It's a strategy that makes sense ahead of the 2020 election.
Even though no one yet knows who the candidates will be, the battle lines for the 2020 election are already being drawn. Moving back to center stage after a considerable absence is the issue of legal abortion. Recent developments to either expand or contract abortion rights in the face of an increasingly Republican-appointed federal judiciary have both sides of the issue believing a major clash is imminent.
Continued access to legal abortion does not rise or fall with Roe. Vacating the decision would simply return to the states the ability to set abortion policy within their borders. There would no longer be a national standard—just as there is not nor has there ever been a national consensus on the issue. Rasmussen, Gallup and other pollsters have shown for some time that the country remains roughly equally divided on whether abortion should be legal.
What’s playing out now is a contest by each side to make the other appear unacceptably extreme. When you consider that control of the U.S. House of Representatives—or perhaps even the entire Congress—and the presidency rests largely with female voters in the American suburbs, most of whom tend to reject fringe positions, that makes political sense.
Those in what’s commonly referred to as “the pro-life community” are engaged in similar efforts. Some are pushing for bans and restrictions considered in many circles to be reasonable, such as blocking abortions once “fetal pain” becomes an issue or a “fetal heartbeat” can be detected. As evidence for this, they point to comments made by Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat and pediatric neurologist who supports the legislation. Northam has said that under certain circumstances a late-term abortion survivor “would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
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