To all the conservative folks in the comment thread disagreeing with the analysis, I want you to imagine this. Imagine SCOTUS is 6-3 blues, and they issue a gun control ruling that overturns not only Bruen, but also Heller, and opens the door to banning all private gun ownership at the federal level because of some tortured interpretations of the word "militia." Imagine how many conservatives would vote in the following midterm. There would be lines out the door, down the street, around the corner. Conservatives would be mailing in absentee ballots for their dead relatives, their cats, and their dogs. It would be massive.
That's what abortion is to the blue tribe. It's that important to them.
I've seen this in action. My stepdaughter was pretty solidly conservative on most matters. Somewhere along the way - ironically after she had a couple of kids - abortion became an important issue to her. In time it warped her entire worldview. The reason for this is the harshest elements of the pro-life movement freaked her out. (Also. she gets all of her "news" from NPR). She now doesn't trust them and can't see any reason to regain that trust. This brings me to one small quibble with your last paragraph. It wasn't merely Red SCOTUS that prevented a red wave, it was the reactions of the various state legislatures to pass bans that were far more restrictive than most people seem to want. Making matters worse, Linseed Graham introducing a bill that would have banned nearly all abortions nationwide while simultaneously being doomed due to lack of support from the beginning. It's not every day that a politician can show both extremism and epic cluelessness in the same action.
You mentioned the Kansas abortion vote. For those who don't know, that vote wouldn't have banned abortion but rather would have allowed the legislature to do so. I live in Kansas. While I am pro-life, I voted against the amendment because I believe that, as a practical matter, banning abortion completely would be disastrous policy. Basically, I didn't trust the legislature to not go too far.
The gun rights/Dobbs analogy hinges on the same innate human libertarian source of irritation, 'leave me alone, stop telling me how to live, my morality is correct'.
If, now saved in their own state, does the 2022 pro-choice voter stay in the fight going forward, forever campaigning to make National law?
I'm not going to say abortion had nothing to do with what happened on Tuesday, but it was not the reason Republicans had a bad night. You seem to be ignoring the orange-hued elephant in the room.
Trump and his endorsed candidates are losing in almost every close race across the country in swing states. In race after race more electable Republicans were shoved aside for weak, untested, or unelectable candidates who's only required qualification was to bend the knee to the stolen election lie and pledge fealty to Trump.
Don Bolduc in New Hampshire gets destroyed while Chris Sununu easily wins re-election for Governor. Sununu was being courted to run for Senate but refused to put up with Trump's meddling.
Pat Toomey refused to run for re-election to the Senate in PA because of Trump where he would have easily won, but instead we get Trump backed Mehmet Oz and lunatic fringe Mastriano who promised that if elected, he would certify Trump the winner of PA in 2024 no matter how the state voted.
Doug Ducey in Arizona would be the next Senator but instead we get Blake Masters who cannot catch Kelly now, and Kari Lake looks like she will lose to an incredibly lackluster Democrat for Governor.
Let's see how Trump backed candidates compared to Governor candidates in states with strict abortion laws:
Ohio - Gov. Mike DeWine signs 6 week abortion ban - DeWine wins easily with 62% of the vote while J.D. Vance struggled.
Georgia - Brian Kemp signs six week abortion ban - Kemp wins easily while Herschel Walker is now in a runoff.
TX - Greg Abbott signs a six week abortion ban - Abbott wins easily.
Of course Democrats ran on abortion because it was one of the only things they could talk about. Every other issue was political poison for them except the biggest one, and that was Trump.
Democrats meddled in numerous primary elections all across the country and in each case they worked to support the Trumpiest candidate in the race, knowing that it would help fire up Democrats and turn independents against the Republican candidate.
In every....single...race where the Democrats meddled in the Republican primary, the Democrat won the election on Tuesday. Those races were not about abortion. They were all...about...Trump.
