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The Republican strategy on abortion is simple: Lie and then lie some more [1]
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Date: 2022-10-24
The poll does not mention Republicans or Democrats. It asked people which view of abortion was more extreme: “allowing abortions up until nine months of pregnancy for any reason,” or “restricting abortions to only in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is in danger.” The former view was chosen as more extreme by 57% of people and the latter view by 29%.
Here’s the thing: It’s not just the fact that the poll didn’t say “Republican” or “Democrat” that makes the Republican excitement over the poll misplaced. It’s that the poll asked about a position that virtually no elected Democrats would embrace and counterposed it against a position that’s not only widely embraced by Republican lawmakers, but actually falls short of how extreme many Republican abortion bans really are.
Most state abortion bans do not have rape or incest exceptions—just life-of-the-mother exceptions. That’s true in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin. West Virginia allows rape and incest exceptions up to eight weeks gestation, and a so-generous 14 weeks for pregnant children. In Mississippi, there’s a rape exception but none for incest.
It is absolutely the fact that this poll asking what was extreme did not include an option that was as extreme as many Republican-passed laws.
On the other hand, elected Democrats are not out here talking about “allowing abortions up until nine months of pregnancy for any reason.” Six states don’t have laws specifically banning abortion at any specific point in pregnancy—not because Democrats have recently campaigned to lift existing limits but because those states just never wrote limits into law. But abortion past the point of viability remains extremely rare in those states. According to the CDC, nationally, just 1.3% of abortions are performed past 21 weeks’ gestation. The numbers are barely higher in the states that don’t officially limit abortion based on gestational age—1.5% in Colorado and Vermont, 1.57% in Oregon, 1.8% in New Mexico.
When Democrats—whether elected to or running for office—talk about abortion past the viability threshold of 22 to 24 weeks, they talk about how very rare it is, and how those few cases come about because of serious medical issues for either the fetus or the pregnant person. People do not decide to remain pregnant for five or six months and then get an abortion just because. Legal abortion past the typical point of viability is important because not all pregnancies are typical—some of them turn very dangerous, and in some of them, fetal conditions are discovered that are not compatible with life.
There are very good reasons reproductive rights activists don’t want to split hairs about when abortion is and isn’t allowed—and why it’s better not to have limits written in law, because such legal restrictions always run the risk of being used as weapons against vulnerable people, and because getting into a debate about what constitutes a valid or necessary abortion could quickly become a slippery slope into judging how deserving women were of abortions at 15 weeks or 12 weeks. But that’s not where most Democratic politicians are—they’re talking either about a viability threshold or emphasizing how incredibly rare abortion after 21 weeks is. By contrast, the issues presented by Republican abortion bans are not rare at all.
In other words, a reasonable poll question would be “which is more extreme: restricting abortions to only in cases when the life of the mother is in danger, or restoring the abortion protections in place under Roe v. Wade?” Or maybe “allowing elective abortion until the point of viability, and medically necessary abortion after that point.” (Wording which, again, abortion activists would dislike for good reason, but which would be a reasonable representation of where most Democratic lawmakers stand.)
If even where there are technically no legal limits, abortion after 21 weeks remains extremely rare, why do Republicans want to talk about that one thing so much? Because it’s all they’ve got. They are extreme, so they have to lie to make Democrats look extreme.
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