The Kansas Abortion Referendum: The Gap Between Activism And Governing

 The Bulwark positions themselves as a centrist organ, "focuse[d] on political analysis and reporting without partisan loyalties or tribal prejudices". Charlie Sykes today published a piece about the failure of yesterday's abortion ban referendum in Kansas and what it means going forward in the ongoing politics of abortion. The important points:

• Pro-choice advocates stuck to messaging about government medical mandates, linking them to unpopular mask and vaccine mandates.
• They also stayed away from the crazier "men can get abortions, too" nonsense, avoiding "scratch[ing] their ideological id."
• They mentioned that abortion is already highly regulated in Kansas.
• The measure lost even in some counties that voted for Trump in 2020.

Pro-choice people will have to model this messaging going forward, though the details will differ depending on locale. It probably helped immensely that the bill was a radical measure that would ban abortion under all circumstances, which is a consequence of conception personhood. It really highlights just how unpopular conception personhood really is once people consider its logical conclusions: under this rubric, abortion has the same valence as first-degree homicide (laying in wait). This underpinning ideology is fine if you need to get activists worked up, but it's a positive hindrance if you need to speak to people outside your tribe, i.e. if you need to actually govern. In that vein, it's pretty significant that the measure's advocates felt the need to use confusing language to hide what a "yes" or "no" vote actually meant.

 With Roe v. Wade now a matter for the history books, latitude for sweeping, polarizing gestures politicians don't have to worry about because, Supreme Court, has suddenly collapsed. San Clemente might try to make their city a "sanctuary for life", but did anyone actually ask people living there what their opinions on the matter might be?

The Surprising Polling Results On Stricter Abortion Controls In The UK

Why do so many more UK women than men favor further restriction on abortion on demand? It's frequently taken as axiomatic by a number of social media memes and bumper stickers implying that, because legislators tend to be male that this reflects who, generally, wants to control abortion. (The idea's origin appears to come from an expression coined by Florynce Kennedy, "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.") The reality is the opposite, at least for certain questions and in certain places; broadly, in the U.S., Gallup reports a more conventional view, with men self-labeling as "pro-life" 51%-44% and women skewing the opposite way, 50%-41%. But it's not a huge gap, and given the UK polling covered much more specific proposals, one wonders how that would go if you started asking detailed questions.

The Horseshoe Effect

Wikipedia:

The horseshoe theory in political science asserts that rather than the far left and the far right being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear political continuum, they in fact closely resemble one another, much like the ends of a horseshoe. The theory is attributed to French writer Jean-Pierre Faye.^[1]

A mostly reasonable piece in the NYT on the subject of abortion contains this passage:

In his 2007 Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy specifically mentioned the “unexceptionable” likelihood that a woman might come to regret her choice. That women need to be protected from decisions they might feel bad about later — not that there was any evidence supporting this notion — is now a legal precedent.

Yes. The notion that women might not be capable of delivering meaningful consent — where have we heard that before? Increasingly, the left and right mirror each other's arguments, albeit on different terrain.

Dear @FDRLST, Please Stop With The Lazy Abortion Articles

I can't even remember when I saw an article at The Federalist on the topic of abortion that wasn't tendentious and stupid. Today's from Charles C. Camosy tries pulling the rabbit of suppressing abortion out of the hat of gay marriage:

In offering his opinion on same-sex marriage last week, not only did Justice Kennedy invoke human dignity as the central idea behind legalizing such marriages in all 50 states, it was celebrated all over the Internet as the most beautiful part of his argument.

But some pro-life analysis of his opinion has been hopeful—not only because Kennedy (also the swing vote on abortion cases) refused to tie his opinion about legal same-sex marriage to abortion law—but also because of his insistence that the Fourteenth Amendment covers injustices that were previously unseen and must be corrected by the court. Pro-lifers hope Kennedy will see U.S. abortion practices (which involve, among other things, frequent killing of a fetus simply because she has Down syndrome) as yet another example of precisely this kind of hidden injustice.

Leaving aside the notion that it's any of his damned business whether a woman who can't keep a child should be forced at gunpoint to bear it long before the fetus is capable of surviving outside the womb, this is a point that barely has traction; the words "human dignity" aren't a get-out-of-jail-free card for abortion opponents. His hope for change in some wise rests on political winds shifting:

Want to get in step with a fast-changing modern American when it comes to abortion? Then you had better get okay with increased legal protections for prenatal children. Literally hundreds of bills limiting abortion have been passed in dozens of states in just the past few years, with hundreds more on the way this year. (One of the few state laws attempting to expand abortion rights was defeated—in a movement lead by a pro-life Democrat—in the liberal state of New York.) In addition, the future of abortion policy in the United States belongs to Millennials and Hispanics, who are increasingly skeptical of abortion. More than half are intensely skeptical.

But here, Camosy fails to parse the fine print of his supposedly buttressing evidence. From the USA Today article he links to:

Hardly. The Public Religion Research Institute conducted a very interesting 2011 poll. It found, especially among young people, significant majorities saying "pro-choice" described them somewhat or very well, while simultaneously claiming that "pro-life" described them somewhat or very well. Our lazy choice/life binary — which assumes that a complex issue such as abortion has only two possible answers — simply doesn't apply to our demographic future.

It's puzzling that Camosy would try to claim that "skeptical of abortion" implies greater public disapproval; isn't it possible that "I wouldn't get one but wouldn't prevent someone who wants one from getting one" is a possibility, too?