The independent voters sent Republicans a message in Tuesday that was loud and clear:
"We don't like the Democrats, but we are not ready to give you back power as long as you are beholden to Trump and his stolen election, storm the Capitol BS."
If Republicans want to win again, they need to dump Trump.
Bingo. Trump is toxic and now the red tribe is faced with a bleak 2024. They have to either hitch their cart to his horse, in which case he will run them over the cliff and get them slaughtered, or purge his cult from the party, opening themselves up to getting H Ross Perot'd in 2024 and still getting slaughtered, but at least having something left over to build on afterwards.
The 2022 midterm elections were the first time Americans at large had an opportunity to vote after witnessing Trump’s attempted coup on January 6th. Trump and the rule of law—not abortion—was the elephant in the voting booth.
Sure, Progressive activists and their media sycophants spun abortion as the major factor. And in the handful of states where referendums were on the ballot, they were able to demagogue the issue to victory.
If abortion was really such a big deal, Stacey Abrams, Beto O’Rouke, Charlie Crist and Nan Whaley would all be governors-elect. This analysis is completely wrong.
This is belated but I'm only reading this now so will comment. Your point is good; and a lot of these candidates are just lackluster.
Blake Masters seemed fake. He came out of nowhere, had the right takes but then flip-flopped on the abortion question when realizing it might be unpopular, evidencing a lack of integrity.
Mehmet Oz as candidate is so out of left field and made so little sense, and has so little intuitive affinity with Pennsylvania, it's surprising he was the candidate at all.
I became convinced as well that this is true. I live in a very blue state where it's effectively one-party vote and so it doesn't matter but it's also true that I take the "left wing" protections on things like abortion, contraception, tenant protections, and the like.
One of the commenters here tells about a conservative woman with children who voted on the abortion issue. I kind of get it. You might in your head disapprove of convenience abortions and lack of planning, etc. but you kind of want to know that if Gd for bid one of those edge cases (rape, incest, mother's life, severe birth defects) happen to *you* or someone in your family, you've got the fallback and not SOL.
Tangentially, when the opinions on abortion are from men, particularly younger and unmarried, they often seem a bit out of touch and kind of facile, without even any due given to the ravages that even regular pregnancy, especially repeat pregnancy, has on one's body, and how much can go wrong, which when you add it up across all the things and many children (and especially if you do some fun statistics like in your flood/bloody revolution analysis) is not that negligible. If you don't feel like the politicians, often men, of "your tribe" will protect their OWN women even in situations where they have a legitimate need....it's harder to trust and vote for that.
Also in general, there are certain things that Republicans, or conservatives, which I know aren't 100% overlapping, do which not only sabotage them, but are also either not important or bad policy. Like supporting bad businesses, or corporate interests even when it's patently bad. (Need to look around for examples.)
I have no love for Republicans, and I think that the US system is doomed by FPTP game theory to be perpetually ruled by lesser evils competing to be the greater evil.
Good assessment. I said early on, Repubs are clueless on strategy, reflexively salivating after Dobbs to put a boot on neck.
It's also true they could have hammered woke, trans and covid authoritarianism. Instead they came of looking like they don't care about anything but using the government as a really big stick on abortion, crime and immigration, while offering not one tangible plan to do anything about inflation.
I very much agree. I wasn't paying as much attention as I could have on the various campaign promises, but what I did hear was very abortion centric from the D's and rather "We aren't those guys!" from the R's. The best I can figure is that R' strategists just can't come up with a list of things they would do if given power and promise to do them. One long rant about "We wouldn't do the same bad things!" doesn't carry much weight if you don't say what you will actually do.
In Minnesota on FOX there ran a relentless commercial implying Scott Jensen running for gov would outlaw all abortion with no set-asides. It was more effective in a general sense than relentless FOX programming on how disastrous Dems were on inflation, crime and immigration. I sometimes wondered if I was watching takedowns of the Carter Administration.
