New York Times Finds Yet Another Man Who Thinks We Need To Moderate On Abortion
Did they lose a bet? Does someone legally have to write this article once a year?
It’s that time of year again! The time when The New York Times finds them a guy what wants to write an op-ed on the One Weird Trick that someone over there very clearly believes is the key to Democrats sweeping in elections across the nation: moderating on abortion.
This time, that honor goes to former Intercept and ThinkProgress journalist Zaid Jilani, who is here to talk to us about “nuance” and “compromise.” You know, because of how we’re all just too stupid to know about or understand those things.
But sure, let’s hear him out.
Jilani starts out by talking about how James Talarico could, possibly, win the race to become the next senator from Texas against scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton. Talarico is doing pretty well, he’s even got Joe Rogan’s endorsement to run for president (swoon!), but as far as Jilani is concerned, he’s got a big weakness, and that weakness is that he thinks the government should not be telling women what to do with their bodies.
Via New York Times:
But there’s one issue that may trip up Mr. Talarico.
“I trust Texas women to make decisions about their own bodies, to shape their own destinies,” he told a podcaster, Jamie Kern Lima, in May about his stance on abortion. “I don’t believe that’s a place for government.”
His campaign calls for codifying Roe v. Wade, which allowed states to ban abortion only after fetal viability. Abortion rights advocates nationwide would support Talarico’s stance; it’s what you’d expect to hear from Democrats from coast to coast.
But is it what Texans believe?
Jilani goes on to point out that a recent survey found that only only 23 percent of Texans believe that “unrestricted abortion should never be legal” — which some might say is positive news.
But he wants us to know there is a pretty big “but” there.
If you return to the survey, you’ll find that only 10 percent of Texans agreed that abortion should be legal for any reason after 24 weeks. Just 20 percent believed that it should be legal for any reason after 15 weeks.
Many Texans may think both that the state’s abortion ban is too harsh and that the Democrats’ alternative is also extreme.
Texas Democrats’ failure to calibrate on abortion serves as a microcosm for what’s happened to abortion politics in the party writ large. The party has long been the home of pro-choice Americans and has for decades worked to expand access to abortion. But Democrats used to see the issue with more nuance, acknowledging the moral complexity behind the procedure.
Abortion “for any reason” after 24 weeks has never been legal. Roe only allowed for abortion up to viability, citing 24 weeks as the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb. The narrative that abortion rights supporters are out here trying to kill babies that could survive outside the womb for literally no reason is absurd right-wing propaganda.
Are there times when there is a choice between saving the mother or saving the child? Are there times when a fatal fetal anomaly isn’t discovered until later in a pregnancy? Yes, but that’s not “for any reason.”
Now, prior to Dobbs, 96 percent of all abortions occurred before 15 weeks, 92 percent before 13 weeks and 40 percent before 6 weeks. It might be different now that many people must put off having an abortion until they are able to travel to get one, but that’s what they were.
Only one percent of abortions occur after 21 weeks. They are very expensive and require multiple days of care. In many cases, we are talking about wanted pregnancies where something went horrifically wrong, and we don’t want to put official government restrictions on those abortions because we do not want doctors waiting around until the patient goes septic to feel they can do something about the situation.
In other cases, patients who get abortions after 21 weeks do so because restrictions on abortion access prevented them from getting one earlier. You know how to keep those from happening? By keeping abortion legal and accessible.
Next, we come to the part in the essay whereupon the “Let’s Moderate on Abortion” dude harkens back to the heady days when Bill Clinton called for abortions to be “safe, legal and rare.”
President Bill Clinton, for instance, appointed a bevy of federal judges who defended abortion rights. But he also insisted that abortion should be “safe and legal but rare” and that we should “protect the right to choose while reducing the number of abortions.”
This served as an admission that abortion is not just a routine medical procedure like a root canal, and it would be best if it was rare.
When his vice president, Al Gore, ran for the White House, Mr. Gore vowed to defend Roe but also signaled his openness to banning late-term abortions. When Congress voted to ban what some politicians called “partial-birth abortions” a few years later, it did so with the votes of dozens of Democrats.
Even Obama was on board!
President Barack Obama, too, took pains to respect opponents of abortion and insist on the need to reduce the procedure’s frequency. When the Affordable Care Act was passed, more than 60 House Democrats supported an amendment to prevent taxpayer funds from being used for abortions.
Which was cruel and stupid, by the way. The Stupak Amendment was bad and we should all be glad that Bart Stupak (D-Michigan) is no longer serving in Congress, because fuck that dude.
