ReportWire

Tag: life after roe

  • Abortion Is on the Ballot in Two Big Battleground States

    Abortion Is on the Ballot in Two Big Battleground States

    [ad_1]

    A pro-choice rally in Tucson, Arizona.
    Photo: Sandy Huffaker/AFP/Getty Images

    Alongside (and in some states adding to) the drama of the 2024 presidential contest is a grim fight between Republican legislators looking to enact abortion bans and citizen groups seeking to overturn them by ballot initiative. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, pro-choice ballot initiatives have prevailed in seven states (Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, California, Vermont, Montana, and Ohio). Abortion-rights advocates have pushed for new ballot measures in 12 more states in this election cycle with proponents of abortion restrictions pushing a couple of their own.

    So far, seven initiatives protecting the right to an abortion at least up until fetal viability have been certified for the November general-election ballot, and two of the most recent are in the presidential and Senate battleground states of Arizona and Nevada. Both are expected to pass (Nevada will need to do this twice — the second time presumably in 2026 — to amend its constitution to add abortion protections), and Democrats are hoping to benefit from heavy turnout by voters leaning their way while attacking GOP candidates up and down the ballot for favoring or enabling abortion restrictions. That will include Donald Trump and his intensely anti-feminist running mate, J.D. Vance, along with Republican Senate candidates Kari Lake in Arizona and Sam Brown in Nevada.

    Ballot measures in the blue states of Colorado (where a ban on abortion funding would be repealed), Maryland, and New York (where abortion protections are framed as anti-discrimination measures) are certain to pass; they could have an impact on down-ballot political contests. Initiatives in the red states of Missouri and South Dakota are favored to pass as well, though neither state is a presidential or Senate battleground and the South Dakota measure is not being backed by national abortion-rights groups because it only protects procedures during the first trimester of pregnancy. A Florida initiative restoring the right to abortion prior to fetal viability has a couple of notable features: It must meet a supermajority (60 percent) threshold for passage, and it has become a problem for Donald Trump, whose efforts to take the abortion issue out of the presidential contest are being undermined by demands that he disclose his own vote on his state’s ballot measure (most recently, he’s said he will hold a future “press conference” to reveal his position, which seems very unlikely).

    There remain three states where the ballot status of abortion initiatives is unclear. In Montana, where voters rejected a restrictive ballot measure in 2022, backers of an initiative to protect pre-viability abortions claim to have submitted enough petitions to achieve a November vote, but it hasn’t been certified, though a Republican effort to strike petitions from “inactive voters” was stopped by the courts. In Arkansas, sponsors of a modest initiative (also not backed by many national abortion-rights groups) to protect abortions up to 18 weeks into pregnancy submitted what appeared to be enough petitions to achieve ballot access, but it was declared disqualified by the hostile Republican state attorney general on grounds of missed paperwork without any chance to fix the error. The dispute is now playing out in court.

    Finally, Nebraska voters are likely to encounter dueling abortion ballot initiatives, though neither has been certified. One is much like the pro-choice measures at play in other states, enshrining a right to pre-viability abortions in the state constitution. The other would allegedly protect first-trimester pregnancy but would create a constitutional ban on second- or third-trimester abortions. There could be some voter confusion over the implications of the two measures, and while Nebraska is a deep-red state, it allows electoral votes to be cast by congressional district, and Democrats are counting on winning one of them (as Joe Biden did in 2020).

    There’s not much question that when the dust has cleared, more states will have instituted abortion rights measures, some against the will of Republican legislatures. And it’s also clear Democrats will try to “own” the issue (particularly now that the Biden’s administration’s chief abortion-rights spokesperson is the presidential nominee) and Republicans will try to avoid it and disguise their intentions.


