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After the Arizona Supreme Court reinstated a Civil War era restrictions on contraception and presidential candidate Donald Trump responded with a mild, centralist position on abortion, disappointing some in the pro-life action and making him a mocking figure in the mainstream press, abortion is back in the news with a vengeance.
The week’s roundtable panel on public television’s Washington Week with The Atlantic featured abortion politics as a lifesaver for Democrats ( if not for the abortion victims themselves ).
The Atlantic‘s Franklin Foer, a visitor mediator, set the tone:
FRANKLIN FOER: Arizona’s Supreme Court reinstates a 160- year- ancient abortion ban, and as a spate of states rush to hinder sexual rights, Republicans, including Donald Trump, scramble to insulate themselves from a potential social backlash…. The Supreme Court of Arizona has ruled in favor of reinstatering a law from the Civil War that forbids almost all abortions. Democrats take advantage of the opportunity to gain in the battleground state while Republicans are running to range themselves from the shock choice. Following decades of mingled signs, former President Trump declared he opposes a nationwide abortion ban following the announcement. How did Democratic candidates understand the current environment that is posed to them by Roe?
As usual, the journalists were universally democratic. According to National Public Radio social editor Domenico Montanaro, Republicans lost” special election after unique election” on abortion. He lamented” the chaos that has ensued with women never having access to reproductive rights in– millions of women across the South in particular, this chaotic kind of patchwork of abortion laws across the country, that’s made it truly, truly difficult.”
Trump’s base, according to PBS NewsHour political reporter Lisa Desjardins, showed that he was not concerned about all of those “hard-right evangelicals,” Desjardins said. Trump ca n’t deny that he was to blame for everything, according to Susan Glasser of The New Yorker, who noted that Roe has been destroyed by him numerous times.
GLASSER: In the immediate wake of Trump’s video, the Biden campaign released a new advertisement for a Texas couple who wanted to have a baby that I found particularly powerful. The woman experienced a miscarriage and she was denied necessary medical care in Texas, sent home, developed an infection, got sepsis, nearly died and she probably ca n’t have a kid now. The title simply states,” Trump did this, did this, and it’s intimate and powerful until the end. He will be haunted by those words, in my opinion.
She took a maximalist ideological stance, expressed via obscurantist pro- choice labeling, telling tax- paying viewers that abortion was a “human right”, and thus all talk of states ‘ rights was irrelevant. ( At least there was no dithering regarding the possibility of a man becoming pregnant. )
Glasser: If this is a human right for women, to have access to health care, to have access to their reproductive rights, your rights should n’t depend on what state you live in. If it’s a right, it’s a right, and it should n’t matter that in Texas you have no access to something that you have in California.
She played the role of a Democratic political strategist and moral arbitrator, accepting that the audience was on her side despite her admitting that it was rather “ghoulish” to support Democrats as supposedly extremist abortion laws were becoming law in various states.
Glasser: …. According to the Biden campaign, one in three women in America have lost access to reproductive health care as a result of the Supreme Court’s ruling. And so there’s this almost ghoulish phenomenon, right? Like we’re like, well, it’s a great issue for the Democrats or, you know, that it’s really good news. But, of course, in a real sense, these laws are actually going into effect…. So, it’s odd that we’re discussing the political advantage that might be enjoyed by pro-choice activists at a time when millions of women are actually losing their rights.
This pro-abortion piece was provided to you in part by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards.