In the South and states without procedures for referendums, Democrats have had little luck imposing a cost on G.O.P. officials who support strict bans. Brian Kemp, who is the Republican governor in my swing state, Georgia, remains popular despite imposing a ban on abortions after six weeks — a point at which many women don’t even know they’re pregnant.
What if — just hear me out here — this is less because those people think that the Democrats’ position is too extreme, and more because they agree with Republicans on other points and abortion is not enough of an important issue for them to change their minds? Because the fact is that abortion rights have actually won, on the ballot, in every state they have been tried except for Florida, despite getting a majority of votes, because the measure required a threshold of at least 60 percent to pass the referendum.
Next, Jilani moves on to pleading with Democrats to just at least admit that abortions are bad and that the women who have them are bad.
Democrats might solve this problem by embracing nuance on abortion again.
This would include acknowledging that many Americans who are skeptical of abortion arrive at that position not because they want to control women but because they have deeply held concerns about when they believe life begins.
Except for how they do, in fact, want to control women.
Large swaths of the Republican Party are now openly calling for an end to women’s voting rights, demanding that women leave the workplace in order to have babies and take care of their husbands. They absolutely do want to control women, or, at the very least, don’t care that people in their party want to control women. There are very few anti-abortion conversations that do not ultimately come back to the idea that there simply must be “consequences” for women who have recreational sex for non-procreative purposes.
Democrats should be more willing to admit that it’s desirable to reduce the number of abortions and to link that goal to progressive policy that has been proven to do so — like broadening access to birth control and reproductive education.
Why is that desirable? Because Zaid Jilani says so? Now, there’s nothing wrong with preventative care, or with doing things in order to prevent requiring a more serious medical intervention down the road, but that doesn’t mean we need to stigmatize said medical interventions.
Jilani then argues that Democrats would have a better time winning in southern states if they would just push for limits at 12 or 15 weeks. We have heard this argument before, and I can see how people who haven’t thought too much about why abortion needs to be a decision between patient and doctor might come to that conclusion. After all, 96 percent of abortions occur before 15 weeks, anway. Except the thing is, only 20 percent of Republicans say that abortion is the most important issue to them, which again suggests that there might be a few other things they like about the Republican Party. I’d also have a hard time believing that those in that 20 percent would be willing to vote for candidates who support abortion rights up to 15 weeks.
Next, we come to the not-so-Shyamalan-ian twist, in which Jilani admits what we could all tell all along — that he is one of those Democrats who would like to see more restrictions on abortion.
It’s time for supporters of abortion rights to realize that nuance and compromise aren’t dirty words. Dogmatism was always the purview of the Christian right, not the secular left. There are millions of Americans in the middle of the polarized abortion debate, and the Democrats should realize we exist and meet us where we are.
Pass!
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So here’s what I really, really need to be clear about. There are not legions of people out there who would vote for Democrats if only they would push for some restrictions on abortion. There is not a significant number of people who are like “Gee, I want to take care of poor people, I want everyone to have healthcare and childcare, I want to take care of the environment, I think we are being super gross to immigrants right now, I believe in LGBTQ+ rights, but I just think that if James Talarico becomes the next senator from Texas, he’s going to make it so people can have abortions ‘for any reason’ after 24 weeks, despite the fact that this was not even a thing under Roe.”
That is not a major demographic. People who hate abortion, for the most part, hate all of those other things, too. Possibly even more than they hate abortion. People who hate abortion enough to vote Republican for that reason alone are not people who are going to vote for candidates who say they support abortion rights up to 15 weeks.
I am tired of being told that these people exist in great numbers without any proof of that being true. There are never any polls to back the theory up, never even any anecdotal stories from voters who say they’d switch sides, if only Democrats only supported abortion rights up to 15 weeks. Nope! Nothing but gut feelings all over.
This is not about winning elections, this is personal. This is about people like Zaid Jilani not wanting to be told that their personal beliefs about abortion are harmful to women, which they are. That makes this a “him” problem and not an “us” problem.
I would kindly suggest that he take some time to himself and deal with that, far away from the New York Times op-ed section.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
The rage I feel listening to any man talk about abortion is incandescent. Also, raise your hand if you know that fetal "age" is measured from date of last period, so any super-regular woman taking a pregnancy test a week after a "missed" period IS ALREADY 5 WEEKS ALONG. What's the over/under on percentage of anti-abortionists who do not know this? 80%?
It’s worth noting that Republicans are not expected to moderate on anything ever.