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Abortion, Public Opinion, and Selling Out

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Ezra provides a useful compilation of abortion public opinion data. Having waded through more of this stuff than anybody voluntarily would for professional reasons, I can confirm that public opinion on abortion has been remarkably stable since 1967, and in a way favorable to pro-choicers, no matter what source you look at. On the other hand, as I have argued before, it’s important not to be too sanguine about what that means should Roe be overturned; in particular, it’s crucial to remember that American political institutions are not majoritarian. There are a lot of things about abortion politics that skew legislative outcomes in favor of the anti-choice minority. I do agree with Ezra that it is very unlikely that a categorical ban on abortion could get through Congress. It is very possible, however, that a delegation of abortion decisions to doctors under vague legal standards of the type that several states adopted in the late 60s could pass. These laws have the effect of protecting safe, legal abortions for affluent women in major urban areas while making them much more restricted for poor women and women in rural areas. This outcome should, I think, be regarded as pro-choicers as intolerable even if they are not personally affected.

Comparing this data with public opinion on cultural issues, Yglesias makes an extremely important point:

Interestingly, though, while abortion rights seems to me to be the liberal cultural issue that elites are most wary of, liberal views on abortion actually have much more popular support than do liberal views on gay rights and Establishment clause issues.

This is exactly right, and I think this goes a long way to understanding why many people were (for example) so upset with Kos last month. To a remarkable extent, many Dems offering advice about how to cope with electoral losses–DLCers like Marshall Whitmann, culturally conservative Dems like Amy Sullivan, and (most dismayingly) even some tough-minded lefties like Max Sawicky–start discussions of where to compromise with abortion. Given the underlying attitudes of the electorate, it is virtually impossible to explain why liberal “moves to the center” should start with abortion unless the person in question is hostile to what they perceive as “women’s issues” (sometimes because they oppose feminist goals, more often because they think they’re not very important.) At the very least, the burden of proof is certainly on those who believe that if Dems are to compromise on cultural issues to shift terrain to economic issues on which the Dems are on better electoral ground, they should start with the issue on which the Democratic position is the majority position. When you hear this set of priorities, you’re hearing someone who either has a hidden agenda or simply doesn’t know the data (and part of this, I think, stems from a tendency to conflate “cultural issues” that, as Matt suggests, are often quite politically distinct.)

Look, I’m a secularist, an in an ideal world I would be a pretty strong Establishment clause absolutist. But if it’s a choice between selling out on 10 Commandments displays and selling out the reproductive rights of poor women, this is no choice at all. Liberal positions on church and state are genuinely unpopular, and the issues are relatively trivial in terms of their significance to people’s lives. I grew up in a country that doesn’t have an Establishment clause, and while it was somewhat annoying to get dirty looks from teachers when I refused to say the Lord’s Prayer at assemblies, I would suggest that this inconvenience rather pales next to the dilemma of a women who has the choice of involuntarily bringing a pregnancy to term or using a coathanger. While tactical compromises may be necessary, at a national level for the Dems to sell out reproductive rights is bad policy and bad politics.

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