Take a deep breath. This is not an attempt to change your mind on this fraught, deeply divisive issue. This is the second post in a series looking into whether the policies of the two leading candidates can be described as significantly different in terms of their morality. Not the candidates, the policies.
Abortion, or women’s reproductive choice, is another major issue in the presidential election. Where do the candidates stand, and what does it mean?
When Vice President Harris speaks on this issue, she does so with clarity and sincerity. Even her extemporaneous remarks on this issue are (usually) coherent and forceful. Prior to becoming the presidential candidate, the Biden campaign had assigned her the lead role in public discussions on it, and she was effective with the liberal/progressive audiences with which she engaged.
At its most elemental, Harris says she will sign a new federal law reinstating the status quo before the Dobbs decision overturned Roe’s constitutional right to an abortion. However, there are several areas where she goes further. She has promised to rescind the Hyde Amendment, a bipartisan agreement (that has lasted decades) that says no federal funding can be used to procure an abortion. She has suggested (according to the American Civil Liberties Union) that this is “to ensure that everyone can get an abortion if they need one, no matter who they are, where they live, or how much money they have.” Harris also co-sponsored (and has not backed away from) the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2017, which would invalidate all state-level laws or regulations which restrict abortion or abortion access.
Just today, the Vice President announced she supports making an exception to the filibuster rules to pass her pro-choice law in the Senate. This is an important development. To remind, the Senate has a rule that for any vote to take place, debate must be allowed first, and if that debate becomes a filibuster, it takes a super-majority of sixty Senators to break the filibuster and continue to the actual vote. Her support, coupled with any Democratic majority in the Senate, makes passage of her proposed abortion rights bill far more likely. It also means that Republicans will accept the new rule change, and our nation’s abortion rules will go from one extreme (unlimited abortion) to another (abortion banned) with every change in the Presidency and Congress. And some thought things were bad before now!
In practical terms, when asked at the presidential debate if she supports any restrictions on abortion, Harris did not answer the question. When former President Trump said “You could do abortions in the seventh month, the eighth month, the ninth month” Harris responded “that’s not true.” This happened at the end of a back-n-forth exchange between the candidates, so perhaps the moderator Linsey Davis can be forgiven for not fact-checking the Vice President. Roe placed no limitation on abortion after viability; it only afforded the states the ability to do so. Some states under Roe placed no such restrictions, and many more have done the same under Dobbs. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2019 there were almost 5,000 abortions in the US after the twenty-first week; the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute estimates it was closer to 9,000. That’s between one or two every hour. And that same group denies these were abortions for late-discovered fetal anomalies, but rather (according to the women who had the abortions) they were for the same reasons as abortions in general.
Summing up, Vice President Harris sees abortion solely as women’s health care, there is no reason to place any limits on it, and she would use the powers of the federal government to prevent states from restricting the practice.
As clear and unapologetic as Vice President Harris is on this issue, former President Trump is vague and evasive. He was vigorously pro-choice for decades, but changed to pro-life when he announced his candidacy in 2015. When asked by Maureen Dowd whether “he was ever involved with someone who had an abortion?” he said, “Such an interesting question. So what’s your next question?” Responding to prompts from pro-life activists, he has taken positions all over the map on abortion, then walked those same positions back when they attracted negative attention. His one constant has been his promise to nominate Supreme Court Justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, which he did.
In the post Dobbs environment, he has continued to waffle, saying he was against a six-week Florida state limit for abortions as “too early” but then denying that he said it. He often states these flips are due to hypothetical discussions, hyperbole, or sarcasm, although there is no evidence for this. His most recent touchstone has been that he doesn’t need to take a stand on abortion as a national issue, as his work to overturn Roe had made the issue one for each state and its voters. He even went so far at the debate as to (falsely) claim “that was what everybody wanted” (i.e. that abortion be decided at the state level).
While the former President at times speaks passionately about the issue and some of its more repulsive aspects, I don’t think it is too judgmental to say he doesn’t have set personal views on it. For him, it seems to be something transactional, in that he understands it is important to others.