    See All



    [ad_2]

    Ed Kilgore

    Source link

  • Don’t Be Fooled by Trump’s Triangulation on Abortion

    Don’t Be Fooled by Trump’s Triangulation on Abortion

    [ad_1]

    Trump can’t evade his promises to the anti-abortion movement.
    Photo: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

    Democrats are understandably frantic to make abortion policy a key issue in the 2024 elections. But they aren’t entirely on the same page about how to deal with Donald Trump’s latest tactics on the subject. The former president, who enabled the end of Roe v. Wade, is pretty clearly trying to take the issue off the table by foreswearing any interest in a federal abortion ban and depicting himself as largely indifferent to what states decide to do. Some critics hope to drive a wedge between Trump and one of his party’s most important constituency groups by suggesting that he has thrown the anti-abortion lobby “under the bus,” discarding them now that they are making very unpopular demands. Others accuse Trump of lying about his plans for abortion policy once he’s back in the White House. And still others suggest that this supremely transactional man can’t be trusted to take a principled position on much of anything that doesn’t touch on his personal power and his lust for vengeance against his many enemies.

    All of these perspectives have merit. But from a coldly political point of view, Democrats should recognize a tactic that one of their own presidents perfected to the befuddlement of allies and opponents alike: triangulation.

    Bill Clinton was masterful at addressing issues that were bedeviling his party in ways that neutralized their salience and strengthened the impression he was “a different kind of Democrat.” This did not mean simply adopting Republican positions, as intraparty critics often complained (as did conservative politicians, who whined that Clinton was “stealing our ideas”). It meant, as the 42nd president’s one-time Svengali Dick Morris put it, to “use your party’s solutions to solve the other side’s problems. Use your tools to fix their car.” For example, instead of refusing to talk about crime because it was a “Republican issue,” Clinton promoted community policing and putting more cops on the street instead of the GOP’s preferred policies of tougher sentencing and sanctioned violence against criminal suspects. More controversially, he responded to the popular craving for welfare reform not by cutting off public assistance but by focusing it on transitional support aiming at immediate employment. Whatever you think of those policies (and they didn’t age very well), at the time, they helped insulate Democrats from attacks while driving Republicans nuts.

    Trump seems to be trying something similar on abortion: He’s distancing himself from the anti-abortion extremists, who have been perhaps his staunchest allies, without becoming pro-choice. Trump’s “It’s a state issue” stance conveniently allows him to deny reproductive rights will even be an issue for him as president, without embracing abortion rights in any way, shape, or form. He’s embellished his evasive stance by selectively and vaguely criticizing total state abortion bans as “too harsh,” and undergirded his faux-centrist posture by falsely claiming “legal experts on both sides” wanted to reverse Roe v. Wade and make abortion a state issue. Meanwhile, anti-abortion militants understand that there’s not going to be any federal abortion ban until (a) Republicans have a governing trifecta and (b) they decide it’s safe to kill the Senate filibuster. So they’ll tolerate Trump’s disrespectful rhetoric, much as many old-school Democrats backed Clinton even though they were deeply annoyed by his “third way” stylings.

    The simplest way for Democrats to deal with Trumpian triangulation on abortion is to remind voters again and again of the explicit promises to the anti-abortion movement that he has made and delivered upon, bringing them closer to their goal of eliminating legal abortion and even some forms of contraception. Because Trump won, abortion rights suffered and, in much of the country, died. Voters don’t need an in-depth education on constitutional law or how the federal judiciary works to understand that, and it’s an argument and a challenge Trump cannot evade.


    See All



    [ad_2]

    Ed Kilgore

    Source link

  • Ruling Against New York Abortion Vote Is a Blow to Democrats

    Ruling Against New York Abortion Vote Is a Blow to Democrats

    [ad_1]

    Pro-choice protesters in New York.
    Photo: AFP via Getty Images

    Even in states where there’s no imminent threat to the abortion rights that existed under Roe v. Wade, ballot measures are becoming a popular way to protect or even expand the right to choose via constitutional amendments — and also for Democrats to turn out pro-choice voters at the polls. Such ballot tests have uniformly been won by pro-choice activists in recent years, and Democrats hoped to add New York to the list of states expanding abortion rights this November.

