Image courtesy of the American Life League
The following is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone.
With the introduction of the Texas Heartbeat Act in March of this year, the hotly contested topic of abortion has returned to the forefront of political conversation in the United States. The Texas Bill coming into effect on September 1st marked the first time since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that enforcement of a six-week ban on abortion had been permitted in a state. Widely put, Roe v. Wade prevents the enforcement of blanket bans on abortion before fetal viability, given the constitutional right to privacy. For the last 50 years, the court has interpreted the right to privacy to include the issue of abortion given the very personal nature of the action and its effects on the individual wishing to abort. They have, therefore, generally elected to place greater restrictions on anti-abortion legislation that is enforced before the point of viability. However, supporters of the Texas law assert that this legislation evades the provisions of the decision in Roe v. Wade firstly by not directly targeting the mothers in question seeking an abortion but instead individuals aiding and abetting abortions following the 6-week deadline, and secondly, by delegating the law’s enforcement mechanisms to the nation’s private citizens. Rather than state officials, it is the general citizenry capable of suing abortion assisters to prevent abortions after the heartbeat is detected; according to some, this is sufficient to prevent the federal government from lawfully intervening to prevent enforcement.
Many social conservatives, particularly Evangelical Christians, around the United States have viewed the passage of this law, and the refusal of the Supreme Court to grant an injunction blocking it pending official consideration in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson as a victory in their decades-long fight over abortion. This seems to be the direct result of their decision to place a great deal of political focus and public pressure on nominations to the judiciary over the past few years. Many social conservatives who held ideological reservations about voting for Trump in 2016 were convinced, at least in part, by the vacant spot available on the Supreme Court and the likelihood of new spaces opening in the coming year. The possibility for several key conservative SCOTUS Justices to be appointed by Trump seemed for many to be worth the risk, a risk that ultimately resulted in the appointment of three conservative Justices to the Supreme Court. And for conservatives who still held reservations about their decision to prioritize the courts politically, for all three of the Trump-appointed justices to sign on to the majority decision that rejected the injunction against the Texas Heartbeat Act must seem like a perfect vindication.
However, debates over this bill have revealed clear unaddressed cracks in the Republican coalition’s ideological views on the issue of abortion. Polls estimate that less than half of self-identified Republicans support the enforcement mechanisms in the Texas Cardiac Activity bill, permitting private citizens to sue those who materially support pregnant women in getting an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. An even greater percentage of independents, nearly three-quarters, say that they oppose legal action by private citizens against abortion facilitators. There is evidently a strong disconnect between the opinions of state legislators attempting to design abortion legislation and their constituents that seek abortion restrictions in their respective states. 62% of Republicans still support abortion legislation in the United States for most cases, so the support for abortion in the US among conservatives certainly hasn’t dissolved. However, legal realities have prevented state governments from passing the kinds of anti-abortion legislation that Republican voters really desire.
The decisions in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey have continued to mire the ability of state governments to pass conventional blanket bans on any pre-viability abortions. Casey greatly restrains the ability of state governments to restrict pre-viability abortions by imposing an undue burden standard on legislation that occurs before twenty-four weeks of pregnancy. This standard, which prevents the state from erecting significant barriers to abortion that are either “too severe” or lacking in “legitimate, rational justification,” has put many state legislators in tough positions regarding the issue of abortion. Socially moderate and liberal Republican voters are often very opposed to legislation that exploits indirect legal enforcement schemes to prevent abortions, but socially conservative Republicans insist that legislators find methods to justify restrictions to abortions if possible. This apparent conflict has introduced tension between the interests of the more conservative and generally religious wing of the party and the more moderate wing that has less of a vested interest in the success of anti-abortion legislation in the United States. Until now, moderates have generally been willing to ignore the policies and even support them with reservaions. However, as the possibility of such legislation being passed and enforced increases, the political effect of supporting abortion will begin to change for Republicans.
As we slowly bustle towards the midterm and eventual presidential elections, the galvanization of the liberal electorate around a few issues will likely include Trump as the foremost target. But if it is the case that the Texas abortion ban and others like it are permitted to stand, it is virtually unthinkable that Democrats would not hope to use them to motivate their base to get out and vote just as Republicans sought to do during Trump’s presidential election. And if this is the case, socially liberal and moderate Republicans will certainly be inclined to wonder about the value of maintaining support for these contentious pieces of legislation. The potential for these bans to backfire politically for Republicans seems apparent, and some might be inclined to think that their best course of action could be to quietly withdraw support for these abortion bills.
However, despite the political dangers involved in abortion bills, I assert that abandoning pro-life conservatives on the issue of abortion would require the rest of Republicans to abandon the fundamental notion that underlies the GOP coalition: that we are not simply a party of policy issues, but of ideological beliefs about how our republic should function. And one of the foremost of these ideologies, regardless of one’s views on abortion, is the importance of resistance to the government overreach that continues to plague our nation’s political system. We oppose the federal government’s efforts to unduly curtail the rights of the citizenry and states as they’ve tried for so many years. And whether the overreach that one opposes takes the form of excessive taxation, restrictive gun control, or federal judiciaries limiting the freedom of states to regulate abortions, we cannot give up on our collective opposition to these infringements just because they’re controversial. Without the mutual support of one another on all of our issues, this party is doomed to splintering and disarray, an outcome that would ruin us all.
Copyright © 2024 The Princeton Tory. All rights reserved.