The "pro life" party is really a "pro birth" party. After birth, the prevailing conservative/Republican philosophies of "personal responsibility" and "I got to where I am on my own, so should you" kicks in. If the party was pro life would they say no to vaccines that save lives, child tax credits to help reduce childhood poverty, access to affordable health care for children (talking to you Mr Abbott), access to affordable prenatal care, access to assistance for child care for working parents, and the list goes one. The Republican Party should not be allowed to use the pro life moniker. Brand them as only pro birth and then you're on your own.
So the financial worries of a pregnant woman “can be alleviated”. Yes indeed - but they won’t be. Notice the passive voice…. “can be alleviated” doesn’t get to who will do the alleviation. Not a plan you can take to the bank.
And adoption is also not a realistic solution for most women. Apart from the emotional trauma of giving up a baby you have lived with for nine months, what about the real-world problems of pregnancy? How will the mother pay for prenatal checkups and hospital birth? Who would pay for medical costs if the pregnancy runs into to one of the many complications of pregnancy. And what about the woman’s job? Employers have been known to find a reason to “lay off” pregnant women. Some employers straight up fire unmarried pregnant women because they aren’t considered morally fit to represent the morally-stellar company. If adoption is such a winning solution, why are there thousands of children in foster care?
Suggestion for how to solve the”pregnancy problem” need to be connected to the real world.
1) 6-in-10 women who get abortions are already mothers.
2) 1-in-4 women will have an abortion at some point during their child-bearing years.
3) 90+% of abortions are done in the 1st trimester (92% in first 13 weeks).
If the GOP doesn't get that there's going to be an immense backlash to this ruling and the subsequent state laws that kick in, then they are dreaming. This issue will move swing voters and mobilize liberals--even the young ones. It impacts more people's lives and is more popular than they understand. And they're STILL going the maximist route--no exceptions for rape, incest, mother's health--via one-liners like "I guess the father has to be a good guy for it not to be a murder" (yes, I've see pro-lifers throwing that one around). They don't see how badly this is going to backfire on them going into the next two election cycles.
Charlie, I'm one of your biggest fans, but I'm going to have to disagree with your characterization of Mona's piece as nuanced. Mona is making the same argument she makes consistently, which is that abortion should be illegal except in cases of rape, incest, and extreme medical conditions on the part of the mother or fetus. Her response to unwanted pregnancies: better support and/or adoption. This is (en)forced pregnancy, and is an extreme position not in keeping with the majority of Americans. There is a reason abortion had been on the back burner (though certainly an always simmering part of the political soup): it had been laid to rest as settled precedent, which all of Trump's appointees agreed to respect in public and private questioning.
Abortion is obviously a very emotional subject. But no matter how much I may agree or disagree with the writers’ views (and I am not completely on board with every argument presented by both Mona and Will), I want to applaud their principled stance and good faith arguments.
As someone who is frankly squishy on the topic, I would like pro-choice folks to think about how the social conservatives are finally able to reverse Roe (assuming the draft opinion sticks), and what they can do to regain the upper hand?
I think Charlie is having fun writing inflammatory statements on abortion. He certainly doesn’t promote good discussion. Todays proof is his praise on Mona’s BELIEFS (lacking facts) and satisfying his daily need to attack Dems - today being Schumer codifying CURRENT 50 yo abortion law (Roe). Sigh.🥴🥱
I saw Charlie's appearance on The Beat last night and had the same reaction.
I'm amazed at how so many democrats are politically naive (or more honestly, outright politically stupid) - they would rather "feel" good at the moment by protesting outside the home of a SCOTUS than to think of the implications it has on the midterms, where many suburban voters will turn away from a "radical" or "extreme" democratic party.
When we have so many good arguments to make regarding the overturning of Roe, why must the Progressive wing of the party loudly insist on "whenever" abortions, no restrictions, when a majority of Americans from any party are as against that as they are in "never" abortions?
Like it or not, neither Democrats or Republicans can win elections without convincing Independents to vote for them. Most of those Independents live in the suburbs and they are not in the 18-25 yo age group. No generation in my lifetime voted with any frequency when they were the "younger" generation.
Instead of taking the opportunity to convince the 18-25 yo's that using their voice is great, but it is meaningless to bringing about change if they don't VOTE, progressives like Jason Johnson live in a fantasy world thinking that just the right "cause" will magically succeed in turning out their vote in sufficient numbers, though it's never happened in my long lifetime....
