In a post-Roe America, progressives should expect their stance on abortion to become politically toxic.
In a post-Roe America, progressives should expect their stance on abortion to become politically toxic.
M ore than a week has passed since someone leaked the draft of a Supreme Court opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito that would overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. If this draft were to become the official opinion of the Court, the issue would, after 50 long years, return to the states, where the American people, rather than nine unelected justices, would have the chance to determine their preferred abortion policies.
Oddly, in the wake of this bombshell leak, Democratic politicians and pro-abortion activists have wanted to discuss everything under the sun other than their preferred abortion policies.
Instead, they’ve turned their attention to a series of red herrings, designed to put pro-lifers on the defensive. They have claimed that laws protecting unborn children will outlaw treatment for ectopic pregnancies. This is false. They have argued that pro-lifers intend to punish women who suffer miscarriages. This is also false: Not only will abortion laws not affect miscarriage care, but they won’t punish women — even women who’ve had an abortion — at all. And they have argued that laws against abortion are a means of “forcing women to give birth,” a nonsensical claim that entirely ignores the agency of the women in question.
In short, with Roe on the chopping block, abortion supporters have proven unwilling to defend their own view of what ought to happen in a post-Roe America. And in the Senate, Democrats are about to show us the reason for this reluctance.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) is holding a vote today on the Democrats’ truly radical abortion bill, which would make abortion legal nationwide throughout all nine months of pregnancy. That is plenty extreme enough. But the bill would also nullify nearly every state pro-life law, both those in place now and any that states attempt to enact later on, including state laws that require parental notification for abortions sought by young girls and those that prohibit sex-selective abortions.
The bill is so extreme it would create a right for non-physicians to perform abortions, including surgical abortions after the unborn child is able to survive outside the womb. And it would eliminate conscience protections for health-care professionals who object to performing abortions on moral or religious grounds.
It would, in other words, be a congressional mandate for nearly unlimited abortion, through all nine months of pregnancy, for any reason, anywhere in the country. It would leave no room for pro-life voters to have a say in abortion laws in their own states. It would leave no room for protecting minors or unborn children. And it would leave no room for anyone in the health-care industry who rejects the violence of abortion.
This is why abortion supporters have been so focused on falsehoods about ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, and “forced birth” since the leak of Alito’s draft: The reality of their preferred policies is horrifying, and it will shock Americans.
Hardly anyone in America agrees with this type of abortion policy. A mere 13 percent of Americans say that abortion should be available at all in the last three months of pregnancy. Even most Democrats disagree: Only 18 percent think abortion should be legal up until birth. The overwhelming majority of Americans would prefer abortion to be limited to the first trimester and the so-called hard cases of rape and incest, or that it not be legal at all.
Nevertheless, the Democratic Party has committed itself to unlimited abortion, and, fearing that Roe is doomed, abortion-advocacy groups are demanding their pound of flesh. The pro-life movement should stick to this message unrelentingly: When Roe is gone, the American people deserve a chance to protect unborn children. Democratic politicians are out of step not only with the average American but with the average Democratic voter. We aren’t debating red herrings anymore. It’s time for abortion advocates to defend their own extremism.