    But now, they may not get the chance. This week, a conservative upstate New York judge ruled that a proposed state constitutional amendment banning discrimination based on “pregnancy outcomes” and “gender expression,” which includes language to protect abortion rights, cannot appear on the ballot in November due to a procedural error.

    State Supreme Court Justice Daniel Doyle ruled that an advisory opinion on the constitutionality of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment from state Attorney General Letitia James was not received before an initial legislative vote (as required by the state constitution, the measure cleared the Legislature twice, in 2022 and in 2023, before being referred to voters). Democrats have argued that the opinion was received during legislative consideration of the amendmen, and that the requirement has been overlooked many times in the past. Now James will have the responsibility of making that case before New York’s appeals courts, where Democratic-appointed judges may be more sympathetic.

    In the meantime, Doyle’s ruling has created significant consternation among pro-choice New Yorkers. One fact should mitigate anxiety, though: The current law in New York protects the right to pre-viability abortions, as well as post-viability abortions under significant exceptions. In other words, in New York, it’s as though Roe has never been reversed, though some abortion-rights advocates felt the ERA’s language (prohibiting, among other things, discrimination based on “pregnancy” or “pregnancy outcomes”) might expand reproductive rights beyond those guaranteed by Roe.

    Most of the controversy over the ERA (and its ballot counterpart, Proposition 1) actually has involved non-abortion issues; Republicans have argued that by banning discrimination on grounds of “sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression” and also of national origin, the ERA will lead to transgender participation in women’s sports and expanded rights for undocumented immigrants. There’s not much question New York Republicans believe transphobia is a better bet politically than hostility to abortion rights.

    New York Democrats, on the other hand, while supporting protections for LGBTQ citizens, have heavily advertised Proposition 1 as necessary to offer permanent protection for abortion rights, and as a rebuke to national Republicans scheming to impose abortion bans via Congress or perhaps executive order if Donald Trump is returned to office. So they’ve been counting on the ballot measure to drive up Democratic turnout and even to flip some swing voters in their direction. This in turn has drawn the attention of Democrats nationally, who consider New York central to their plans to flip control of the U.S. House of Representatives (the Cook Political Report rates four GOP House seats from New York as highly vulnerable).

    The legal and political maneuvering in New York over the proposed ERA will get less attention than ballot fights in other states where the clock has been turned back all the way to the pre-Roe legal regime of near-universal forced birth. But for New Yorkers who simply want constitutional equality, and for Democrats eager to give or deny the next president control over the U.S. House, it’s a big deal that will go down in the courts very soon.


    See All



    [ad_2]

    Ed Kilgore

    Source link

  • Two Big Lies Trump Is Telling on Abortion

    Two Big Lies Trump Is Telling on Abortion

    [ad_1]

    Trump speaking to one of the many groups favoring him and a total ban on abortions everywhere.
    Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    There is no exercise more exhausting and probably futile than examining a Donald Trump speech or social-media post for lies, half-truths, and incoherent self-contradictions. But it’s important on occasion to highlight some very big whoppers he tells that are central to his political strategy. It’s well known that Trump’s own position on abortion policy has wandered all over the map, and it’s plausible to suggest his approach is entirely transactional. But now that he’s staked out a “states’ rights” position on abortion that is designed to take a losing issue off the table in the 2024 presidential election, he’s telling two very specific lies to justify his latest flip-flop.

    The first is his now-routine claim that “both sides” and even “legal scholars on both sides” of the abortion debate “agreed” that Roe v. Wade needed to be reversed, leaving abortion policy up to the states:

    This claim was the centerpiece of Trump’s April 9 statement setting out his position on abortion for the 2024 general election, as CNN noted:

    In a video statement on abortion policy he posted on social media Monday, Trump said: “I was proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and, in fact, demanded be ended: Roe v. Wade. They wanted it ended.” Later in his statement, Trump said that since “we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint,” states are free to determine their own abortion laws.