Ugh, yea, Pandora seems to believe I still live in MN, and all the ads I have been getting for the past few months are "As a doctor, I like to think that Minnesota is better than other states, but extreme republicans can ban abortion... Scott Jensen is too extreme for Minnesota" If the goal was to be so annoying I would pony up for a year's subscription, it nearly worked.
What it says about the R's inability to say "Look, here's what we want to do with abortion (15 weeks)," as well as the D's ability to understand crime and inflation (particularly in Minneapolis/St Paul after 2020) doesn't suggest much good.
I sold my house of 16 years and my food forest and greenhouse in Minneapolis about 6 seconds before the market collapsed, going rural. I worked for the Park Board and saw the descent and the willful ignorance first hand.
Republicans should have followed Dobbs up with laws like Florida. The problem is many Republican political hacks had been using abortion as a tool to gain votes/money on a issue they really didn't care about and were merely using. They couldn't flip the switch.
The Kansas election right after Dobbs made it clear that abortion was a huge driver for unmarried women. And unmarried women are a huge part of the country and also want Daddy Government to bail them out of their bad choices.
Republicans need to abandon any efforts at a 100% ban and move to 15 weeks ASAP, to save themselves.
And then abortion be a non issue except for extremists on both sides.
I live in a purple state that has abortion enshrined already in the state constitution. No one is changing that any time soon. Even so, we had non stop abortion ads.
The Democrats were not talking about how big abortion was before the elections but they were using it like crazy.
Abortion in and of itself isn't the only issue, (although it is very important, being a life-changing law.) Bans symbolize the apparent reality that right wing christian nationalists want to take over and deprive people of the right to make private choices.
There were several factors, but the abortion one was obviously underrated in the lead-in.
It absolutely motivated single women (a fairly unreliable bloc, traditionally) to vote in unheard of numbers.
Was Trumpism, and GOP abandonment of poor candidates a factor? Sure.
The frustrating part is how it didn't need to go this way. The moment Dobbs passed, Republicans could have pushed for a compromise, protecting first trimester abortions (Something with widespread general support) and that would have taken all the energy out of the left's abortion push. They didn't, and this is the result.
They probably felt the pro-life base would have stayed home. And they may very well have been right.
Pro-Life conservatives have to start understanding that the majority of the U.S. does not and never will support a complete ban. This fantasy of the U.S. "coming to God" is damaging to their efforts to limit the more extreme pro-abortion positions.
The Dems will continue to blunt any possible future red waves until the GOP accepts the hit, passes a 15-week law, and puts the issue to bed.
Most people want 2020-2021 in their rear view mirrors and a return to normalcy. I think almost every independent voter and many Republicans are sick and tired of Trump and the 2020 election. We just don’t want to hear about it anymore. Going full retard on abortion does not help either. Most single young women are brainwashed by TikTok (China).
Folk who didn’t vote because of The Donald, election denials, bad candidates don’t turn up in exit polls. But I agree that abortion really mattered. The Florida Republicans took the issue off the table and voting for DeSantis was the most powerful way to vote against The Donald.
My sense of things is that the R's tried to sound reasoned and sane about abortion policy but were drowned out. Trump was a minor factor as R's tried to dance around that issue. But it's clear that the young women who are learning the sex thing were afraid if a baby happened they would get stuck were worried. They bought into the fear and were not adequately targeted by R messaging. Do the R's not have various consultants to guide them? Where was the RNC in advice? The RNC even has a woman who ought to understand the issue and ways to defuse it.
OTOH, '24 won't have that wedge to clutter. And it seems many R's are rejecting Trump as well. He might not be moving on but the insulting nicks have less appeal.
Yes, unmarried women being the only group to break Blue is a strong point of evidence for this.
If true, as a pro-life conservative, I think it's worth it. And, if Republicans still take the House (as they're likely to do), I think this's one of the least bad times for it to happen. Hopefully it'll also help destroy Trump's grip on the party.
