They have no plan except to continue showcasing their anti-abortion bonafides and continue handing the Democrats a potent political issue that is already said to have limited their success in 2022 and might well doom them again in 2024.
Republicans spent almost fifty years attempting to overturn the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that enshrined abortion as a right found in the penumbras emanating from certain parts of the Constitution. Many, myself included, assumed it would never happen, the equivalent of right-wing fever dream that would reassert something like the Constitutional order of states rights, sending this controversial issue back to the legislatures where people actually vote rather than being lorded over by men and women in robes. President Donald Trump changed all that by nominating three justices to the highest court in the land and reinvigorating the conservative movement in general, moving the proverbial Overton Window so that a world without Roe v. Wade could be even imagined, much less actually achieved. That was two years ago, however, and since then, Republicans have done nothing except demonstrate that they shouldn’t have been trusted with the issue in the first place. Even today, they have no plan except to continue showcasing their anti-abortion bonafides and continue handing the Democrats a potent political issue that is already said to have limited their success in 2022 and might well doom them again in 2024. It’s almost as if huge segments of the party were naive enough to believe that by overturning Roe v. Wade abortion would simply disappear from American life, something that happened sometime in the distant past like treating diseases with leeches, but either because it was banned or forgotten, no longer happens anymore. For some reason, they remain unable to come to terms with two important facts. First, the popular Democrat characterization that important rights have been taken away from women resonates with a significant percentage of the population and will continue to do so. Of course, this should’ve been obvious from the start considering that no such “right” has ever been taken away in a similar situation in living memory. Second, there will never be enough votes in Congress to pass any federal legislation surrounding abortion under current political conditions. Democrats will not vote for anything resembling a restriction on the procedure and Republicans are far too fractured to pass anything reasonable, as they recently did in France where abortion rights were enshrined with the equivalent of a ban after 16 weeks. Pretending that retaking the White House and the Senate will change that dynamic is a fantasy, when you need 60 votes to even debate potential legislation, forget actually pass something meaningful.
The political perils of the situation were made plain on Monday, when the Arizona state Supreme Court ruled that a “near-total” abortion ban passed during the Civil freaking War is still enforceable – even though a newer law was passed in 2022, which had banned abortion after 15-weeks. The 160 year old version made abortion a felony punishable by two to five years in prison, both for providers of abortions and anyone who helps a woman obtain one, say a family member who drove them to the clinic. A subsequent revision in 1913 provides an extremely limited exception to save the life of the mother. Somehow, the court believes that the 2022 law and the Civil War era law can be “harmonized,” whatever that means beyond causing outright confusion in the state. The situation is doubly strange considering a lower court had reached the obvious conclusion that the new law supersedes the old one and the Supreme Court took the usual measure of placing their decision on hold for 14 days so the lower courts could consider “additional constitutional challenges” whatever those may be. While I readily admit I am not a lawyer in general or an expert on Arizona’s constitution in particular, common sense seems to clearly dictate that the passage of a new law by definition negates the old law. Enacting legislation is not a passive matter like a bill expiring. It’s an intentional action that, unless it runs afoul of the constitution, is meant specifically to legislate something new, replacing what already exists unless otherwise specified. The Supreme Court, contrary to common sense, is insisting the state legislature needs to actively repeal the old law rather than simply replacing it, which necessarily is what Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs is calling for. “We are 14 days away from this extreme ban coming back to life,” she said at a press conference. “It must be repealed immediately.” Needless to say and not without good reason, she also emphasized the importance of voting Democrat in November to protect abortion rights in the state from exactly this sort of confusion. “It is more urgent than ever that Arizonans have the opportunity to vote to enshrine the right to abortion in our constitution this November. I’m confident that Arizonans will support this ballot measure, and I’m going to continue doing everything in my power to make sure it is successful,” she said, referencing a referendum that is widely believed to help Democrats including President Joe Biden, who appears to need all the help he can get in the state if recent polls are any indication. Equally needless to say, the President himself jumped in with a statement and has dispatched Vice President Kamala Harris to the state for an event on Friday. “Millions of Arizonans will soon live under an even more extreme and dangerous abortion ban, which fails to protect women even when their health is at risk or in tragic cases of rape or incest,” the statement read, calling the ban “cruel” and “a result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom” while vowing to “continue to fight to protect reproductive rights.”