    This is clearly and demonstrably false. The three “legal experts” on the Supreme Court who passionately dissented from the decision to reverse Roe are just the tip of the iceberg of anguish over the defiance of precedent and ideological reasoning underlying Justice Samuel Alito in the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Society of American Law Teachers immediately and definitively issued a “condemnation” of the Dobbs decision. When the case was being argued before the Supreme Court, the American Bar Association filed an amicus brief arguing the constitutional doctrine of stare decisis required that Roe be left in place. None of these views were novel. Back in 1989 when an earlier threat to abortion rights had emerged, 885 law professors signed onto a brief defending Roe.

    Sure, there was a tiny minority of “pro-choice, anti-Roe” liberals over the years who claimed resentment of the power of the unelected judges who decided Roe would eventually threaten abortion rights (not as much, it turns out, as the unelected judges that decided Dobbs). And yes, there have always been progressive critics (notably Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) of the particular reasoning in the original Roe decision, but by no means have any of them (particularly Ginsburg) favored abandoning the federal constitutional right to abortion even if they supported a different constitutional basis for that right. So Trump’s claim is grossly nonfactual and is indeed not one that any self-respecting conservative fan of Dobbs would ever make.

    The second big lie that Trump has formulated to defend his latest states’-rights position is that he’s just supporting the age-old Republican stance on the subject, as he has just asserted at Truth Social:

    Sending this Issue back to the States was the Policy of the Republican Party and Conservatives for over 50 years, due to States’ Rights and 10th Amendment, and only happened because of the Justices I proudly Nominated and got Confirmed.

    Yes, of course a growing majority of Republicans have favored reversal of Roe as a way station to a nationwide ban on abortion, but not as an end in itself. The GOP first came out for a federal constitutional amendment to ban abortion from sea to shining sea in its 1980 party platform, and every single Republican presidential nominee since then has backed the idea. There have been disagreements as to whether such a constitutional amendment should include exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. But the last GOP presidential nominee to share Trump’s position that the states should be the final arbiter of abortion policy was Gerald R. Ford in 1976, as the New York Times reported at the time:

    [Ford] said that as President he must enforce the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that forbids states to ban abortions. But he has come out in favor of a constitutional amendment that would overturn that ruling and return to the states the option of drawing up their own abortion laws.

    Ronald Reagan, who challenged Ford’s nomination in 1976 and was already a proponent of a “pro-life” constitutional amendment, and the GOP formally adopted that position in 1980; four years later, it adopted its long-standing proposal that by constitutional amendment or by a judicial ruling the protection of fetal life under the 14th Amendment should be recognized and imposed on the country regardless of what states wanted. Anti-abortion leader Marjorie Dannenfelser noted this well-known history in a not-so-subtle rebuke to Trump’s revisionist history, as NBC News reported:

    “Since 1984, the GOP platform has affirmed that 14th Amendment protections apply to unborn babies and endorsed congressional action to clarify this fact through legislation,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement to NBC News. “Republicans led the charge to outlaw barbaric partial-birth abortions federally, and both chambers have voted multiple times to limit painful late-term abortion. The Senate voted on this most recently in 2020. In January 2023, House Republicans also voted to protect infants born alive during an abortion.”

    It’s pretty clear that anti-abortion activists know Trump is lying about both Roe v. Wade and the GOP tradition and will support him anyway. But the rest of us should take due notice that the once and perhaps future president’s word on this subject, including his current pledge to leave abortion policy to the states, cannot be trusted for even a moment. Absent the abolition of the Senate filibuster (which, lest we forget, Trump backed as president out of impatience with the Senate’s refusal to bend the knee to his every demand), there isn’t going to be a complete federal ban on abortion in the foreseeable future. But Trump can be counted on to use the powers of the presidency to make life miserable for women needing abortion services, among the many “enemies of the people” he wants to punish.


