Boston Globe | A troubling reality for the GOP: No middle ground on abortion
There can be no consensus when you are taking rights away, and Republicans know it.
By Joan Vennochi
Story Originally Appeared in the Boston Globe
On the same day the Republican presidential candidates gathered for their first debate last week — minus Donald Trump — the members of the all-male South Carolina Supreme Court upheld a state law that imposes a near-total ban on abortion by a 4-1 vote.
Even those justices who supported the new law that bans abortion after embryonic cardiac activity can be detected — around six weeks — acknowledged what that meant: “To be sure, the 2023 Act infringes on a woman’s right of privacy and bodily autonomy,” Justice John Kittredge wrote for the majority. The lone dissenter, Chief Justice Donald W. Beatty, drove that point home even harder: “The result will essentially force an untold number of affected women to give birth without their consent. I am hard-pressed to think of a greater governmental intrusion by a political body.”
During the debate in Milwaukee Wednesday night, Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and former ambassador to the United Nations, who calls herself “unapologetically pro-life,” tried to carve out “consensus” around some comforting middle ground that would be somewhat safe from such extreme governmental intrusion. But up against the autonomy that is being taken from women — and freely acknowledged by those who are taking it — there isn’t any consensus or middle ground. Not right now.
In the runup to the 2024 presidential election, Republicans will try their best to make this election about President Biden’s age and the business dealings of his son. But in the end, it won’t be about that, or even about the pileup of criminal indictments against Trump. It will be about personal freedom and the eagerness of Republicans to strip it away, especially when it comes to a woman’s body.
And Republicans know it. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the abortion issue has been an electoral disaster for its opponents. In Kansas, voters defeated a constitutional amendment that would have denied a right to abortion. In Ohio, voters defeated a measure earlier this month that didn’t specifically mention abortion but would have made it harder to amend the state constitution; because of that it was supported by abortion opponents. As Mona Charen, a conservative columnist and policy editor for The Bulwark writes, “It’s time for the pro-life movement to face reality: The attempt to limit abortions through the law is a failure.” She urges antiabortion activists to switch their focus from placing legal restrictions on abortion to supporting women with crisis pregnancies.
They won’t — and that means the politicians who desperately want their vote won’t either. This was also evident in Milwaukee, when Haley’s call for consensus was immediately shot down by former vice president Mike Pence. In his ceaseless quest for votes from antiabortion evangelicals, Pence called Haley’s consensus talk “the opposite of leadership.” Yet all Haley was proposing was that since it would take 60 Senate votes — a difficult hurdle — to impose a nationwide abortion ban, Republicans should coalesce around some basic points of agreement. Such as: “Can’t we all agree that we should ban late-term abortions? Can’t we all agree that we should encourage adoptions? Can’t we all agree that doctors and nurses who don’t believe in abortion shouldn’t have to perform them? Can’t we all agree that contraception should be available? And can’t we all agree that we are not going to put a woman in jail or give her the death penalty if she gets an abortion?”
Pence and the other Republicans on the stage couldn’t agree with that, even as they babbled about a 15-week national abortion ban. And, to be honest, neither will abortion-rights activists. When I asked Rebecca Hart Holder, executive director of the Massachusetts-based Reproductive Equity Now, whether anything Haley said about abortion had merit, she was quick to say, via email, “I don’t.” She added, “We should not be playing ‘consensus’ with basic human rights. A 15-week abortion ban is an abortion ban, plain and simple. People need access to life-saving health care and must be able to make personal decisions about their bodies, lives and futures. If we’re to talk about ‘consensus,’ the consensus is clear; people overwhelmingly support abortion access.”
In his newsletter, “Arguable,” my colleague Jeff Jacoby argues that with language like that, the left sounds as intractable as the right. The problem for the right is that polling shows that a majority of Americans believe in the concept of “access,” which antiabortion extremists want to completely eliminate. In this heated political climate, with states already putting extreme abortion bans in place, even some of those who might someday share Haley’s quest for middle ground are going to be on the side of abortion access and the personal freedom and autonomy it represents. There can be no consensus when you are taking rights away.
And that is bad news for Republicans.