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Reaping the Whirlwind: The Coming Demise of the Antiabortionist GOP? [1]

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Date: 2023-07-27  

During the Roe era, one argument from the left claimed that Roe would never be overturned because a Republican Supreme Court would want to avoid a ruling that could destroy the Republican Party. Dobbs ended that hope. However, it remains to be seen If the GOP will be destroyed by a growing, intensifying movement to restore abortion rights.

The recent political history of Michigan suggests that the post-Dobbs GOP is in big trouble.

In 2018, while most of the public still believed that Roe would never be overturned, and while Michigan was living under a GOP trifecta, Gretchen Whitmer began campaigning for governor on a platform with an emphasis on reproductive rights. She won easily with 53 to 44. Then in 2022 she won again with a slightly larger margin of victory, 54 to 43 this time running alongside a state constitutional amendment protecting abortion and other reproductive rights. Of course, her opponent, Tudor Dixon didn’t help herself by finding a way to celebrate the pregnancies of raped teenage girls. In four years Michigan went from a Red to a Blue trifecta, substantially lifted by a focus on reproductive rights. Now the government of Michigan is beginning to address climate change.

Also in 2018, at the same time that Whitmer campaigned to ensure reproductive rights for individuals in Michigan, Lujan Grisholm campaigned on the same issue in New Mexico and won 57/43 and then won again in 2022, by 52/45.6. In Illinois, Pritzer also campaigned with a heavy emphasis on reproductive rights and won in 2018, 54/39 and again, in 2022, 55/43. These Democratic Governors deserve a standing ovation, not only from their own constituents, but also from the hundreds of thousands of people from abortion banning states who will be traveling there to get access to abortion care.

Purple states are especially ripe for Democratic success because Republicans have enough power to harm women, while public support for abortion rights is massive. Many of these states allow for citizen initiated petitions, all of which have been highly successful.

Blue states and Red state, on the other hand, pose difficulties for abortion rights campaigns.

Attitudes are changing in Red States. An abortion poll..taken in Mississippi illustrates the problem for the GOP

A poll of Mississippians who say they will vote in the Aug. 8 Republican primary found that 45% support repealing the state’s “trigger law” that bans most abortions in the state. Another 44% of likely Republican voters oppose repealing the ban, and 11% said they were not sure.

An abortion poll from Louisiana illustrates the GOP problem even more clearly:

In a survey in 2016, 40% of the people interviewed said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and 55% said it should be illegal in all or most cases. Today, these opinions have nearly reversed, with 52% saying abortion should be legal and 44% saying it should be illegal. Twenty-three percent of participants think abortion should be legal in all cases, and only 15% think it should be illegal in all cas

However, the GOP is so entrenched in Red states that public opinion will have to swing even more the side of abortions before progress can be made at the Red State level. For the most part, these states do not allow for citizen initiatives.

Blue states, on the other hand, have a problem based in complacency rather than hopelessness. Republicans can win only when they convince voters that in their state, the issue is settled and so a candidate’s so-called “pro-life” stance doesn’t matter.

Since the 2020 election, the GOP has dug itself into a deeper and deeper hole.

The first major unforced error made by the GOP was to nuke the filibuster and stack the Supreme Court with right wing justices, whose main purpose was to give us the Dobbs decision, a stark, sudden withdrawal of an established and essential right to bodily autonomy. This ruling is adamantly apposed by approximately two-thirds of the population. The second mistake was dispensing with the “states rights” pretense and plunging onward toward a national ban, as promoted by Lindsay Graham and the major antiabortion groups. The third blunder was trying to criminalize nationally the use of mifepristone, the pill that reduces the pain in a medication abortion and increases its efficacy.

FiveThirtyEight reports

The idea of banning abortion nationally — even at a later point in pregnancy, like 15 weeks — seems to be fairly politically toxic: A YouGov/Economist poll conducted last fall: found that there was more support for establishing a national right to abortion (51 percent) than banning abortion at 15 weeks, while allowing states to enact stricter laws on their own (39 percent).

Republicans keep stoking national abortion bans of one sort or another. Going into the 2024 election, every GOP candidate will enter the race piggybacked by at least two crushing burdens, abortion bans and Trump, either as the Republican nominee, or menacing from the depths of the MAGA base.

The most direct path to re-establishing reproductive rights throughout the U.S. is for the Democrats to assert power in Washington by re-taking the House, expanding the number of Senators who are willing to nuke the filibuster, and then enshrining an equivalent to Roe into law. After all, Mitch McConnell set the precedent by stealing a Justice from Obama an then nuking the filibuster in order to create an antiabortionist Supreme Court, a Court that has succeeded in creating havoc throughout the country.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/27/2170187/-Reaping-the-Whirlwind-The-Coming-Demise-of-the-Antiabortionist-GOP

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