In the wake of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race a conservative radio host in the state wrote, “As difficult as this may be to come to grips with, Republicans are on the wrong side politically of an issue that they are clearly on the right side of morally.” Apparently your moral rightness is not so clear to most voters, my dude, but do go on.
A former House Republican leadership aide who pleaded with his party to “get their act together on abortion” in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization told the Times, ”They didn’t want to do the hard work on abortion.”
Mind you, all of these Republicans still want abortion bans! They just want ones they can sell as moderate in comparison with the extreme ones the rest of their party is busy trying to pass. That’s what Sen. Lindsey Graham thought he was doing with his 15-week abortion ban bill shortly before the 2022 elections: He thought he was setting a trap for Democrats to look extreme when they rejected his kind, gentle national abortion ban, which would have allowed states to keep harsher bans but not allowed states to continue allowing abortions past that point as had been the law nationwide until the Supreme Court decision.
But the “can’t we try to look less eager to lock people up over abortions and give lip service to rape and incest exceptions while still banning abortion” crowd is struggling to get their fellow Republicans on board despite the party’s poor showing in November, in a series of special elections, and on key ballot measures relating to reproductive rights. According to “a longtime pollster and strategist for House Republican leaders,” the Wisconsin Supreme Court election result was just about Dan Kelly being a weak candidate (a weak candidate who made it through the first round of voting and had a ton of Republican dark-money support) and Republicans didn’t lose women voters by as much in 2022 as they did in 2018, so it’s all good. As the Times reports it, “If inflation and economic concerns remain elevated, he added, the 2024 elections will be about the economy, not abortion or guns.”
Didn’t we hear that through 2022? There was going to be a red tsunami because voters care so much more about gas prices than abortion. How did that work out for you guys?
The important thing, though, is not what a few Republicans say about how nice it would be if other Republicans stopped trying to put people in prison over abortion—it’s what Republicans are doing, how they are affecting people’s lives. Right now, what they are working with is a Trump-appointed judge attempting to repeal the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone for medication abortions, an approval that has been in place for more than two decades, accumulating huge amounts of data on how safe and effective it is. They are also working with Idaho Republicans creating the brand-new crime of “abortion trafficking,” carefully crafting a law to restrict the interstate travel of pregnant minors without admitting that’s the whole point of the law.
Even the Republicans who want to pass for moderate on this issue are still calling for something that would have constituted overturning Roe v. Wade. They’re not moderate. But more importantly, they are not winning the battle for the direction of their party. The question is not if a newspaper can find a few Republicans willing to talk about their regret that the party can’t show a little compassion. It’s if there are enough Republicans willing to take action to stop more and harsher anti-abortion laws, or to roll back the bans they’ve already put in place. And the answer on that is clear.
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