Spot on analysis. Now, if only more power brokers in the GOP would start reading your substack, maybe they could stop helping the Dems win elections... At least Florida is getting it done.
Even with the stirred up pro choice voters, when you add up all the Federal races, Republican candidates still received 8 million more votes than Dem candidates.
Not sure what that means for the future, except instead of all the watery tidal allusions which suggest a nationwide leveling effect, it was more like a Hurricane ashore in Florida that then reformed and hit NY. Or how about an acute outbreak of electoral herpes with hot spots here and there, that will die down now but come back again later.
Abortion is premeditated murder. Pledging to "enshrine" a "right" to kill unborn children in order to win elections is selling your soul.
Anyway, imagine thinking that electoral politics will be able to arrest the decline of an anarcho-tyrrannical ochlocracy constituted of a moronic public and plagued by rampant electoral fraud and unchecked illegal immigration.
Soapbox --> ballot box --> jury box --> ammo box. Keep your powder dry.
I used to carry this “black and white” view before I witnessed my wife carry three children, along with two miscarriages. It is way more gray and complicated and the 15 week line is probably a good balance. Honestly the call should be made by the women who have to carry children and practically speaking an abortion ban will just lead to coat hangers, etc. It’s just another one of those things that are immoral yet legal.
I say let women who are the types to murder their own children do so and not breed. Let those spirits be ensouled in bodies that will be born to parents who care for them. As though God somehow does not know this event would come to pass and has not planned for it. *headshake*
I swear, the lack of faith, and sheer hubris people show about an entity they explicitly claim to be unknowably superior to us, sometimes...
To all the conservative folks in the comment thread disagreeing with the analysis, I want you to imagine this. Imagine SCOTUS is 6-3 blues, and they issue a gun control ruling that overturns not only Bruen, but also Heller, and opens the door to banning all private gun ownership at the federal level because of some tortured interpretations of the word "militia." Imagine how many conservatives would vote in the following midterm. There would be lines out the door, down the street, around the corner. Conservatives would be mailing in absentee ballots for their dead relatives, their cats, and their dogs. It would be massive.
That's what abortion is to the blue tribe. It's that important to them.
I've seen this in action. My stepdaughter was pretty solidly conservative on most matters. Somewhere along the way - ironically after she had a couple of kids - abortion became an important issue to her. In time it warped her entire worldview. The reason for this is the harshest elements of the pro-life movement freaked her out. (Also. she gets all of her "news" from NPR). She now doesn't trust them and can't see any reason to regain that trust. This brings me to one small quibble with your last paragraph. It wasn't merely Red SCOTUS that prevented a red wave, it was the reactions of the various state legislatures to pass bans that were far more restrictive than most people seem to want. Making matters worse, Linseed Graham introducing a bill that would have banned nearly all abortions nationwide while simultaneously being doomed due to lack of support from the beginning. It's not every day that a politician can show both extremism and epic cluelessness in the same action.
You mentioned the Kansas abortion vote. For those who don't know, that vote wouldn't have banned abortion but rather would have allowed the legislature to do so. I live in Kansas. While I am pro-life, I voted against the amendment because I believe that, as a practical matter, banning abortion completely would be disastrous policy. Basically, I didn't trust the legislature to not go too far.
Doesn't disprove Mick's treatise.
The gun rights/Dobbs analogy hinges on the same innate human libertarian source of irritation, 'leave me alone, stop telling me how to live, my morality is correct'.
If, now saved in their own state, does the 2022 pro-choice voter stay in the fight going forward, forever campaigning to make National law?
They were always pushing/going to push to make it National law. Beat them to it, and the wind is taken out of their sails.
I'm not going to say abortion had nothing to do with what happened on Tuesday, but it was not the reason Republicans had a bad night. You seem to be ignoring the orange-hued elephant in the room.
