By Steve Woodward
Logic rarely informs political narratives. Thus, it comes as no surprise that a narrative gaining momentum advises that abortion does not kill babies, but it’s about to kill the Republican party.
It’s gaining momentum, we conclude, because The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal agree.
“Republicans had better get their abortion position straight, and more in line with where voters are or they will face another disappointment in 2024,” observes a lead editorial in April 6, 2023, editions of the Journal.
“Now that the end of Roe (v. Wade after the Supreme Court’s historic crushing of legal abortion) has awakened a previously complacent pro-choice majority, anti-abortion passion has become a liability, but the Republican Party can’t jettison it without tearing itself apart,” writes Times columnist Michelle Goldberg in an April 7 op-ed headlined, “Republicans are freaking out”.
The Times’ Goldberg bolstered the premise of her ominous screed by quoting a tweet by conservative commentator Ann Coulter: “Please stop pushing strict limits on abortion, or there will be no Republicans left.”
This wrist wringing comes in the aftermath of a resounding defeat in Wisconsin earlier in April that flipped the state’s Supreme Court to a 4-3 radical Left majority — a majority likely to hold for a decade. The post-election narrative advised that this was a self-inflicted wound by the Republican candidate who stubbornly clung to his anti-abortion messaging.
That thinking does not square with the real story: A cascade of dark money transformed a state Supreme Court race into a $30 million slugfest with most of financial haymakers delivered in support of the Milwaukee circuit judge Janet Protasiewicz, who dropped all pretense of pledging to interpret law from the high court’s bench. Instead she said, essentially, that she never would recuse herself from any case tied to social or cultural issues in which she has expressed firm positions, abortion “rights” at the top of the list.
“Turnout was the highest ever for a court race that didn’t coincide with a presidential primary,” wrote Kimberley Strassel in an April 6, 2023, op-ed in the Journal. Strassel, no centrist, nonetheless warns Republicans in her column that they must “unwax their ears” and cave on abortion. Otherwise, expect more defeats like Wisconsin.
A Substack columnist, Jessica Valenti, who proudly proclaims that her mission is to advance “Abortion, Every Day”, jumps onto the same bandwagon, that being: It matters not that your camp fundamentally and religiously opposes aborting births. Wake up. An American culture in decline is fine with it. Why stand on principle when you can easily cave based on polling numbers?
“Republican legislators across the country have been working overtime to prevent Americans from having a say on abortion rights,” Valenti rants, “no longer bothering to hide their obvious disdain for democracy.”
She’s so dumb — an obvious conclusion — that they/them Valenti fails to grasp that America is a Republic girded by democratic principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our founders prioritized life.
Democracy is the Left’s favorite word in defense of everything they wish to obliterate. Their opponents always are “existential threats to democracy”.
Not to be overlooked in an examination of the Left’s hypocrisy on all things abortion is its waffling on “born alive” legislation addressing babies targeted for abortion that survive execution. Democrats simply could not see the common sense to which this bill in the U.S. House was anchored.
Dems opposing the bill argued that the same baby they would have killed on contact might “suffer” en route to a hospital to receive medical attention. Can’t make it up.
Reports The Christian Post: “Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) who opined that the bill could create ‘more harm for the baby since it requires immediately taking a struggling baby to a hospital’.” That hospital,” she explained, “could be hours away and could be detrimental to the life of that baby. This is nothing more than part of the effort to make abortion illegal nationally in this country. I object, and I urge a no vote.”
The baby as the pawn is the Left’s central theme. The Left wants to kill and protect the baby at the same time.
What do we, as Conservative Republicans do, in the face of calls from within to abandon defense of the sanctity of life? I might suggest we recall the 1964 speech that vaulted Ronald Reagan into the political arena. He told us then that we had arrived at “a time for choosing”. He went on to warn that the choice was not easy but that the wrong choice could cast our nation into darkness.
In 2023, Republicans can not afford to lack courage to choose vehement opposition to the normalization of infanticide.