Someone made that same calculation regarding Black and Latino voters several decades ago, and how did that work out? We lost the working class of voters because we stopped fighting for them at the same time.... It doesn't have to be a numbers game - it ought to be an issues game. And we need to include every group who shares the same vision of a better America with better opportunities for all of us.
McKinley going down in West Virginia should lay to rest any ideas pundits have about what bipartisanship and crossing Trump gets you in a very red state: a primary loss. Doesn't matter if you voted to give your constituents broadband, fill potholes, or running water. Don't kiss the ring and you lose!
It should also give Joe Manchin an idea of how much weight his endorsement carries in the Republican base, the same one that will show up in droves to end his career in 2024.
“ 1. Don’t miss Mona Charen’s thoughtful, nuanced discussion of the possible ways the post-Roe debate over abortion might change.” And then Mona states “I believe…” followed by her personal anti-abortion thoughts lacking any proof to substantiate any of them. So “thoughtful and nuanced” is poppycock. Just Mona being Mona.
There are solutions for women who are on the fence about abortion, but Republicans would *never* entertain them.
-A guaranty of free healthcare and housing for every pregnant woman and her family.
-A guaranty of a minimum stipend to cover any living/housing costs that they cannot cover themselves.
-A guaranty that if they are in school, their progress will at worst only be paused with them to resume immediately upon their desire to do so.
-A guaranty that the child will have full healthcare up to age five (at a minimum).
-A guaranty that the woman's children would have immediate access to child care as soon as she decided she was ready to re-enter school or the work force.
-A guaranty of free after school programs to fill the donut hole of when school ends and when most jobs end.
-A guaranty of a minimum six weeks recovery time that can instantly and immediately be extended (because the detatching of the placenta is effectively an internal gunshot wound--not every gunshot wound heals with the same alacrity).
-A guaranty that they will not miss out on any promotions or raises while they are away from work.
You *must* eliminate every.possible.negative. before you decide you are going to treat half the population as brood mares.
Once all that is in place and firmly established, then you can *ask* a woman if she might prefer to have a(nother) child. It would, and should always be, her decision.
I think you meant “ second trimester not second term”. While you state the Roe “ mandates states to allow second trimester abortion the actual rate of abortions in the second trimester is very small, 1.3 %. According to this document from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology:
In the United States, more than one half of pregnancies are unintended, with 3 in 10 women having an abortion by age 45 years. In 2008, 1.2 million abortions occurred in the United States, of which 6.2% took place between 13 weeks of gestation and 15 weeks of gestation, and 4.0% took place at 16 weeks of gestation or later. Only 1.3% of abortions are performed at 21 weeks of gestation or later. The proportion of abortions performed in the second trimester, usually defined as between 13 weeks of gestation and 26 weeks of gestation (as calculated from the last menstrual period), has remained stable during the past two decades
For the next year or two (at least), the Republican base will require that their representatives spike the football. There will be much more extremism on the right in service of 'owning the libs'. On top of that, there really is a theocratic impulse that has no use for pluralism.
Charlie, I really like the Bulwark and read at least one article in it almost every day. But Mona's position on abortion is nuts. Let's face facts here. The notion that "life begins at conception," the basis of her position and increasingly that of all of the GOP, is a matter of opinion and not science. I assume that opinion is based on her religious faith, which I greatly respect. But it is NOT a matter of objective fact.
It is simply wrong for government at any level to take away the right to make a decision about what goes on in one's own body based on a religious view that is not even held by the majority.
Twitter before Elon Musk had the right to ban Trump if it chose--- Twitter after Elon Musk has the right to allow Trump if it wants. Those who don't like it can move the invisible hand and go elsewhere.
[Sarcasm alert]
BUT everyone knows having Trump on Twitter is far more fun and entertaining than not having him there.
[End Sarcasm alert]
In the end, it is my job, not Twitters, to sort out truth from disinformation. The ability to block people I find objectionable (racists, fascists, homophobes, religious fanatics, etc.) means I have the power to shape my own Twitter experience without stripping others of their own.
Charlie, I love the Bulwark, or at least I think I do, and it's why it pains me to see articles like the ones you've featured today, because it very much feels to me like either coping or outright delusion on basically everything.
