Abortion on demand, for any reason, until birth, funded by taxpayers.
That’s the modern left’s position on the issue. Democrats are so dug into their extremism that they can’t even support bills that compel “doctors” to keep babies who survive a homicide attempt alive.
Perhaps most American voters don’t care enough. Maybe most voters aren’t even aware of the modern left’s radicalism. The political media might be plagued by partisan mediocrity, but when it comes to abortion, they have demonstrated an unmatched competency in misleading the public.
This week, Donald Trump released a statement contending that the abortion issue should be left to the states and refused to endorse any federal law. Because his position is inconveniently restrained, the Joe Biden campaign was compelled to focus on the former president’s flip-flops on the issue.
And virtually every outlet followed the president’s lead, zeroing in on Trump’s inconsistency. The Washington Post laid out “How Trump’s abortion stance has shifted over the years.” NBC News wrote up a “A timeline of Trump’s many, many positions on abortion.” “Why Trump Will Keep Flip-Flopping on Abortion in 2024,” explains a Time magazine headline. “13 times Trump’s abortion position shifted over the last 25 years,” appeared on CNN. And so on.
Fair enough. Trump is obviously taking a politically expedient position meant to diffuse the issue among independents and moderates. And it’s no great pronouncement to say that Trump isn’t any kind of social conservative. Whatever he believes or doesn’t, the former president worked with pro-life and pro-Constitution groups to put three originalist judges on the court because his constituents wanted him to do it. That court, perhaps the last properly functioning institution in the country, overturned one of the most preposterous and deadly decisions in American history.
Guess what? Biden is also a transactional politician. His goal is to delegitimize the court and Constitution and compel states to accept the Democrats’ maximalist position.
What no major media outlet, as far as I can tell, even bothered to point out was that Biden has also radically changed his position on abortion, from supporting virtually every restriction in the ’70s and ’80s — including overturning Roe v. Wade and handing the issue back to states — to taking a “middle-of-the-road” approach as vice president to Barack “above my paygrade” Obama, to now supporting abortion without any limits until birth.
Even during the 2020 campaign, Biden was still pro-Hyde Amendment — a law that bans direct government funding for abortion. This position, if we trust polls, is still popular. But it only took two days of criticism from progressives on social media to convince this feckless, weak man to capitulate to the far left and “denounce” the amendment.
“On Abortion, Trump Chose Politics Over Principles,” says The New York Times this week. When Biden had his abrupt reversal on Hyde in 2020, the Times assured readers the candidate had “grappled for decades with his views on abortion rights.”
We all know politicians are only permitted to “evolve” toward a pro-abortion position. It is odd, though, that every time Biden “grapples” with an issue — and he’s wrestled with virtually every one of them — he somehow always ends up precisely in the most politically convenient place. Weird how that works out.
In any event, as a pro-lifer, I find Trump’s milquetoast triangulation on the issue cowardly and completely expected — presidential candidates always moderate their positions for the general election. As a compromise, however, it is well within the norms of American governance. States should be making most of the decisions about how they conduct business.
Yet, Democrats like Bill Kristol claimed Trump’s waffling was “classic authoritarianism,” because they have completely lost the ability, it seems, to say anything else. We often hear the left argue that restricting abortion is an attack on “democracy.” Abortion, mentioned nowhere in the Constitution, is not a right. It is perfectly within our norms — nay, within the constitutional order — to empower voters in states, or even nationally, to decide the issue for themselves.
Anyway, if waffling on abortion is authoritarian, Bill Kristol is Benito Mussolini.
(Trump’s abortion statement, incidentally, came the same day Biden announced a new student loan “forgiveness” plan — ignoring Congress, defying the Supreme Court, breaking millions of private contracts, and unilaterally demanding taxpayers foot the bill. This unconstitutional vote-buying scheme doesn’t seem to bother any of our self-appointed defenders of democracy.)
For both constitutional and practical reasons, I believe the abortion fight is better fought on the state level. But, at the same time, Dobbs does not restrict federal action. And it must be noted that Democrats have zero compunction ramming through national abortion policy. It is difficult to maneuver locally — which, let’s face it, the GOP can barely do as it is — while Democrats work to make maximalist abortion legislation the law of the land.
And we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that even the GOP federal position is far more reasonable than anything Democrats propose. Trump wants to avoid the debate, but Lindsey Graham’s “Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act” would have limited abortions past 15 weeks of pregnancy (which is when the vast majority of abortions take place, we are constantly informed) and included exceptions for rape and incest, protections for the woman’s life, and prohibitions from prosecuting women seeking abortions.
Democrats keep calling Graham’s bill a “ban,” when it’s clear it comports with the view of a large swath of voters, who do not believe in complete bans or complete license to kill human beings.
Though you’d never know it from the news.
