Following the well-fought and well-earned victories by pro-choice forces — again — in the latest election rounds, the body politic has been greeted, or burdened, with more than the usual number of political post-election punditry trying to make sense of it all. Or trying to avoid making sense by dismissing abortion as (pick one or more) bad for Joe Biden / irrelevant to Joe Biden / a Democratic fluke / a Republican miscue / invent your own because I’m tired of repeating them. Taggan Goddard of Political Wire is one of those who has no trouble making sense:
There’s No Way for Republicans to Win on Abortion
For more than 40 years, the GOP pushed to elect politicians who would appoint and confirm judges who would ultimately repeal Roe v. Wade.
But once they finally succeeded on June 23, 2022, it’s been an electoral albatross.
They’ve lost elections they should have won and Democrats have outperformed in nearly every state and district — especially when abortion rights are at the forefront of the campaign.
However (and it was a short article, so I won’t fault him for this), Goddard did not bring the reason why Republicans can’t escape the albatross: the religious extremists who own the GOP won’t let them, regardless of whether it’s killing them politically.
Here is the irony: While the Catholic Church (the hierarchy, anyway) immediately moved to reject abortion rights after Roe v. Wade, evangelical Protestants at first were much less concerned.
“There is no official Southern Baptist position on abortion, or any other such question,” Barry Garrett, head of the Washington bureau of Baptist Press, wrote in a news analysis dated Jan. 31, 1973 [in response to Roe]. “Among 12 million Southern Baptists, there are probably 12 million different opinions.” Southern Baptist Convention’s abortion stance moving toward birth control issues (2014)
What changed their minds was a totally different legal problem that came up around 1978: The IRS notified Bob Jones University that it was taking away its tax-exempt status because of its racial segregation policies. Evangelical and fundamentalist leaders were incensed at what they saw as “government interference” and vowed to build up their political power in order to get the government to back off. But they also recognized that wouldn’t attract voters by opening defending racial segregation. (This was 1978, remember; today it might work.) Casting around for other issues they could build on, they landed on abortion.* (Two caveats to this summary: Fundamentalists and other evangelicals were seeking political power all along, but the Bob Jones case gave them a huge incentive. Two, I don’t mean to imply that these people weren’t perturbed by the Roe decision, just that hadn’t come to a theological stand on abortion yet.)
So here we have a group of religious right-wingers incensed at government interference in their schools’ racial policies working to remove that interference by calling for government interference in a woman’s personal health and well-being. But now we have a further irony: Having gotten power because of abortion, the religious extremists and their GOP co-conspirators are now in danger of losing power because of abortion.
And the GOP can’t get out of this trap because their religious masters won’t let them.
Ever since these religious right-wingers decided to use abortion as a path to power, they have become more dogmatic about what they mean by abortion, even when it hinders that path. In the beginning, they made noises about exceptions for rape and incest, about protection the health as well as the life of the mother. But the logic of abortion theology has pushed them (in some cases perhaps reluctantly) into an absolutist position: Life begins at the moment of conception, and because all life is sacred, no abortion can ever be allowed (except perhaps to save the mother’s life).
This kind of absolutism is anathema to the realities of politics, where success requires compromise. Reality also requires an acknowledgment that sometimes one’s position was wrong.
Abortion opponents are unwilling or unable to do that; the theological structure that they built for political purposes won’t let them. Nor will let them allow realistic Republicans to salvage anything from their recurring debacles. Here’s a story from Ohio today, 3 days after Ohio voters told their government in no uncertain terms to stay out of women’s uteruses:
Ohio GOP lawmakers propose stripping judges of power to interpret abortion rights, Issue 1
"To prevent mischief [sic!] by pro-abortion courts with Issue 1, Ohio legislators will consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary over this ambiguous ballot initiative," according to a Thursday night news release with quotes from four GOP House representatives. "The Ohio legislature alone will consider what, if any, modifications to make to existing laws based on public hearings and input from legal experts on both sides."
(To his credit, the Ohio governor isn’t going along with any such idea: Gov. DeWine on abortion rights vote: 'We accept the results of elections'. If he runs for re-election, he may well be primaried over this.)
It is increasingly clear that a large majority of voters in this country accepts the reality that abortions are sometimes necessary, that whether life begins at conception is an unresolved and really irrelevant issue, that the complexities of conception and pregnancy require realistic compromise. But even those Republican leaders who legitimately understand this will not be permitted to take political steps in this direction, because it has become a theological absolute for those whose votes they need to stay in power.
We are, and rightly so, extremely worried about the rise of Christian Nationalism in this country, about how religious extremists see democracy only as an obstacle to their “free” exercise of religion. But this can be a hard sell to the electorate, even today. A much easier sell is to show the electorate, which has made clear its will that abortion remain protected, how religious extremists are using the GOP to subvert that will. Since their religion will not permit the Republicans to make political compromises, the solution is to vote the Republicans out of power.
Republicans are now in danger of losing power because they are religiously required to oppose abortion and to subvert the will of the people on abortion. Let’s now use that religious tie to bind up the Republicans and toss them out of office.
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*For details, see Randall Ballmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right (2021), particularly his interviews with Paul Weyrich, the chief architect of the early anti-abortion strategy.