To start with the easy bit, Schumer's bill is merely codifying what is currently already law thanks to Roe v Wade. If that's the 'maximalist' position, then we have a very different idea of what that is. Beyond that, politics is salesmanship, which is why Trump was so bad at it. You don't start with what you want. You put out the position you know you won't get and you let people haggle you down for it to where you actually want to be. That lets them think they got one over on you when you actually got what you want. Beyond that, the reason you need to bring it up for a vote is because you need to A. show the base that you actually do need more democrats in office because you don't have enough to do what they want and B. need to make it clear that the party position on this issue is not up for debate. Parties, at least until recently, stood for things. You couldn't be a communist in Reagan's GOP, and you can't be anti-abortion in today's Democratic party.
Moving beyond that, Mona is well out of her depth about what's coming. The positions are not going to get less maximalist, they're going to get more so, especially on the anti-choice side, which has already begun criminalizing not just abortion but things like Plan B and IVFs. What is coming, simply put, is another version of Dred Scott; we are going to have two Americas, where where you live determines what rights you have. Or we will, until there is a matter like Dred Scott where someone has an abortion in another state and there's a showdown over who has jurisdiction. And if you don't believe me, Louisiana just passed a law wherein it says, explicitly, that any judge that attempts to stop it in the state will be impeached, and any federal law that attempts to overrule it will be ignored. To put it bluntly, the issue of abortion is no less significant than that of slavery in our day and age, and rather than tone down the rhetoric, it's going to go to eleven.
Lastly, a shrinking GOP base means nothing, because they don't believe in elections or in voting. Any Democratic victory is a lie, any GOP failure is only due to evil by the other side. This is what animates the party. It doesn't matter if it's shrinking, because either later this year or in 2024, the party is simply going to seek, as JD Vance says, 'their American Caesar.' American institutions already don't reflect the popular will, and the Supreme Court has now taking to flouting it openly, so if you think it's going to do anything other than rubber stamp the GOP into power you're dreaming.
I hate to say it, but we as a nation are heading either towards a second civil war or dissolution. There is no other way to see the world, given the fact that neither side is going to give up on an issue or a set of beliefs that they consider literally life or death. The right already canonizes figures like Rittenhouse, and we're going to have a whole nation of them before long, I'm afraid.
The "pro life" party is really a "pro birth" party. After birth, the prevailing conservative/Republican philosophies of "personal responsibility" and "I got to where I am on my own, so should you" kicks in. If the party was pro life would they say no to vaccines that save lives, child tax credits to help reduce childhood poverty, access to affordable health care for children (talking to you Mr Abbott), access to affordable prenatal care, access to assistance for child care for working parents, and the list goes one. The Republican Party should not be allowed to use the pro life moniker. Brand them as only pro birth and then you're on your own.
Suggested correction to this phrase from Mona Charen's piece:
"With the Supreme Court poised to toss the issue back into politics. . . ."
Revise to:
"With the Supreme Court poised to toss the issue back into a different arena of politics. . . . ."
So the financial worries of a pregnant woman “can be alleviated”. Yes indeed - but they won’t be. Notice the passive voice…. “can be alleviated” doesn’t get to who will do the alleviation. Not a plan you can take to the bank.
And adoption is also not a realistic solution for most women. Apart from the emotional trauma of giving up a baby you have lived with for nine months, what about the real-world problems of pregnancy? How will the mother pay for prenatal checkups and hospital birth? Who would pay for medical costs if the pregnancy runs into to one of the many complications of pregnancy. And what about the woman’s job? Employers have been known to find a reason to “lay off” pregnant women. Some employers straight up fire unmarried pregnant women because they aren’t considered morally fit to represent the morally-stellar company. If adoption is such a winning solution, why are there thousands of children in foster care?
Suggestion for how to solve the”pregnancy problem” need to be connected to the real world.
Fun abortion facts:
1) 6-in-10 women who get abortions are already mothers.
2) 1-in-4 women will have an abortion at some point during their child-bearing years.
3) 90+% of abortions are done in the 1st trimester (92% in first 13 weeks).
If the GOP doesn't get that there's going to be an immense backlash to this ruling and the subsequent state laws that kick in, then they are dreaming. This issue will move swing voters and mobilize liberals--even the young ones. It impacts more people's lives and is more popular than they understand. And they're STILL going the maximist route--no exceptions for rape, incest, mother's health--via one-liners like "I guess the father has to be a good guy for it not to be a murder" (yes, I've see pro-lifers throwing that one around). They don't see how badly this is going to backfire on them going into the next two election cycles.