Trump and his endorsed candidates are losing in almost every close race across the country in swing states. In race after race more electable Republicans were shoved aside for weak, untested, or unelectable candidates who's only required qualification was to bend the knee to the stolen election lie and pledge fealty to Trump.
Don Bolduc in New Hampshire gets destroyed while Chris Sununu easily wins re-election for Governor. Sununu was being courted to run for Senate but refused to put up with Trump's meddling.
Pat Toomey refused to run for re-election to the Senate in PA because of Trump where he would have easily won, but instead we get Trump backed Mehmet Oz and lunatic fringe Mastriano who promised that if elected, he would certify Trump the winner of PA in 2024 no matter how the state voted.
Doug Ducey in Arizona would be the next Senator but instead we get Blake Masters who cannot catch Kelly now, and Kari Lake looks like she will lose to an incredibly lackluster Democrat for Governor.
Let's see how Trump backed candidates compared to Governor candidates in states with strict abortion laws:
Ohio - Gov. Mike DeWine signs 6 week abortion ban - DeWine wins easily with 62% of the vote while J.D. Vance struggled.
Georgia - Brian Kemp signs six week abortion ban - Kemp wins easily while Herschel Walker is now in a runoff.
TX - Greg Abbott signs a six week abortion ban - Abbott wins easily.
Of course Democrats ran on abortion because it was one of the only things they could talk about. Every other issue was political poison for them except the biggest one, and that was Trump.
Democrats meddled in numerous primary elections all across the country and in each case they worked to support the Trumpiest candidate in the race, knowing that it would help fire up Democrats and turn independents against the Republican candidate.
In every....single...race where the Democrats meddled in the Republican primary, the Democrat won the election on Tuesday. Those races were not about abortion. They were all...about...Trump.
The independent voters sent Republicans a message in Tuesday that was loud and clear:
"We don't like the Democrats, but we are not ready to give you back power as long as you are beholden to Trump and his stolen election, storm the Capitol BS."
If Republicans want to win again, they need to dump Trump.
Bingo. Trump is toxic and now the red tribe is faced with a bleak 2024. They have to either hitch their cart to his horse, in which case he will run them over the cliff and get them slaughtered, or purge his cult from the party, opening themselves up to getting H Ross Perot'd in 2024 and still getting slaughtered, but at least having something left over to build on afterwards.
Winner, winner chicken dinner!
The 2022 midterm elections were the first time Americans at large had an opportunity to vote after witnessing Trump’s attempted coup on January 6th. Trump and the rule of law—not abortion—was the elephant in the voting booth.
Sure, Progressive activists and their media sycophants spun abortion as the major factor. And in the handful of states where referendums were on the ballot, they were able to demagogue the issue to victory.
If abortion was really such a big deal, Stacey Abrams, Beto O’Rouke, Charlie Crist and Nan Whaley would all be governors-elect. This analysis is completely wrong.
I agree that this was a one-two punch. Both were major factors.
This is belated but I'm only reading this now so will comment. Your point is good; and a lot of these candidates are just lackluster.
Blake Masters seemed fake. He came out of nowhere, had the right takes but then flip-flopped on the abortion question when realizing it might be unpopular, evidencing a lack of integrity.
Mehmet Oz as candidate is so out of left field and made so little sense, and has so little intuitive affinity with Pennsylvania, it's surprising he was the candidate at all.
Abortion is too confounding a factor to say Trump was toxic. He did just fine in Florida.
I became convinced as well that this is true. I live in a very blue state where it's effectively one-party vote and so it doesn't matter but it's also true that I take the "left wing" protections on things like abortion, contraception, tenant protections, and the like.
One of the commenters here tells about a conservative woman with children who voted on the abortion issue. I kind of get it. You might in your head disapprove of convenience abortions and lack of planning, etc. but you kind of want to know that if Gd for bid one of those edge cases (rape, incest, mother's life, severe birth defects) happen to *you* or someone in your family, you've got the fallback and not SOL.