    See All



    [ad_2]

    Ed Kilgore

    Source link

  • In a First, Arizona Republicans Rush to Dismantle a Total Abortion Ban

    In a First, Arizona Republicans Rush to Dismantle a Total Abortion Ban

    [ad_1]

    Kari Lake is in full retreat.
    Photo: Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

    “Incrementalism” has been a standard feature of anti-abortion activism, both before and since the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. While Roe was in place, many anti-abortion advocates and their Republican allies sought to chip away at abortion rights at the margins with bans on rare late-term abortions and various efforts to make life difficult for abortion providers and their patients. Just before Roe fell in 2022, some red states put into place the kind of limited bans they were used to proposing but then moved as quickly as possible to total or near-total bans that would take effect as soon as SCOTUS green-lit them (known as “trigger laws”). A good example was Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis and Republican lawmakers first enacted a 15-week ban when it was clear Roe would fall, then passed a six-week ban the following year.

    As a backlash to abortion restrictions swelled across the country, voters prevented or forced roll-backs of bans wherever they could, even in red states like in Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio. For the most part, however, Republican stayed in the trenches, tried to change the subject, or argued over abstractions like a proposed national abortion ban (impractical so long as enough Democratic senators were in office to kill or filibuster it). But now a court decision in Arizona has created a new phenomenon: Republican politicians at the state level rushing to dismantle a total abortion ban and replace it with something more “moderate.” It’s anti-abortion incrementalism in reverse.

    On Tuesday, a 4-2 majority of the Arizona Supreme Court — all appointed by Republican governors — brushed aside a 15-week abortion ban enacted just prior to the reversal of Roe and instead resurrected a statute dating back to 1864 that outlawed all abortions (other than those performed to save the life of the mother) and imposed criminal penalties on medical providers performing them. So overnight one of the most complete and atavistic abortion bans anywhere descended on this politically competitive state that will be a presidential and Senate battleground in November. Arizona Republicans are in disarray, and in many cases, full retreat.

    Perhaps unsurprisingly, Republicans in competitive congressional districts are already denouncing the court’s decision and the law it revived, as Axios reported:

    Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), who represents a seat President Biden won in 2020, called the ruling a “disaster for women and providers” in a statement posted to social media.

    Ciscomani said the 15-week ban “protected the rights of women and new life,” but the territorial law is “archaic.”

    Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), another Biden-district Republican, said the issue “should be decided by Arizonans, not legislated from the bench,” urging the state legislature to “address this issue immediately.”

    Kelly Cooper, a Republican running to challenge Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.), called for the state legislature to “begin work immediately on reinstating” the 15-week ban.

    But the call for a retreat has extended into the heart of MAGA country, as illustrated by U.S. Senate candidate (and narrowly defeated 2022 gubernatorial candidate) Kari Lake, who is also backing restoration of the 15-week ban. And pressure on legislators to kill the 1864 law may soon become intense as prior abortion extremists back-track, suggests the Guardian:

    Some of the criticisms of the Tuesday ruling came from politicians who had previously supported the 1864 ban or cheered the end of Roe v Wade. Lake previously called the ban a “great law”, according to PolitiFact. David Schweikert, an Arizona congressman who is facing one of the most competitive House races in the country this November, said on Tuesday that he does not support the ruling and wants the state legislature to “address this issue immediately”, but in 2022 said the fall of Roe “pleased” him….

    “This is an earthquake that has never been seen in Arizona politics,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican consultant in Arizona, of the decision. “This will shake the ground under every Republican candidate, even those in safe legislative or congressional seats.”

    Hanging over Arizona Republicans and anti-abortion advocates isn’t just the political backlash to the restoration of a total ban, but the high likelihood that the November general election ballot will include a citizen-initiated state constitutional amendment restoring abortion rights as they existed under Roe. If Republicans don’t quickly dial back abortion restrictions, voters may well go further than allowing abortions up to 15 weeks and pregnancy and take down some GOP candidates while they are at it.

    This is a whole new world for the anti-abortion movement and the GOP. It’s not just a matter of being decisively on the wrong side of public opinion nationally and in most states, wherein a majority of voters reject the abolition of abortion rights. It’s that after decades of tactical advances in the fight to put the law of the land behind forced birth policies, they’re now having to engage in tactical retreats. And in November and beyond, voters will have an opportunity to give them a swift kick to continue in that direction indefinitely.

