This Week in Abortion - September 18
This newsletter is a collection of abortion-related reads and events from the week and occasional insights from me, Rachel Leven.
For a change of pace, I’ve shared some of my own thoughts on a current topic followed by the usual quick hits. Please excuse the timing and the typos. (I mean, it’s not like you’re paying me!)
Chaos and Order in the Anti-Access Movement.
There has been a lot of talk this week about the lack of a unified platform in the anti-abortion/access camp. Case in point, South Carolina’s legislature is still trying to pass a total ban on abortion thanks to opposition from Republican members. This should not be surprising. It’s ALWAYS easier to oppose policy than legislate solutions.
But, I see a method forming in the madness that I’m going to try to explain.
On the state level, while the fights seem very bitter, the disagreement is rather small. FiveThirtyEight gets it, “Republicans are not fighting…about whether abortion should be legal — they’re arguing over how to handle the tiny subset of cases...” Anti-access politicians and advocates are not dumb and they see the same numbers everyone else does. Rather than being caught in an “unbridgeable” divide as most media seems to paint it, I think anti-access advocates are coalescing. Difficult-to-use exceptions for rape and medical necessity will be baked into most anti-access legislation.
More importantly, there was a post-decision rush by conservative states to make abortion essentially illegal. As of this week, the current count is 14 states (See West Virginia). That trend is slowing down, partly thanks to legal blockages, such that getting total bans in 14 more states is going to take years, not months - if it happens at all. We are entering the long game in which, state-by-state, we will reach a national consensus.
To win, anti-access activists first need to convince the majority of the electorate that they are the reasonable adults in the room. Enter Senator Lindsey Graham’s bill to ban abortions after 15 weeks. As the NYTimes touched on, his bill is a big bet from some key anti-access advocates. They are hoping they can refocus the debate away from preventing access and towards reigning in pro-abortion “extremists.”
The strategy takes advantage of pro-access advocates’ failure to collectively define what viability means. Anti-access supporters are going to play into this weakness hard in the coming months. We are already seeing it. This week, Pence told Real Clear Politics, “Anyone looking for extremism ought to be looking to the position that President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party have taken on abortion.” A recent Washington Examiner headline read: “Stacey Abrams supports abortion 'until the time of birth' in some cases.’” Abrams called for some limit with exceptions for medical necessity but didn’t say what that limit should be.
Republicans and activists on the anti-access side want to put themselves back in the driver's seat on this issue with traditional and mainstream conservatives. For advocates, this is not just about the coming election, this is about regaining control of the conversation. To do this they are going to try to present themselves as reasonable protectors of what many voters consider to be human life, while at the same time continuing to push for total bans where possible. It’s an incredibly difficult line to walk and from where I sit now it looks likely to fail. But, it would be a big mistake to assume what we are seeing now is the result of incompetence and chaos. If nothing else, the overturning of Roe v. Wade showed that the anti-access camp is ready to play the long game on policy and they are pretty good at it too.
Events in the News
Other governors (Pritzker) like to talk a big game, but California is really the national leader on abortion access.
Cities stepping up: Chicago and Philadelphia
West Virginia passed a ban on nearly all abortions with exceptions for rape and medical necessity. Abortions were legal in WV up to about 21 weeks.
Lindsey Graham’s 15-week abortion bill is not going to go anywhere. But, as explained above, it may help Republicans refocus the discussion.
Legal Updates
Quiet week. Judges were still getting their kids settled into the school year. Probably.
Oh AND,
For my serious policy nerds, the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation is hosting a discussion Tuesday on Maternal Mortality and New Risks to Women’s Reproductive Health.