On Friday, The New York Times reported that former President Donald Trump has indicated privately that he likes the idea of prohibiting abortion after 16 weeks in most cases. Given that Trump has repeatedly criticized others for supporting such bans, the Trump campaign jumped to respond. Still, his spokesperson did not deny the story so much as reiterate Trump’s current campaign line: “He would sit down with both sides and negotiate a deal that everyone will be happy with.” This of course is a fool’s errand. Democrats know exactly how impossible it is to find an abortion policy that everyone is happy about — that used to be their goal.
Democrats know exactly how impossible it is to find an abortion policy that everyone is happy about — that used to be their goal.
The Trump campaign also tried to contrast this fantasy compromise with President Joe Biden, claiming the president supports “abortion on demand.” But the joke’s on them — Biden has specifically opposed “abortion on demand” as recently as last week. So I guess maybe Trump has found an abortion policy that “both sides” can be happy with.
For 50 years, Democrats ceded to the forced-birth movement the idea that abortion was a shameful act. Opponents of reproductive freedom encouraged this perception of abortion as sinful and violent with their bloody placards and word games (neither “partial-birth abortion” nor “late-term abortion” are terms with any real medical meaning). This rhetoric shifted the Overton window further and further away from what Americans — according to polls, anyway — have long believed: that most abortions should be legal.
Democrats have avoided stridency on expansive abortion access because those same polls show Americans can be uncomfortable or unsure about specific circumstances, i.e., what “most abortions” really means. Some Americans say abortions should be banned after the second trimester, or the first, or allowed at all times only as…
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