    [ad_2]

    By Ed Kilgore

    Source link

  • Will the Abortion Vote Help Democrats Flip Florida in 2024?

    Will the Abortion Vote Help Democrats Flip Florida in 2024?

    [ad_1]

    Biden could wind up concentrating on Florida more than he did in 2020.
    Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

    Not very long ago, Florida was considered the ultimate presidential battleground state. It determined the outcome of the 2000 election, and as recently as 2012 it was carried by a Democrat, Barack Obama. But after being won twice by Donald Trump, as Republicans swept every statewide elected office and increased their grip on the state legislature and congressional delegation, Florida is now perceived as decidedly red-tinged. Nevertheless, as Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign ponders a path to 270 electoral votes complicated by poor polling in key 2020 states like Arizona and Georgia, Florida’s 30 electoral votes remain tempting. That’s particularly true after the Florida Supreme Court simultaneously let a six-week abortion ban take effect while clearing the way for a November ballot initiative aimed at overturning it. The very next day, the same court cleared a November ballot initiative to legalize recreational cannabis use as well.

    Florida could theoretically become ground zero for a national Democratic strategy of making popular anger over abortion restrictions the big game-changer for 2024, offsetting economic unhappiness, border-security worries, and concerns about Biden’s age. As my colleague Gabriel Debenedetti has pointed out, ballot measures have become a turnout-booster for Florida Democrats: “In three of the last four election cycles, the party’s turnout appeared to be helped by ballot initiatives — on broadening medical marijuana laws in 2016, on restoring voting rights for felons in 2018, and on raising the minimum wage in 2020.”

    But is Florida likely to be close enough in 2024 to make this issue-driven reach for a win feasible? That’s not entirely clear. Perceptions of Florida’s trajectory are being heavily affected by the 2022 midterm blowout that gave Ron DeSantis a landslide 19-point reelection win. But at the presidential level, the red tide in the Sunshine State has been less dramatic, if still highly significant. Obama carried the state by a mere 0.9 percent in 2012 and then Hillary Clinton lost it by 1.2 percent four years later. Trump’s margin then increased to 3.3 percent in 2020, though the Biden campaign did not really target Florida. Demographically Florida has been a haven for tax-leery white retirees, including the blue-collar folk who have been trending Republican, and it’s also Exhibit A in the much-discussed Latino voter surge toward the GOP (much of it driven by conservative Cuban American and South American immigrants, with some drift among Puerto Ricans as well).

    Public polling of the 2024 general election in Florida has been sparse, but two polls taken in March both show Trump with a solid if not overwhelming lead (six points per St. Pete Polls and seven points according to Redfield & Wilton Strategies).

    There’s no question the twin abortion and cannabis ballot initiatives should be appealing to Democratic constituencies in Florida (especially the crucial youth vote). And the state’s 60 percent requirement for approval of state constitutional amendments means those votes will be tantalizingly close and heavily publicized. It’s also likely that the abortion policy fight will attract serious national money, with some perhaps coming from ultrawealthy Democratic Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, who is already donating heavily to abortion ballot initiatives in Arizona and Nevada.

    On the other hand, past ballot-measure fights in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022 have had a debatable effect on partisan-turnout patterns. Pro-choice forces have won them all, but often by attracting pro-choice Republican voters who still support their party’s candidates despite its anti-abortion positioning. The relatively late timing of Florida’s imposition of a near-total abortion ban (it was enacted last year but held up in the courts until this week’s judicial decision) could make the ballot fight in the state especially intense and accordingly dangerous for the Republicans responsible for this denial of basic rights.

    Perhaps the best way to characterize Florida’s status in the presidential race right now is that it’s on the Biden campaign’s watch list and could move near the top if (a) subsequent polling looks promising and (b) other states counted on to win the president an Electoral College majority appear problematic. No Democrat is simply writing off Florida right now, and even if it’s a reach, Team Biden would enjoy making a relatively cash-strapped Trump campaign devote precious resources to defending the 45th president’s home turf.


