The past month saw legislative victories for pro-abortion activists up and down the East Coast. Vermont, New York, and Virginia all either passed or are currently in the process of passing new sweeping abortion laws allowing abortion up until birth and possibly after in the case of Virginia.
In response, pro-life activists in states with unified Republican government have proceeded to pass or advocate heartbeat bills that ban abortion after a heartbeat is detected. 10 states are currently deliberating over these bills.
On the federal level, every Democrat in the Senate aside from Sen. Casey from Pennsylvania, Sen. Manchin from West Virginia, and Sen. Jones from Alabama voted to prevent the survivors of failed abortions who are born from being protected. This includes every Democrat in the Senate currently running for President.
I believe that the new abortion laws passed on the East Coast are a strategic blunder for Democrats in their attempt to retake the Presidency. The Trump elections, both 2016 and 2020 will be decided in the Midwest. The states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania will decide who the next President is, barring a Republican collapse in Arizona and Texas or a Democratic collapse in Minnesota and Colorado. Keep in mind that more historic blue states were in danger of being flipped in 2016 than did. Minnesota, Maine, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Colorado were all within striking distance for President Trump.
The legislative term during a divided Congress leading into a presidential election is often merely a game of chess between the leaders of the two parties to put their side in the best light going into the general election. With as polarized as the two parties are, nothing fundamentally transforming is going to come out of this congress. As we saw this year, they can barely keep the government open. Each side is trying to put the other in tricky voting situations that can be turned into attack ads in October of 2020 right before voters go to the polls.
This is where Democrats have made a strategic blunder on the abortion issue. The selling point for abortion used to be “safe legal and rare”. Now it has become “shout your abortion” and pushing the limits of the questionable science in support of abortion to its limits by demanding abortion be an option up to birth. There is no talking point on abortion that is actually a quality talking point, but safe legal and rare is as close as they get.
Now think back to the electoral map and voting behaviors. When it comes to voters, Democrats own the pro-abortion voter, these voters simply don’t have a reason to vote Republican. Regardless of which Democrat is nominated, they will win almost all of the pro-abortion votes in the United States, just like Hillary Clinton.
In politics, when you empower one group of interest voters, you upset a different group. By empowering abortion extremists inside the Democratic Party, Democrats continue to alienate the pro-life Democrats, specifically Catholic Democrats. It’s one thing to support abortion when the argument is safe legal and rare. Now, it’s a whole new ballgame.
By attempting to pacify its radical base with absurd and unnecessary expansions on abortion, Democrats could very well be gift wrapping the 2020 Presidential election for Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton didn’t lose the Midwest ‘blue wall’ in 2016 due to the lack of enthusiasm on the behalf of pro-abortion voters. She lost the Midwest because of the defection of pro-life blue collar democrats to the Donald Trump. By the posturing of the Democratic candidates currently running for President, they clearly haven’t learned from the 2016 election about the dangers of holding absurd positions on abortion. Unrestricted abortion is a line through the heart which moderate Democrats simply won’t allow to be crossed when it comes to the ballot box.
Ironically, extremism on the abortion issue by the Democratic Party could lead to it being banned, a goal shared by many conservatives including myself. Without digging too deeply into the age of Supreme Court justices, the two oldest are 85 and 80 both appointed by Democratic presidents and considered to be the leaders of the liberal wing. The current ideological split of the court is 5-4 in favor of the conservatives with Roberts being the swing vote. If both of those Supreme Court justices retire before the next Democrat president, the court could go as far as 7-2 in favor of conservatives.
If the 7-2 split is achieved, then pro-life organizations around the United States would rally to their respective state capitals to advocate for silver bullet bills designed to trigger legal challenges to Roe v. Wade. The new conservative court would likely side with the laws, throwing out Roe v. Wade and hopefully putting an end to the era of America’s second great mortal sin.
Photo from NY governor’s office. Source.
The Tower 