On Friday, The New York Times reported that former President Donald Trump has indicated privately that he likes the idea of prohibiting abortion after 16 weeks in most cases. Given that Trump has repeatedly criticized others for supporting such bans, the Trump campaign jumped to respond. Still, his spokesperson did not deny the story so much as reiterate Trump’s current campaign line: “He would sit down with both sides and negotiate a deal that everyone will be happy with.” This of course is a fool’s errand. Democrats know exactly how impossible it is to find an abortion policy that everyone is happy about — that used to be their goal.
Democrats know exactly how impossible it is to find an abortion policy that everyone is happy about — that used to be their goal.
The Trump campaign also tried to contrast this fantasy compromise with President Joe Biden, claiming the president supports “abortion on demand.” But the joke’s on them — Biden has specifically opposed “abortion on demand” as recently as last week. So I guess maybe Trump has found an abortion policy that “both sides” can be happy with.
For 50 years, Democrats ceded to the forced-birth movement the idea that abortion was a shameful act. Opponents of reproductive freedom encouraged this perception of abortion as sinful and violent with their bloody placards and word games (neither “partial-birth abortion” nor “late-term abortion” are terms with any real medical meaning). This rhetoric shifted the Overton window further and further away from what Americans — according to polls, anyway — have long believed: that most abortions should be legal.
Democrats have avoided stridency on expansive abortion access because those same polls show Americans can be uncomfortable or unsure about specific circumstances, i.e., what “most abortions” really means. Some Americans say abortions should be banned after the second trimester, or the first, or allowed at all times only as long as the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest. Over the years, polling has been inconsistent in framing these options, but consistent in showing a majority of Americans want “some” restrictions.
Clearly, plenty of establishment Democrats have decided that it is easier to talk about restoring Roe rather than to champion women’s complete autonomy when it comes to pregnancy and risk challenging “some restrictions.” They still don’t really want to think about the realities of abortion. Thus Biden’s few forays into specifics have sounded so depressingly familiar. “Restoring Roe” allows Democrats to define themselves in opposition to the Republicans without talking in detail about what free access to abortion looks like or means.
However, designing your abortion policy according to what Americans tell pollsters has always been something like the Federal Aviation Administration doing away with co-pilots because nearly 50% of men told pollsters in December they could land a plane in an emergency if they had to. What someone believes about the world (or themselves) when chatting comfortably on the phone is not the same as what you believe when your life or the lives of the ones you love are at risk.
At the moment, many if not most Americans are already on the plane in the midst of an emergency, not on the ground answering hypothetical questions about how they’d prevent a crash. About 2 in 5 women ages 15 to 44 are currently living in places where abortions are banned or significantly restricted. Republicans who are not Donald Trump have made it clear that they would love to force every pregnant person in America carry their pregnancy to term.
Many if not most Americans are already on the plane in the midst of an emergency, not on the ground answering hypothetical questions about how they’d prevent a crash.
The data on what this new reality means for maternal mortality, for rape survivors, for victims of domestic violence, is slowly emerging. And the data is not good. Stories appear nearly every week about the specific and heartbreaking toll of denying abortion access to an individual woman. Do you need to read some? I could go a lifetime without another but here, here, here, here, here, here, here. And these are, obviously, just the ones that catch the attention of reporters.
The horror of this moment could be a political gift, if only Democrats would accept it. They no longer have to worry that a “radical” position on abortion will turn off voters, because it’s the Republicans who have taken a radical position — and voters are turned off by it, endorsing access and rebuking the forced-birth position whenever the issue is on the ballot. The days of scaring voters with the prospect of unrestricted abortion access leading to promiscuity and moral decline are over. Now, those voters are scared of what’s actually happening.
Democrats, Biden included, need to boldly talk about why abortion is health care, period, and the government has no business deciding who deserves one anymore than it regulates who gets a checkup. They need to be unapologetic about letting women and their doctors decide at what point in a pregnancy abortions should take place. Assert that “abortion on demand” is wrong only because you shouldn’t have to demand; wanting is enough. If some moderate voters are unnerved by this, what are they going to do? Vote for the folks who have now decided to go after contraceptives as well?
The toxicity of the phrase “abortion on demand” is an artifact of the era in which Democrats wanted to appeal to some mythical centrist on the issue, someone who believed in “choice” but didn’t like the idea of just anyone getting one, for any old reason.
But with abortion access so radically reduced and so many Americans facing the lived consequences of anti-abortion politicians getting to decide who deserves to get an abortion, there are fewer and fewer centrists to appeal to.