    See All



    [ad_2]

    By Ed Kilgore

    Source link

  • Arizonans Asked to Block Themselves From Voting on Abortion

    Arizonans Asked to Block Themselves From Voting on Abortion

    [ad_1]

    Anti-abortion activists only favor votes on the subject if it promotes their point of view.
    Photo: Joel Angel Juarez/The Republic/USA Today Networks

    Throughout the 49 years during which Roe v. Wade set abortion policy in this country, one of the mantras of the anti-abortion movement was “Let the people decide!” “Unelected federal judges,” we were told, had usurped the right of the public to determine the laws governing reproductive rights via the instruments of state politics and government, as they had done before Roe was handed down in 1973.

    Well, the U.S. Supreme Court did reverse Roe in 2022, and wherever they had the power, anti-abortion Republicans enacted the most thorough abortion restrictions they could impose in any given state. There was, however, a strong popular backlash to these new laws, even in strongly Republican states. Where it was possible to roll them back or prevent their enactment by passing or rejecting ballot initiatives, the pro-choice popular majority won again and again, in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, and Ohio.

    So as the 2024 election approaches, efforts are underway to place abortion policy on the ballot in a host of states (including Florida, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota). Democrats are hoping to galvanize general-election turnout, and anti-abortion activists have been looking high or low for ways to make that harder. In Ohio, the Republican legislature tried but failed to create supermajority requirements for ballot initiatives changing state constitutions. In Florida, the Republican attorney general is seeking to stop a ballot initiative on grounds of allegedly deceptive wording.

    In Arizona, however, anti-abortion activists battling an effort to put a pro-choice constitutional amendment on the November ballot are trying a more direct method: convincing voters they should not sign petitions enabling the ballot initiative because they should not decide abortion policy. Politico explains this “decline to sign” campaign, spearheaded by the hard-core anti-abortion group Students for Life:

    The activists are deploying everywhere signatures are gathered — making their case at festivals, libraries, big box parking lots and coffee shops across Arizona. Some are simply trying to reach voters with an anti-abortion message before the other side does. Others are turning to more confrontational methods: tracking the locations of signature-gatherers on a private Telegram channel, filming them, interrupting their work, and calling security to get them removed from high-traffic spots around town.

    “We will make sure no one will get approached to sign without hearing the other side of the story,” said Chanel Prunier, who leads Students for Life’s electoral advocacy arm. She called her decline-to-sign volunteers going door-to-door across the state the “ground troops” of the anti-abortion movement.

    To some extent, these “ground troops” are promoting misinformation about the implications of the proposed amendment, arguing that it guarantees the right to an “abortion up until birth.” In fact, the initiative would simply restore the Roe standard of a right to choose prior to fetal viability, with post-viability abortions only protected in cases of a threat to the life or health of the pregnant woman. But the “up until birth” argument is key to the more general claim of anti-abortion activists that their opponents are the real “extremists” on this issue.

    The underlying argument, of course, is that voters shouldn’t be voting on abortion policy at all, at least where they might relax rather than increase restrictions. Politico quoted this line from a “decline to sign” protester standing near booths set up to secure ballot-initiative signatures:

    “There are things that shouldn’t be voted on,” Jacob Minic, one of the demonstrators, told POLITICO. “When it comes to extreme moral issues like this one, I don’t think it should be on the ballot.”

    It’s very much a “heads I win, tails you lose” approach to the issue: “The people” should be able to ban abortions but not protect them. This is, of course, in line with the anti-abortion movement’s fundamental values beneath all the rhetoric. They oppose abortion on biological, ontological, or religious grounds that have nothing to do with public opinion or democracy. Given a chance, they would embed constitutional protections for the fetus even stronger than the reproductive rights overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022. So they’re not at all daunted by the clear pro-choice majority that has emerged since abortion policy was turned over to the states — even in many red states. Whatever it takes to use the power of government to force each and every pregnancy to full term, they’re for it, even if that involves more than a bit of deception. We should all get used to it.