Tangentially, when the opinions on abortion are from men, particularly younger and unmarried, they often seem a bit out of touch and kind of facile, without even any due given to the ravages that even regular pregnancy, especially repeat pregnancy, has on one's body, and how much can go wrong, which when you add it up across all the things and many children (and especially if you do some fun statistics like in your flood/bloody revolution analysis) is not that negligible. If you don't feel like the politicians, often men, of "your tribe" will protect their OWN women even in situations where they have a legitimate need....it's harder to trust and vote for that.
Also in general, there are certain things that Republicans, or conservatives, which I know aren't 100% overlapping, do which not only sabotage them, but are also either not important or bad policy. Like supporting bad businesses, or corporate interests even when it's patently bad. (Need to look around for examples.)
I have no love for Republicans, and I think that the US system is doomed by FPTP game theory to be perpetually ruled by lesser evils competing to be the greater evil.
The split between married and unmarried women is a symptom of the deep rot in our country.
Good assessment. I said early on, Repubs are clueless on strategy, reflexively salivating after Dobbs to put a boot on neck.
It's also true they could have hammered woke, trans and covid authoritarianism. Instead they came of looking like they don't care about anything but using the government as a really big stick on abortion, crime and immigration, while offering not one tangible plan to do anything about inflation.
I very much agree. I wasn't paying as much attention as I could have on the various campaign promises, but what I did hear was very abortion centric from the D's and rather "We aren't those guys!" from the R's. The best I can figure is that R' strategists just can't come up with a list of things they would do if given power and promise to do them. One long rant about "We wouldn't do the same bad things!" doesn't carry much weight if you don't say what you will actually do.
In Minnesota on FOX there ran a relentless commercial implying Scott Jensen running for gov would outlaw all abortion with no set-asides. It was more effective in a general sense than relentless FOX programming on how disastrous Dems were on inflation, crime and immigration. I sometimes wondered if I was watching takedowns of the Carter Administration.
Ugh, yea, Pandora seems to believe I still live in MN, and all the ads I have been getting for the past few months are "As a doctor, I like to think that Minnesota is better than other states, but extreme republicans can ban abortion... Scott Jensen is too extreme for Minnesota" If the goal was to be so annoying I would pony up for a year's subscription, it nearly worked.
What it says about the R's inability to say "Look, here's what we want to do with abortion (15 weeks)," as well as the D's ability to understand crime and inflation (particularly in Minneapolis/St Paul after 2020) doesn't suggest much good.
I sold my house of 16 years and my food forest and greenhouse in Minneapolis about 6 seconds before the market collapsed, going rural. I worked for the Park Board and saw the descent and the willful ignorance first hand.
Republicans should have followed Dobbs up with laws like Florida. The problem is many Republican political hacks had been using abortion as a tool to gain votes/money on a issue they really didn't care about and were merely using. They couldn't flip the switch.
The Kansas election right after Dobbs made it clear that abortion was a huge driver for unmarried women. And unmarried women are a huge part of the country and also want Daddy Government to bail them out of their bad choices.
Republicans need to abandon any efforts at a 100% ban and move to 15 weeks ASAP, to save themselves.
And then abortion be a non issue except for extremists on both sides.
I live in a purple state that has abortion enshrined already in the state constitution. No one is changing that any time soon. Even so, we had non stop abortion ads.
The Democrats were not talking about how big abortion was before the elections but they were using it like crazy.
Abortion in and of itself isn't the only issue, (although it is very important, being a life-changing law.) Bans symbolize the apparent reality that right wing christian nationalists want to take over and deprive people of the right to make private choices.
There were several factors, but the abortion one was obviously underrated in the lead-in.
It absolutely motivated single women (a fairly unreliable bloc, traditionally) to vote in unheard of numbers.
Was Trumpism, and GOP abandonment of poor candidates a factor? Sure.