One final comment on another part for the debate. When former President Trump tried to bring up the issue of children born despite an abortion, then left to die, moderator Linsey Davis replied with this fact check, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.” This response was both telling and frightening. Telling in that it denies the fact there are people alive today who survived botched abortions; they even have their own affinity group. And chilling in that by the logic of the pro-choice movement, the product of an abortion is not a person but “tissue” or “a fetus.” So if that product just happens to be breathing when it is removed, it is not a child, so it can be left to die. If you don’t believe me, check out what the proud abortion doctor William Hern says on his own website!
How do we assess all this when it comes to the morality of the two candidates’ policies? It is important to separate the morality of the issue from that of the policy. Each side absolutely believes it is not only right but totally moral, while the opposing side is irrational, uncaring, and evil. It is important to note this is not where most Americans are. Polls on the issue of abortion reliably show that most people accept neither the full pro-life nor pro-choice side. Poll results can be easily manipulated by how the questions are asked, demonstrating how conflicted people are. Ask whether a teenager should be forced to give birth to her rapist’s child and you get a strong result. Ask whether a woman should be able to choose to abort in the third trimester for sex selection and you get the same strong result. Both cases are extreme, and they point out the relative weaknesses in each side’s argument. That doesn’t make either side’s case wrong; it just shows how fraught the issue is.
Vice President Harris has staked out consistent positions on this issue, although she denies some of the inconvenient facts along the way. Her positions would go well beyond the status quo under Roe. Former President Trump has been consistently inconsistent. He seems to want to be done with the issue, and I believe he thought he was with the Dobbs decision. There is no way to know what he might choose to support, but I think it is telling this is no longer an issue on which he seems comfortable leading.
Trump’s position is almost amoral, although his instincts are that there is something wrong about abortion. He seems to want to limit it, but would prefer to stop talking about it altogether. Harris has the certainty of a true believer, and her policies represent the furthest extent of those beliefs. On an issue which is so divisive and difficult, I don’t see either of them having a decided moral advantage here.
I am clearly pro-choice, no debate about that. I take offense that you see the issue as a test of personal morality. I believe I am a moral person and I believe you to be a moral person. We are on 2 sides of the fence but are both moral. I believe I should have the right to make reproductive choices for myself and you don’t have a right to decide my choices. Is it moral for someone other than myself to have a say in what I will or will not be able to do with my body???? Why should YOU have a say?? Are you the morality judge? Is the government a morality judge? Is it OK to force medical treatments on people even if they risk others lives? Is it moral to harvest organs for donation? Is it moral to accept a donated organ? Is it OK to deny medical treatments because it is not affordable?? These may or may not be moral issues but a question arises— Do you have a right to decide what I will or will not do with my body?
I am sorry you take offense, but as I said in the post, this was about what the candidate’s positions on abortion are, not whether either side believes they are moral or correct. The premise of this three-part series is simply this: I know many people (perhaps you?) who feel this election is a moral choice between good and evil. Such a belief has to have a factual basis, or else it is simply bias masquerading as virtue. So I am taking the three most important issues (immigration, abortion, the economy) and reviewing what the candidates say they will do, to answer a simple question: is there a moral difference between their positions? If there isn’t, then we should be evaluating the candidates on their policies, come what may.
As to your questions about a woman’s right to determine her own health care, you correctly state the memes of the pro-choice movement. It surprises me that such questions have well-understood public answers, yet some continue to offer them, as if they have some power. We regularly pass laws in the United States that control people’s health care options: laws for/against transition surgeries/treatments, laws against selling your organs or for-profit surrogacy, laws on what drugs you may take and which one you may not. So no, I don’t have a right to decide what you do with your body, but “we” (the polity) does. And always has. That is what government is for.
As to the famous question posed by then-Senator Harris to Bret Kavanaugh (‘can you think of any law regulating a man’s body?’), I’m shocked he missed the obvious answer. He should have said, “yes, for hundreds of years, governments have held drafts–applicable only to men–and they took those men’s bodies for their own purposes. They did so at the total cost of their freedom, and at the risk of their all-too-early demise. These men were subjected to harsh training, discipline, and ultimately ordered to die. So yes, governments have a long history of regulating men’s bodies.”
My compliments to you for somewhat successfully walking the tight rope by making it a political science discussion. If you ever decide to tackle this topic from a biological science perspective, may I suggest that that discussion begin with the question, “When does human life begin?”
Thank you, It’s always best when you finish the tightrope walk still intact!
Well thought out and well written.
Thanks Pat