    See All



    [ad_2]

    Ed Kilgore

    Source link

  • Trump Pulls New 16-Week Abortion Standard Out of Thin Air

    Trump Pulls New 16-Week Abortion Standard Out of Thin Air

    [ad_1]

    The once and perhaps future star of the anti-abortion movement.
    Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

    There is a wide range of positions on the legality of abortion that are based on some belief or assertion related to biology, ethics, or metaphysics. Some people (particularly religious conservatives) famously claim that “life begins at the moment of conception,” and that banning any interference with the development of that life represents homicide. That is the foundation for the extremist “fetal personhood” position that would use force of law to compel women to carry every pregnancy to term. Some abortion opponents won’t go quite that far, but they argue that it’s morally essential to ban abortions from the point a fetal heartbeat can allegedly be discerned. That is the basis for the six-week “heartbeat laws” in place in many states after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. Other abortion opponents claim (on dubious medical grounds) that a fetus can feel pain at 15 weeks of pregnancy (or at either 20 weeks or 22 weeks of pregnancy) and promote abortion bans at that point.

    Conversely, of course, there are many people who believe fetal viability is the crucial point at which a new life becomes distinct from its mother, making some restrictions on abortion appropriate at that point (roughly at 24 weeks of pregnancy). Viability, accordingly, was the standard for a constitutional right to choose abortion during the era of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Many pro-choice Americans are working very hard to restore the viability standard via state constitutional measures or statutes. But others believe that as a matter of bodily autonomy, any fetus at any state of development is part of its mother, and thus argue that the right to abortion should become unconditional.

    I’ve gone through this exercise to establish that however shaky the rationale might be for this or that legal scheme governing abortion, there almost invariably is one. That’s not true of the 16-week standard that Donald Trump is reportedly planning to promote later this year or perhaps only if and when he takes office, according to the New York Times:

    Former President Donald J. Trump has told advisers and allies that he likes the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban with three exceptions, in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother, according to two people with direct knowledge of Mr. Trump’s deliberations. …

    One thing Mr. Trump likes about a 16-week federal ban on abortions is that it’s a round number. “Know what I like about 16?” Mr. Trump told one of these people, who was given anonymity to describe a private conversation. “It’s even. It’s four months.”

    The Times characterizes the former president’s approach to this issue with what might be the understatement of the year: “Mr. Trump has approached abortion transactionally since becoming a candidate in 2015, and his current private discussions reflect that same approach.”

    His allies in the anti-abortion movement certainly understand that, which is why they mostly pulled their punches when he began publicly blaming them for poor Republican performance in the 2022 midterms and then refused to sign onto the national 15-week abortion ban being proposed as a litmus test. Part of this extraordinary forbearance from people not known for flexibility undoubtedly represents gratitude for Trump’s huge role in reshaping the U.S. Supreme Court into one that would reverse Roe. But it is very likely that they also figure Trump’s public position on their favorite topic doesn’t necessarily reflect anything deeper than whatever ephemeral tactic he is pursuing at any given moment.

    The proposed 16-week standard would, however, give anti-abortion activists something they want very badly: a presidential candidate committed to a national abortion ban. If it works like other national bans that have been proposed, it would create a floor on abortion restrictions rather than a ceiling: Abortions after 16 weeks would be banned in blue states, while red states would be free to ban abortion altogether.

    What Trump’s “solution” would not do, however, is what he says it would do in his past comments on the subject. Per the Times:

    [H]e talks about abortion as if it’s a real-estate transaction. He has taken credit for giving “great negotiating power” to anti-abortion activists.

    “What’s going to happen is you’re going to come up with a number of weeks or months,” Mr. Trump said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in September. “You’re going to come up with a number that’s going to make people happy.”

    His “number” isn’t going to make women whose rights are arbitrarily cut off at 16 weeks of pregnancy “happy,” and it won’t make the pro-choice majority of Americans happy, either. For that matter, anti-abortion activists won’t be “happy” with a 16-week national ban other than as a way station to the total prohibition that they want. The only happy party will be Trump, and only if it helps him get back to the White House.


    See All



    [ad_2]

    Ed Kilgore

    Source link