Good morning. It's Friday, the day of the week when I share a quote meant to be informative or enlightening. Today's words come from Nikki Haley, the lone woman running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination -- and seemingly the one who reads the recent election returns the most clearly. I'm referring to the various referenda on the issue of abortion.
For decades, our nation's two dominant political parties have staked out near-absolutist positions on abortion. To pass muster with the Democratic National Committee, a candidate is supposed to express fealty to the right of a woman (or girl) to have an abortion, for any reason, at pretty much any point in the pregnancy without spousal or parental consent, let alone some busybody lawmaker or judge.
Meanwhile, the quadrennial Republican Party platform treated abortion as though it were state-sanctioned murder and called for the appointment of like-minded federal judicial nominees. A national Republican candidate could back exceptions in case of rape or incest, but that was about it.
I wouldn't say these are unprincipled positions. Quite the contrary. The debate is led, and controlled, by true believers. I wouldn't even use the word "extreme," a slur each party hurls at the other. But I would submit that they don't do justice to the moral and scientific complexity of the issue. Nor do they reflect the more nuanced views held by a majority of Americans.
I would also mention, as an aside, that when spiteful slogans are employed in place of reasoned argument -- and when campaign consultants are given free rein to demonize those on the other side of the issue -- it contributes to a general decline in civility and a rise in political dysfunction.
Regardless of all that, it has become clear in the 17 months since the Supreme Court ruled in the Dobbs decision that the Constitution of the United States does not confer a right to abortion that the high court was doing more than sweeping away nearly 50 years of legal precedent. The court, as it turned out, was handing Democrats a cudgel. And they have been wielding it effectively.
The reasons that this historic wedge issue has broken the Democrats' way are varied. The Democratic Party has been raising more money on this issue and spending it more strategically than Republicans. Democrats have also framed the issue more shrewdly than Republicans -- aided by a legacy media generally in sync with "pro-choice" liberals and hostile to "pro-life" conservatives.
But it's not all tactics. For one thing, the Supreme Court did something it rarely does: It took away a right instead of expanding one. This trend makes millions of Americans uneasy. Finally, there are now more people on the left on this issue than on the right: If voters must choose between two Manichean views on abortion, a majority are with the Democrats.
That doesn't mean committed right-to-lifers should throw in the towel. But if the goal is to win elections, it behooves them to be honest with themselves.
Nikki Haley gets this, and has been saying so for some time. In Miami, during the third GOP presidential primary debate this week, she tried to tell it straight:
I've said it before. I think you have to be honest with the American people. This is a personal issue for every woman and every man. I am unapologetically pro-life, not because the Republican Party tells me to be, but because my husband Michael was adopted and I had trouble having both of my children. So I'm surrounded by blessings.
Having said that, when you look post-Roe, a wrong was made right. They took it out of the hands of unelected justices and they put it in the hands of the people and now we're seeing states vote. And what I'll tell you is as much as I'm pro-life, I don't judge anyone for being pro-choice and I don't want them to judge me for being pro-life. So when we're looking at this, there are some states that are going more on the pro-life side. I welcome that there's some states that are going more on the pro-choice side. I wish that wasn't the case, but the people decided.
But when it comes to the federal law, which is what's being debated here, be honest, it's going to take 60 Senate votes, a majority of the House and a president to sign it. So we haven't had 60 Senate votes in over a hundred years. We might have 45 pro-life senators. So no Republican president can ban abortions any more than a Democrat president can ban these state laws. So let's find consensus.
Let's agree on how we can ban late term abortions. Let's make sure we encourage adoptions and good quality adoptions. Let's make sure we make contraception accessible. Let's make sure that none of these state laws put a woman in jail or give her the death penalty for getting an abortion. Let's focus on how to save as many babies as we can and support as many moms as we can and stop the judgment.
We don't need to divide America over this issue anymore.
And that is our quote of the week.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon
