The American anti-abortion lobby is what it is, not what you wish it was

Before Roe was overruled, a good way to get your Savvy card was to claim that anti-abortion Republicans didn’t really Mean It. After Dobbs, this became a harder lift, so the argument shifted toward dreaming that Republicans would pivot from coercive patriarchy to social democracy, despite the overwhelming evidence that this was not going to happen. And, apparently, we’re doing this again:

The traditional pro-life movement is in a moment of profound marginalization within the Republican Party. It will be interesting to see whether family policy—emphasizing the pro-life side, rather than the anti-abortion side—will be the new focus of the movement.— Emma Green (@emmaogreen) November 11, 2024

Profound marginalization? Every Republican trifecta outside of New England has banned abortion where their state constitution permits it, including essentially total bans on abortion in two of the three largest states in the country. Neither of these states have even accepted the Medicaid expansion. Trump will pack the federal judiciary with anti-abortion fanatics and staff the executive branch with anti-abortion fanatics. Trump’s “moderation” on the issue is completely phony.

It is true that Republican congressional majorities are probably too narrow to pass a national abortion ban. But Green downplays the various proposals contained in Project 2025 to restrict access to abortion without congressional action. Check out this pivot:

Although Roberts said that there is a “zero-per-cent chance” of a federal abortion ban passing under the upcoming Trump Administration, Project 2025 contains all sorts of proposals to limit access to abortion through executive orders and administrative rule-making—for example, calling on the F.D.A. to reverse its approval for abortion pills. Several of its recommendations appear to undercut the message of the pro-family right, such as a proposal to eliminate Head Start, a long-standing grant program that offers child care to low-income families, on the ground that it is “fraught with scandal and abuse.” Melissa Boteach, a vice-president at the National Women’s Law Center, told me, “Gutting that means that hundreds of thousands of children lose access to high-quality early education.”

But it’s also possible to see Project 2025 as a reframing of the conservative movement, in which every policy is considered through the lens of whether it supports traditional families.

I’m not really sure how this is a “reframing” — Republican rhetoric has long been focus on preserving traditional families. More to the point, this is not actually inconsistent with doing everything politically possible to restrict abortion.

Throughout this long article, we keep repeating the Arrested Development meme, where either the author or an interviewee concede that attempts to shift focus on coercion to a focus on expanded family benefits within the Republican Party has never worked, and then some pure handwaving to hope that it will really happen this time:

Yuval Levin, the A.E.I. scholar, told me, “I’ve been trying to make family-policy moments happen for the past twenty years. There’s always a sense that we’re in one, and then not much gets done, and it turned out we weren’t.” For all the enthusiasm about the realignment, Levin thinks that social conservatives are weaker now than they were in 2016—in part because of overreach. “The I.V.F. debate has been really terrifying to a lot of Republican politicians, and could easily cause them to be afraid of touching the stove on family policy,” he said.

And yet Levin sees family policy as the almost inevitable conclusion of the pro-life movement’s time in the political wilderness. Pro-life groups are realizing that they need to help people imagine a world without abortion. “In that sense, it’s not simply electoral—it’s much more cultural,” he said. “They have to show that, in saying they want a world where children are welcome and parents are valued, they have to mean it.”

You are what your record says you are. Words are cheap. People who want to force women to carry pregnancies to term are one of the most powerful factions in the GOP, while Republicans who want to make non-token efforts to expand the welfare state would need to increase their influence to rise to the level of being “marginalized.” Look at what Republicans do when they’re in charge of the government. Look at how state officials in anti-abortion states actually act:

Attorney for Idaho says (just before several women testify about their lives and health being threatened by denied abortions): “Plaintiffs have no evidence of concrete facts. They are relying on hypotheticals and speculation as to what might happen to other people.”— Alice Miranda Ollstein (@AliceOllstein) November 12, 2024

The state's attorney is continuously interrupting and objecting during the first patient's testimony about being diagnosed with a lethal fetal anomaly and being denied an abortion. He calls her account of what her doctor told her "hearsay" and "not relevant" to the case.— Alice Miranda Ollstein (@AliceOllstein) November 12, 2024

I dunno, I personally think they Mean It. It’s also worth noting that threatening doctors with arrest for performing medical procedures is not compatible with providing secure access to maternal care. It’s not that Republicans don’t understand the tradeoff; they’ve made their choice. You can support it or oppose it, but hoping for a different, third thing to emerge at this late date is just sad, and incidentally is exactly the kind of credulous coverage Trump is counting on when he lies about being a moderate while his administration and its allies pursue radical restrictions on reproductive autonomy.