Stat source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/14/upshot/who-gets-abortions-in-america.html
Charlie, I'm one of your biggest fans, but I'm going to have to disagree with your characterization of Mona's piece as nuanced. Mona is making the same argument she makes consistently, which is that abortion should be illegal except in cases of rape, incest, and extreme medical conditions on the part of the mother or fetus. Her response to unwanted pregnancies: better support and/or adoption. This is (en)forced pregnancy, and is an extreme position not in keeping with the majority of Americans. There is a reason abortion had been on the back burner (though certainly an always simmering part of the political soup): it had been laid to rest as settled precedent, which all of Trump's appointees agreed to respect in public and private questioning.
Abortion is obviously a very emotional subject. But no matter how much I may agree or disagree with the writers’ views (and I am not completely on board with every argument presented by both Mona and Will), I want to applaud their principled stance and good faith arguments.
As someone who is frankly squishy on the topic, I would like pro-choice folks to think about how the social conservatives are finally able to reverse Roe (assuming the draft opinion sticks), and what they can do to regain the upper hand?
I think Charlie is having fun writing inflammatory statements on abortion. He certainly doesn’t promote good discussion. Todays proof is his praise on Mona’s BELIEFS (lacking facts) and satisfying his daily need to attack Dems - today being Schumer codifying CURRENT 50 yo abortion law (Roe). Sigh.🥴🥱
I saw Charlie's appearance on The Beat last night and had the same reaction.
I'm amazed at how so many democrats are politically naive (or more honestly, outright politically stupid) - they would rather "feel" good at the moment by protesting outside the home of a SCOTUS than to think of the implications it has on the midterms, where many suburban voters will turn away from a "radical" or "extreme" democratic party.
When we have so many good arguments to make regarding the overturning of Roe, why must the Progressive wing of the party loudly insist on "whenever" abortions, no restrictions, when a majority of Americans from any party are as against that as they are in "never" abortions?
Like it or not, neither Democrats or Republicans can win elections without convincing Independents to vote for them. Most of those Independents live in the suburbs and they are not in the 18-25 yo age group. No generation in my lifetime voted with any frequency when they were the "younger" generation.
Instead of taking the opportunity to convince the 18-25 yo's that using their voice is great, but it is meaningless to bringing about change if they don't VOTE, progressives like Jason Johnson live in a fantasy world thinking that just the right "cause" will magically succeed in turning out their vote in sufficient numbers, though it's never happened in my long lifetime....
Someone made that same calculation regarding Black and Latino voters several decades ago, and how did that work out? We lost the working class of voters because we stopped fighting for them at the same time.... It doesn't have to be a numbers game - it ought to be an issues game. And we need to include every group who shares the same vision of a better America with better opportunities for all of us.
McKinley going down in West Virginia should lay to rest any ideas pundits have about what bipartisanship and crossing Trump gets you in a very red state: a primary loss. Doesn't matter if you voted to give your constituents broadband, fill potholes, or running water. Don't kiss the ring and you lose!
It should also give Joe Manchin an idea of how much weight his endorsement carries in the Republican base, the same one that will show up in droves to end his career in 2024.
Hilarious, Charlie:
“ 1. Don’t miss Mona Charen’s thoughtful, nuanced discussion of the possible ways the post-Roe debate over abortion might change.” And then Mona states “I believe…” followed by her personal anti-abortion thoughts lacking any proof to substantiate any of them. So “thoughtful and nuanced” is poppycock. Just Mona being Mona.
There are solutions for women who are on the fence about abortion, but Republicans would *never* entertain them.
-A guaranty of free healthcare and housing for every pregnant woman and her family.
-A guaranty of a minimum stipend to cover any living/housing costs that they cannot cover themselves.
-A guaranty that if they are in school, their progress will at worst only be paused with them to resume immediately upon their desire to do so.
-A guaranty that the child will have full healthcare up to age five (at a minimum).
-A guaranty that the woman's children would have immediate access to child care as soon as she decided she was ready to re-enter school or the work force.
-A guaranty of free after school programs to fill the donut hole of when school ends and when most jobs end.
-A guaranty of a minimum six weeks recovery time that can instantly and immediately be extended (because the detatching of the placenta is effectively an internal gunshot wound--not every gunshot wound heals with the same alacrity).
-A guaranty that they will not miss out on any promotions or raises while they are away from work.
You *must* eliminate every.possible.negative. before you decide you are going to treat half the population as brood mares.
Once all that is in place and firmly established, then you can *ask* a woman if she might prefer to have a(nother) child. It would, and should always be, her decision.
