Red State Abortion Bans

Abortion bans are spreading from Texas to much of red-state America.

There will still be abortions for red-state women. 

What will change is that getting one will be complicated, expensive, and involve travel.

Democrats hope the ban on abortions in red states will backfire on Republicans. It might. After all, according to polls most Americans support abortion rights. Pew Polls show 59% of Americans say it should be legal in most or all cases. The number is even higher for women voters (62%), Black and Asian voters (67%), and voters with graduate degrees (71%). Theoretically, this issue should solidify existing support and expand the Democratic constituency. But so far most women have been voting their party and their race, not their gender. The abortion issue is a single-issue item for abortion opponents, but not for supporters of abortion choice.

There are similarities between the anti-abortion movement and the temperance movement that led to Prohibition. Agitation for Prohibition was led by White church-goers, and in the case of Prohibition, Protestants. They linked temperance with anti-immigrant opposition to wine-drinking Catholics coming from southern Europe. Southern Whites thought it would mostly apply to Blacks. Wealthy people thought it would affect the working stiffs; they had stocked up pre-Prohibition. Jews had a sacramental wine exception, so it wouldn't fully affect them. Farmers had the cider exception. Alcohol would be illegal--for others. Prohibition allowed people to vote their conscience and participate in the social norm of temperance. But people liked to drink and drinkers thought they had their own back-door way of getting alcohol.

I experienced first-hand the selective enforcement of bans on cannabis, an unpopular Vietnam draft, and the 55 MPH speed limit. I learned unpopular laws are leaky. Prohibition was leaky. The leaks caused huge problems in the form of gang violence and police corruption. Prohibition's hypocrisy was exposed. 

Red states that ban abortion will experience the same mismatch between law and behavior. A poll published this past Friday reports that not only will people who say they disapprove of abortions get them if needed, their anti-abortion friends and family will help them. Tricia Bruce, a sociologist at Notre Dame wrote,

Data from the 2018 General Social Survey, a nationally representative survey fielded since 1972 by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, revealed that 76% of Americans who were morally opposed to abortion would nonetheless give “emotional support” to a friend or family member who decided to have an abortion. Another 43% would help make arrangements, and 28% would help pay for associated costs. Six percent would help pay for the abortion itself.

Prohibition ended because the lawbreaking was visible to the public. Abortion will be different. The law avoidance will be a private matter. A great many women have had an abortion, but not daily and visibly. Women with sufficient social and financial wherewithal will be able to travel to a blue state for an overnight stay and procedure. That will become the new social norm. The culture will come up with new language. A young woman might "visit Chicago." People will know what that means. Oregon's Planned Parenthood is opening a facility in Ontario, Oregon, just across the border from abortion-banning Idaho. Idaho women will "visit Ontario." Citibank has already made out-of-state travel a part of its company health plan benefit. Travel will become the new safety net for unplanned pregnancies. 

If there were no safety net, there might be visible sympathetic victims. There will be many victims, of course, but they will be people already marginalized, people who can safely be ignored, people without the financial and social capital to "visit Chicago." I suspect red states will find a durable political equilibrium in the hypocrisy. The law on the books will satisfy their publicly-declared principle, but it will be leaky. Most women will get abortions when they need them. The law will burden the people who are already burdened, and make an example of them. It will be cruel and hypocritical, but that is the nature of laws intended to be obeyed by others.