Stop Changing the Subject

Alito's draft opinion is about abortion. How come nobody wants to talk about abortion?

For a country that is roiled by a decades long debate about abortion, we sure don’t like to talk about abortion. The leak of Justice Alito’s putative majority opinion in the Dobbs case, a blockbuster which will overturn Roe and Casey and send abortion back to the state legislatures, should have occasioned a national discussion on the issue. Instead, we got… something else entirely.

Let’s start with the side I that I think is at least being rational about this. This should be a time for crowing and celebration by pro-life Republicans, but instead they are talking about the unprecedented Supreme Court leak and not the substance of the decision. Indeed, one Republican leader was specifically asked about the substance and immediately changed the subject to the leak. This is not surprising. Roe polls well. Even many Americans who identify as “pro-life” nonetheless support some sort of legal right to abortion; they might want to see less abortion, but they don’t want it to be illegal. Thus, Dobbs presents a political conundrum for the GOP; on the one hand, their most faithful constituency will be demanding their payoff in the form of extremely restrictive abortion laws; on the other hand, especially in swing states and districts, the last thing the Republicans want to talk about is banning abortion.

So it’s understandable that given the opportunity to talk about the leak instead, that’s what Republicans will do. It’s classic political subject-changing, moving the argument onto a more favorable ground. I’m not sure it’s that effective- as David Weigel pointed out on Twitter, most Americans are pretty cool with leaks and like journalistic scoops and information. But it’s at least something to talk about that isn’t restrictions on abortion.

The Democrats, however, I really do not understand. This is a gift from God. The Dobbs opinion will instantly shift the debate from various restrictions on abortion, such as 15 week limits and “partial birth” and parental consent and hospital admitting requirements nobody understands, to abortion bans that are enormously unpopular. The Democrats should love this. They can remind everyone why they supported Roe, even if they have moral qualms about abortion. Abortion, they can point out, is the backstop to many civil liberties and privileges. It makes it possible to go to college, to work, to plan one’s family, and to have a sex life. It is there, in the background, if a mistake is made. It ensures that one drunken night, or even a sexual assault, doesn’t ruin a woman’s life. Yes, people have moral objections to abortion, and we understand and respect that. But making it illegal will pull the rug out from all the progress we have made on equality.

Only- the Democrats don’t want to talk about abortion either! Now, part of this, to be sure, is coalitional. In the Democratic Party coalition are some people who have what you might call a sort of unrefined, gleeful support of abortion. “I had 3 abortions and I’m proud of it” is not really good messaging to suburban parents or relatively devout Catholic liberals. Bill Clinton finessed this by saying abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare”. But the more lefty members of the coalition eventually got the “rare” pulled out of the phrasing. It needs to be put back, and like on a lot of things, the part of the Democratic Party that is obsessed with language and imposing linguistic changes needs to back off a bit and let the Party win some elections.

But coalition issues are, I’m convinced, not the only reason Democrats don’t talk about abortion. They haven’t talked about it for 49 years. They use euphemisms, like “choice” and “women’s health care” (now shortened to “health care” because some activists hate the term “women” coming anywhere near any issue involving sex or reproduction) and “reproductive rights”. As a result, what should have been a winning issue for Democrats for years, and an issue that could even pull some suburban Republican women and even some pro-lifers who don’t want to see abortion made illegal, has been missing in action. And, of course, that is one reason that Republicans’ singular focus on overturning Roe has worked; Democrats were afraid to just say “abortion should be legal as a last resort and Republicans want to make it illegal and unavailable and force every woman who gets pregnant to bear the child”. Democrats avoided the issue.

And in that regard, the reaction of online liberalism to the Dobbs leak, for lack of a better locution, ticks me off. Once again, the messaging on this is absolutely simple. Justice Alito’s opinion, if it becomes law, will result in millions of women being shut off from access to abortion. They will be forced to carry children to term and their lives will be harmed as a result. Victims of sexual assault and domestic violence will be forced to carry the children fathered by their attackers to term. Teenagers will be forced to drop out of school. Parents will be prohibited from aborting even fetuses with debilitating developmental problems. It’s a dystopian nightmare, and the messaging is easy. Legal abortion is the backstop, the failsafe, that allows us to live our lives as free and equal citizens.

Instead, what is everyone talking about? Contraception. Gay marriage. Sodomy laws. Interracial marriage. All things the Republicans are supposedly going to go after. Never mind that Republicans aren’t running on these issues, aren’t trying to change laws, and aren’t filing cases. Never mind that Alito specifically distinguishes all these things in his opinion. Never mind that there are extremely strong arguments against extending Dobbs to those areas. Never mind that there aren’t 5 votes on the Supreme Court to do it. Never mind that public opinion massively (by 70 or more points in some cases!) favors the liberal position on all these issues, and that even many conservatives agree with liberals on them (making these issues wedges that would divide rather than unify the conservative coalition; political parties don’t raise wedge issues against themselves).

Why are we talking about these things? Obviously part of this is that Democrats have convinced themselves of an absolute caricature of Republicans, where they all have the beliefs about sex and marriage that the Duggar family does. News flash: the fact that the pro-life Republicans who live down the street from you have 2 kids is a good indicator that they use contraception just like you do. This has gotten worse in the age of social media- social media encourages what Kevin Drum used to call “nutpicking”, where you identify the absolute most extreme position taken on the other side and assign that position to the entire movement.

In point of fact, Republicans are a coalition full of diverse views just like the Democrats are. Yes, people who have integralist Catholic views about birth control, abortion, and homosexuality are probably Republicans. (It’s worth noting that even integralist Catholics don’t oppose interracial marriage.) But to actually move a political party in a particular direction, you need numbers. The same reason why no Democratic Party presidential nominee has promised to pass single payer is the reason why the Republican Party is not going to adopt the Catholic integralist position, combined with the 1960’s Southern Baptist position on interracial marriage, as its platform or pass legislation or bring court cases to try and bring it about.

I think something else is going on as well though, even beyond just the social media driven nutpicking. I think people, even in 2022, are afraid to talk about sex. I think they see it as politically harmful, and I think the US as a country just has a lot of residual puritanism and prudery from our past. Talking about abortion requires that we admit that in fact Americans have sex, and that some of that sex is unprotected. It requires we admit that having a sex life is normal, and healthy, and that we can’t impose celibacy on any unmarried woman or any woman who wants a career. Changing the subject to contraception is a classic affectation of what feminists call the “Madonna-whore dichotomy”, where there are virtuous women and unvirtuous women, and only the virtuous women are entitled to the protection of the law and society. Contraception, you see, is what good people do- it involves planning, and responsibility, and foresight. So even Democrats are more comfortable talking about it, even if they have to make up a non-existent Republican threat to Griswold v. Connecticut, than talking about abortion. This discomfort has existed ever since Roe, and it still exists now.

But we are entering a period where a lot of women aren’t going to be able to get abortions that they should be entitled to get and which they need to get to live their lives. We have to talk about this. It plays into Republican hands not to talk about it. Stop changing the subject.