I think you meant “ second trimester not second term”. While you state the Roe “ mandates states to allow second trimester abortion the actual rate of abortions in the second trimester is very small, 1.3 %. According to this document from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology:
In the United States, more than one half of pregnancies are unintended, with 3 in 10 women having an abortion by age 45 years. In 2008, 1.2 million abortions occurred in the United States, of which 6.2% took place between 13 weeks of gestation and 15 weeks of gestation, and 4.0% took place at 16 weeks of gestation or later. Only 1.3% of abortions are performed at 21 weeks of gestation or later. The proportion of abortions performed in the second trimester, usually defined as between 13 weeks of gestation and 26 weeks of gestation (as calculated from the last menstrual period), has remained stable during the past two decades
For the next year or two (at least), the Republican base will require that their representatives spike the football. There will be much more extremism on the right in service of 'owning the libs'. On top of that, there really is a theocratic impulse that has no use for pluralism.
Charlie, I really like the Bulwark and read at least one article in it almost every day. But Mona's position on abortion is nuts. Let's face facts here. The notion that "life begins at conception," the basis of her position and increasingly that of all of the GOP, is a matter of opinion and not science. I assume that opinion is based on her religious faith, which I greatly respect. But it is NOT a matter of objective fact.
It is simply wrong for government at any level to take away the right to make a decision about what goes on in one's own body based on a religious view that is not even held by the majority.
Twitter before Elon Musk had the right to ban Trump if it chose--- Twitter after Elon Musk has the right to allow Trump if it wants. Those who don't like it can move the invisible hand and go elsewhere.
[Sarcasm alert]
BUT everyone knows having Trump on Twitter is far more fun and entertaining than not having him there.
[End Sarcasm alert]
In the end, it is my job, not Twitters, to sort out truth from disinformation. The ability to block people I find objectionable (racists, fascists, homophobes, religious fanatics, etc.) means I have the power to shape my own Twitter experience without stripping others of their own.
Charlie, I love the Bulwark, or at least I think I do, and it's why it pains me to see articles like the ones you've featured today, because it very much feels to me like either coping or outright delusion on basically everything.
To start with the easy bit, Schumer's bill is merely codifying what is currently already law thanks to Roe v Wade. If that's the 'maximalist' position, then we have a very different idea of what that is. Beyond that, politics is salesmanship, which is why Trump was so bad at it. You don't start with what you want. You put out the position you know you won't get and you let people haggle you down for it to where you actually want to be. That lets them think they got one over on you when you actually got what you want. Beyond that, the reason you need to bring it up for a vote is because you need to A. show the base that you actually do need more democrats in office because you don't have enough to do what they want and B. need to make it clear that the party position on this issue is not up for debate. Parties, at least until recently, stood for things. You couldn't be a communist in Reagan's GOP, and you can't be anti-abortion in today's Democratic party.
Moving beyond that, Mona is well out of her depth about what's coming. The positions are not going to get less maximalist, they're going to get more so, especially on the anti-choice side, which has already begun criminalizing not just abortion but things like Plan B and IVFs. What is coming, simply put, is another version of Dred Scott; we are going to have two Americas, where where you live determines what rights you have. Or we will, until there is a matter like Dred Scott where someone has an abortion in another state and there's a showdown over who has jurisdiction. And if you don't believe me, Louisiana just passed a law wherein it says, explicitly, that any judge that attempts to stop it in the state will be impeached, and any federal law that attempts to overrule it will be ignored. To put it bluntly, the issue of abortion is no less significant than that of slavery in our day and age, and rather than tone down the rhetoric, it's going to go to eleven.
Lastly, a shrinking GOP base means nothing, because they don't believe in elections or in voting. Any Democratic victory is a lie, any GOP failure is only due to evil by the other side. This is what animates the party. It doesn't matter if it's shrinking, because either later this year or in 2024, the party is simply going to seek, as JD Vance says, 'their American Caesar.' American institutions already don't reflect the popular will, and the Supreme Court has now taking to flouting it openly, so if you think it's going to do anything other than rubber stamp the GOP into power you're dreaming.
I hate to say it, but we as a nation are heading either towards a second civil war or dissolution. There is no other way to see the world, given the fact that neither side is going to give up on an issue or a set of beliefs that they consider literally life or death. The right already canonizes figures like Rittenhouse, and we're going to have a whole nation of them before long, I'm afraid.