The ruling came just a single day after the President’s opponent, former President Donald Trump attempted to seize the middle ground on the controversial issue, taking credit for the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, so any legislation could be left up to the states where divisive matters should be decided. “The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” he said. “Now, it’s up to the states to do the right thing,” adding that he believes the abortion issue, as it is currently framed, is a real risk to Republicans, but that “We must win. We have to win.” Almost immediately, however, several prominent pro-life Republicans disagreed. His former Vice President Mike Pence claimed, “President Trump’s retreat on the Right to Life is a slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans.” South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham claimed he respectfully disagreed, adding a classic non sequitur “Dobbs [the ruling overturning Roe vs. Wade] does not require that conclusion legally and the pro-life movement has always been about the wellbeing of the unborn children – not geography.” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Foundation, said she was “deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position” and claimed that addressing the issue at the state level somehow “cedes the national debate back to the Democrats.” Others were even more extreme, insisting there were no such thing as abortion rights, as if that makes the issue go away entirely. President Trump responded directly to these criticisms by insisting, “Lindsey, Marjorie, and others fought for years, unsuccessfully, until I came along and got the job done. Then they were gone, never to be heard from again, until now,” he wrote on Truth Social. He continued, laying out the political stakes and taking specific aim at Senator Graham, who has variously proposed national legislation with almost no backing in Congress. “Senator Lindsey Graham is doing a great disservice to the Republican Party, and to our Country. At first, he wanted no abortions under any circumstances, then he was up to 6 weeks, where you’re allowed Abortion, now he’s up to 15 weeks, where you’re allowed Abortion, but what he doesn’t understand, or perhaps he does, is the Radical Left Democrats, who are destroying our Country, will never approve anything that he or the Republicans want. They love this Issue, and they want to keep it going for as long as Republicans will allow them to do so.” He continued to deliver a hard truth, “Terminating Roe v. Wade was, according to all Legal Scholars, a Great Event, but sometimes Great Events come with difficulties. Many Good Republicans lost Elections because of this Issue and people like Lindsey Graham that are unrelenting, are handing Democrats their dream of the House, Senate, and perhaps even in the Presidency.” One might take issue with some aspects of this analysis, but the fact remains that Vice President Pence, Senator Graham, Ms. Dannenfelser, and others all apparently believe that some kind of nationwide abortion ban is both possible and a reasonable position for a Republican President to embrace heading into what appears to be an extremely close election.
As I mentioned earlier, this is a fantasy. There’s a reason that Democrats are lining up abortion referendums in key states including Florida, Maryland, New York, Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota in addition to Arizona. It’s because similar measures already went their way in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, and Vermont. The goal could not be more obvious: Increase enthusiasm among progressives to come out and vote, and hope to capture a larger share of moderate women, who might not be happy with President Biden but are not enamored of Trump. Trump, meanwhile, is self-evidently attempting to take the issue “out of play” in his words, while giving himself the freedom him to claim President Biden and his Democrats are the true extremists for supporting abortion on demand, but if the reaction from his own party and Tuesday’s Arizona Supreme Court Decision are any indication, this is going to be far easier said than done. CNN’s Stephen Collinson noted “It only took a day – and a stunning court ruling reviving a Civil War-era abortion ban in a vital swing state – to disprove Donald Trump’s claim that he had taken the issue of abortion “largely out of play” for the 2024 election.” As he continued to describe the situation, “If what happened in Arizona is what unfolds when abortion is left to the states, Trump’s damage control effort was even more fragile than it seemed on Monday. For abortion rights campaigners, the Arizona decision is symptomatic of nationwide chaos and splintered rights caused by the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And it’s easy for them to point to who is to blame – Trump did it for them.” Rarely do I agree with Mr. Collinson, but here, he certainly has a point. In principle, the states are the right venue to address issues where a national consensus cannot be reached. This has the benefit of increasing the power of each individual voter and empowering people to influence the policies they prefer while making any policy more permanent. The states exist for a reason, and if anything, this is it. In practice, however, this kind of federalist approach only works when politicians and other officials like judges can be trusted not to do anything exceedingly stupid, such as resurrecting a law from the Civil War. Elected officials are supposed to represent the will of the people and compromise around controversial issues. The Republicans, or at least most of them, are failing in this regard and if they do not take President Trump’s lead soon, they will suffer for it in November. President Biden put it the only way he can, “Elect me, I’m in the 20th Century…21st Century! Not back then. They weren’t even a state.”
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 