The frustrating part is how it didn't need to go this way. The moment Dobbs passed, Republicans could have pushed for a compromise, protecting first trimester abortions (Something with widespread general support) and that would have taken all the energy out of the left's abortion push. They didn't, and this is the result.
They probably felt the pro-life base would have stayed home. And they may very well have been right.
Pro-Life conservatives have to start understanding that the majority of the U.S. does not and never will support a complete ban. This fantasy of the U.S. "coming to God" is damaging to their efforts to limit the more extreme pro-abortion positions.
The Dems will continue to blunt any possible future red waves until the GOP accepts the hit, passes a 15-week law, and puts the issue to bed.
Most people want 2020-2021 in their rear view mirrors and a return to normalcy. I think almost every independent voter and many Republicans are sick and tired of Trump and the 2020 election. We just don’t want to hear about it anymore. Going full retard on abortion does not help either. Most single young women are brainwashed by TikTok (China).
Folk who didn’t vote because of The Donald, election denials, bad candidates don’t turn up in exit polls. But I agree that abortion really mattered. The Florida Republicans took the issue off the table and voting for DeSantis was the most powerful way to vote against The Donald.
My sense of things is that the R's tried to sound reasoned and sane about abortion policy but were drowned out. Trump was a minor factor as R's tried to dance around that issue. But it's clear that the young women who are learning the sex thing were afraid if a baby happened they would get stuck were worried. They bought into the fear and were not adequately targeted by R messaging. Do the R's not have various consultants to guide them? Where was the RNC in advice? The RNC even has a woman who ought to understand the issue and ways to defuse it.
OTOH, '24 won't have that wedge to clutter. And it seems many R's are rejecting Trump as well. He might not be moving on but the insulting nicks have less appeal.
KY split ticket.
60/40 R senator won, 5/6 R Congress.
Then shot down outright abortion ban 52/48.
Yes, unmarried women being the only group to break Blue is a strong point of evidence for this.
If true, as a pro-life conservative, I think it's worth it. And, if Republicans still take the House (as they're likely to do), I think this's one of the least bad times for it to happen. Hopefully it'll also help destroy Trump's grip on the party.
Trump's "grip" is on a large portion of the GOP base, not strictly the party. It's part of the reason the GOPe don't like him very much.
Spot on analysis. Now, if only more power brokers in the GOP would start reading your substack, maybe they could stop helping the Dems win elections... At least Florida is getting it done.
Even with the stirred up pro choice voters, when you add up all the Federal races, Republican candidates still received 8 million more votes than Dem candidates.
Not sure what that means for the future, except instead of all the watery tidal allusions which suggest a nationwide leveling effect, it was more like a Hurricane ashore in Florida that then reformed and hit NY. Or how about an acute outbreak of electoral herpes with hot spots here and there, that will die down now but come back again later.
Abortion is premeditated murder. Pledging to "enshrine" a "right" to kill unborn children in order to win elections is selling your soul.
Anyway, imagine thinking that electoral politics will be able to arrest the decline of an anarcho-tyrrannical ochlocracy constituted of a moronic public and plagued by rampant electoral fraud and unchecked illegal immigration.
Soapbox --> ballot box --> jury box --> ammo box. Keep your powder dry.
I used to carry this “black and white” view before I witnessed my wife carry three children, along with two miscarriages. It is way more gray and complicated and the 15 week line is probably a good balance. Honestly the call should be made by the women who have to carry children and practically speaking an abortion ban will just lead to coat hangers, etc. It’s just another one of those things that are immoral yet legal.
I say let women who are the types to murder their own children do so and not breed. Let those spirits be ensouled in bodies that will be born to parents who care for them. As though God somehow does not know this event would come to pass and has not planned for it. *headshake*
I swear, the lack of faith, and sheer hubris people show about an entity they explicitly claim to be unknowably superior to us, sometimes...