If any more evidence is needed that the Democrats are, much, much more in step with the public on abortion than Republicans, two items. First, more evidence that people have serious reservations about government meddling in the most personal of decisions: 🚨 NEW @NavigatorSurvey national surveyPosition on abortion?– Pro-Choice: 60%– Pro-life: 33% Decision about abortion should be…– Left to a women and her doctor: 79%– Left to politicians and gov't: 11% pic.twitter.com/qdmSQRtyGS— Jesse Ferguson (@JesseFFerguson) July 8, 2022And this: House Republicans are weighing what kind of national-level abortion ban legislation to pursue if they win the House majority next year, with a 15-week ban or further on the table.But even as they cheer the
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If any more evidence is needed that the Democrats are, much, much more in step with the public on abortion than Republicans, two items.
First, more evidence that people have serious reservations about government meddling in the most personal of decisions:
And this:
House Republicans are weighing what kind of national-level abortion ban legislation to pursue if they win the House majority next year, with a 15-week ban or further on the table.
But even as they cheer the Supreme Court overturning the landmark abortion rights decision in Roe v. Wade, GOP congressional leaders have made few promises on specific measures they would pursue, and some Republicans have advocated leaving abortion restrictions to the states.
House Republicans previously passed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban abortion after 20 weeks gestation, in 2015 and in 2017.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), the sponsor of the bill in this Congress, told CNN that he was considering changing the limit to a 15-week ban. Asked about a 15-week abortion ban, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told CNN that he would support that.
With Roe in the rear-view mirror, the Republicans can go further than the Taliban and enact a nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions. And they may well pass a highly restrictive law to placate their extreme primary voters the next time they gain control of the federal government. But they know this is a losing strategy in general elections, so instead of advocating for a total ban, they are considering a ban after 15 weeks.
In my view, this is likely where we will end up, assuming our democracy survives: abortion will be allowed for any reason on a nationwide basis for some period (say, 12 to 16 weeks), and then abortion will be allowed when pregnancies go wrong in some way. The big open questions are whether abortion will be readily accessible in the early stages of pregnancy, especially to young and poor women in conservative states, and how many women suffer before we manage to secure abortion rights nationwide.