Abortion debate cherry-picks the extremes

Democratic ad: Republicans proposed allowing every member of a rapist's family to sue and collect $20,000 from a doctor who provided an abortion to a rape victim. Disgusting!

Republican ad: Democrats want abortions right up to the moment of full-term birth. Disgusting!

Democrats have every expectation that GOP over-reach and extremism on abortion will make this a winning issue for Democrats. The Texas law set the stage with a big surprise, a law that effectively stops all abortions in Texas at 6 weeks, using a novel approach of vigilante lawsuits. It was a Ka-POW! to settled expectations on abortion rights and another Ka-POW! to settled expectations on what the Supreme Court would let stand.

The implications of the new Supreme Court makeup became clear to red-state America. There was no need to compromise, no need for incrementalism, no need to think the Constitution limited what was possible. So far 13 states have passed "trigger laws," laws which limit or outright ban abortion, to be put into effect the moment Roe v. Wade is reversed. 

In Idaho GOP legislators proposed a law mirroring the Texas one. Like it, the Idaho bill prohibited abortions after six weeks. It gave the father of an aborted fetus, and each member of the father's extended family, the right to sue and collect $20,000 from the provider of an abortion to their potential kin. The original version of the law, defended by the authors of the law, allowed a rapist and his family to be included among those who could collect. Before final passage the bill was amended to exclude the rapist and his family, provided the woman filed a police report and provided it to the physician. Still, abortion opponents are stuck with some ugly video of the authors of the Idaho bill defending its original version.

Discussion of the law in Idaho

In days to come Democrats will find other instances of GOP political tone-deafness, but this one will suffice for a political ad showing the extreme intentions of the "Pro-Life" movement. 

Democrats have their own problem with optics. The acceptable, orthodox Democratic position on abortion has hardened around the idea of rights, not balance. Autonomy is autonomy. "Abortion rights" and "Reproductive Rights" focus on the woman, not the fetus. Even though very late term abortions are exceedingly rare and done under extreme duress involving the health of the mother or the fetus, they do, in fact, happen. Abortion rights advocates are duty-bound to defend them, with a focus on the mother. The Bill Clinton slogan of abortions being "Safe, Legal, and Rare" has been revised in the Democratic platform to "Safe and Legal." Who is a political party to tell a woman who has body autonomy anything about whether an abortion decision must be "rare." It is in fact rare, but Democrats are uncomfortable with saying it must be. 

A singular focus on women and women's rights puts Democrats on solid philosophical grounds.  A woman controls her own body, period. A woman is a more legitimate decision-maker than the government. 

But that focus puts Democrats on weaker political grounds. There are hard cases with bad optics. Abortion advocacy groups need to defend their own roles as point-of-the-spear advocates who defend the boundaries of their rights. Ceding ground is for weaklings. The Hyde Amendment formerly said that federal taxes would not pay for abortions. That had created a defensible line, and gave a nod to anti-abortion voters. They weren't asked to pay for something they disapproved of. Now pro-choice Democrats in good standing say that taxpayers will pay for abortions for women without the funds for them. After all, abortion is a right. It is health care. Don't compromise. Pro-choice Democrats can avert their eyes from very late term abortions, and say they are an exception, not typical, not fair to point to. They are hard to look at and defend, which is exactly why abortion opponents point to them. 

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Washington Post columnist Mark Thiessen put up a warning to Democrats today. He warns that Mississippi's proposed rule, one that allows abortions up to 15 weeks but not later, is not far from that crossover zone in American opinion. Most people are OK with early abortions but oppose late ones. Somewhere around 15 or 18 weeks is where Americans start getting queasy. Maybe its a baby, people think. Maybe it, too, has rights.  Abortion-rights advocates want purity from Democrats at holding the line in defense of publicly funded late-term abortions, at the discretion of the mother. They may win an internal battle within a Democratic primary, but lose the wider war. 

Democrats have an edge here, although they could lose it. For now, Republicans look like they are eager to run up the score while they can. Republicans aren't looking to make abortions safe, legal, and rare. They are trying to ban them. They look extreme and out of control. 

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