Once again, Nikki Haley is the only Republican with a winning abortion message
Tiana Lowe Doescher
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On Tuesday night, the ruby red dominion of Ohio became the seventh state in a row to codify abortion access in local law. In the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the abortion issue back to the states, voters have made clear that however opposed they are, in theory, to unfettered abortion, they do not trust pro-life Republicans with one iota of control over the issue, turning the previously dormant matter into a political winner for Democrats.
During the third Republican presidential debate, Nikki Haley seemed to be the only candidate to get the memo. The abortion answer from the former Ambassador to the United Nations is worth reading in its entirety:
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This is a personal issue for every woman and every man. I am unapologetically pro-life, not because the Republican Party tells me to be, but because my husband Michael was adopted and I had trouble having both of my children, and I am surrounded by blessings. Having said that, when you look post-Roe, a wrong was made right. They took it out of the hands of unelected justices and put it in the hands of the people, and now we’re seeing states vote. As much as I am pro-life, I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice, and I don’t want them to judge me for being pro-life. When we’re looking at this, there are some states going more on the pro-life side. I welcome that. There are some states that are going more on the pro-choice side. I wish that wasn’t the case, but the people decided. But when it comes to the federal law, which is what’s being debated here, be honest: it’s going to take 60 Senate votes, the majority of the House, and a president to sign it. We haven’t had 60 Senate votes in over a hundred years. We might have 45 pro-life senators, so no Republican president can ban abortions any more than a Democratic president can ban these state laws. So let’s find consensus. Let’s agree on how we can ban late term abortions. Let’s make sure we encourage adoptions and good quality adoptions. Let’s make sure we make contraception accessible. Let’s make sure that none of these state laws put a woman in jail or give her the death penalty for getting an abortion. Let’s focus on how to save as many babies as we can and support as many moms as we can. And stop the judgment: we don’t need to divide America over this issue any more.
Haley’s message is crucial not just because it is honest about the procedural realities rendering Republican dreams of a federal ban next to impossible. It is not even just that unlike other candidates who pay lip service to the issue, she has promoted actual policies to reduce the demand for abortion, such as pushing the FDA to move more contraception formulas to over-the-counter status. What Haley does here that nobody else will is try to establish trust and common cause in the abortion debate.
Critics of Haley have asked why she repeatedly asserts that women who obtain abortions must be exempt from punishments ensuing from state abortion restrictions. Well, if a year of solid election losses for pro-life measures is any indication, Haley is correct to do so because voters (and disproportionately women and independents that the GOP sorely need) believe that Republicans will take abortion restrictions to their most extreme mileage if given a single inch by the electorate. This distrust of pro-life mouthpieces explains the gap between polling that indicates the median voter is theoretically in favor of a 15-week abortion ban (one more permissive than most of Europe’s) and the blistering beat down of pro-life measures in practice at the polls.
A major reason for this distrust? Pro-life talking heads, who often say in one breath that they only want a limited abortion ban because they want to protect the unborn but then in the next breath are in hysterics over women’s sexual “body counts” or dog whistling that the nation would be better off with single-earner households, which women understand is a call for them to get back and barefoot in the kitchen.
Haley’s abortion messaging is not a panacea, but it is a start and an honest invitation for the dejected center to join the conversation. And that’s a hell of a lot more than what anyone else in the party has offered as of yet.