing abortion restrictions as pregnancies progress. There would have been compromise language on a host of related questions. And the left-wing Democratic base, donor class, and activist network would never have agreed to any of it. They, along with most journos, represent the one-tenth-to-one-fifth of the country whose zeal for unfettered abortion is so extreme that any middle ground is rendered unacceptable. An actual Roe codification effort would have splintered Republicans, yes, but it may have fractured Democrats even more. So leadership didn't want to go anywhere near it. And now here we are. The angry left is so angry that they're engaged in a nasty circular firing squad, lambasting the Biden administration for not "doing more" – hence the messy press statement above that gifted us with "repeat the line."
In that embedded Harris/Harvard survey graphic, you'll see that 60 percent of self-identified Democratic voters, and 70 percent of independents, said that abortion should generally not be permitted after 15 weeks. A lot of "pro-choice" and "pro-life" Americans aren't actually terribly far apart on some of these questions. It's the hardcore pro-abortion and anti-abortion contingents that are out of the mainstream; the latter group enjoys virtually zero support within our cultural taste-making institutions, which are dominated by the former camp. And yes, much of official Democratdom is appallingly pro-abortion at this point:
Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren: “We need to put a stop” to crisis pregnancy centers “right now.” pic.twitter.com/PzhBe21AGk
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) July 6, 2022
I don't like to toss around words like "evil" to describe political opponents' views, but this one is pretty close. Pro-life crisis pregnancy centers help provide women with the resources they need not to choose abortion (the sort of pro-woman and -child work that abortion activists often claim pro-lifers aren't interested in doing). These organizations are not forcing women to deliver their babies. They're not passing any laws. They're just helping women choose life for their children. Democratic senators want to "crack down" on these centers. The state of California passed a law to force them to advertise abortion (struck down along ideological lines at SCOTUS). And the Speaker of the House refused to offer even a tepid condemnation of the violent campaign of domestic terrorism being waged against them. If "evil" is too strong a word, I'd be open to suggestions. I'll leave you with the latest escalation being cheered on and justified by leftists, in the wake of the latest public hounding episode, which targeted a Supreme Court justice who had an assassin show up at his family's home just a few weeks ago:
ShutDownDC, a liberal advocacy group in Washington, D.C, says it will offer up to $250 to local service industry workers for every sighting of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade.https://t.co/QGXt0Hzv0b
— Axios (@axios) July 10, 2022
Illiberal is the appropriate descriptor here. None of this ends well, for anyone. But how 'bout it, KJP?
Will Jean-Pierre kindly publish her home address? For “democracy”? https://t.co/KOwdEqMa69
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) July 9, 2022
UPDATE - Is an emotionally-charged story about a 10-year-old rape victim needing to leave her state to end her pregnancy (which has been amplified all over social media, hyped by the news media, and mentioned by Biden himself) even true? That's looking unclear at best. I'm in favor of some exceptions that would make such a story moot – also undermining pro-legalized-abortion arguments that rely on exceedingly rare circumstances to put pro-lifers in politically untenable positions. But viral anecdotes should at least be verified before "news professionals" run with them, far and wide. Unless they're more interested in performing activism than journalism, of course. Can anyone be surprised by this richly-earned demolition of trust?
Americans' confidence in newspapers and television news has plummeted to an all-time low, according to the latest annual Gallup survey of trust in U.S. institutions. https://t.co/kIegfyuPBX
— Axios (@axios) July 8, 2022
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