Nikki Haley gives the abortion speech every Republican must hear
Tiana Lowe
Video Embed
A politician does not have to be a woman in order to opine on the abortion issue, but it’s probably not a coincidence that it was the first woman to enter the Republican presidential primary who gave the most profound pro-life speech since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Nikki Haley delivered the speech that ought to be the defining one for the entire right aisle of the issue, and every pro-life politician wishing to actually do something other than fundraise off of the matter ought to take note.
UNDER BIDEN, AMERICANS DEPEND ON OTHER COUNTRIES FOR SAFETY
The speech by the former ambassador to the United Nations, delivered to the Susan B. Anthony List, ought to be read or listened to in its entirety, but the crux of her argument goes as follows:
You don’t save any lives if you can’t enact your position into law. And you can’t do that unless you find consensus. Reaching consensus starts with humanizing, not demonizing. Just like I have my story, I respect everyone who has their story. I don’t judge someone who is pro-choice any more than I want them to judge me for being pro-life. Today, each state is finding its own consensus, as they should. Nationally, however, the task is much harder. As a practical matter, you only achieve consensus when you have a House majority, a 60-vote Senate majority, and a president who are all in alignment. We are nowhere close to reaching that point. Today, there are around 45 pro-life senators, depending on how you count them. There haven’t been 60 Republican senators since 1910. It could happen one day. But it hasn’t happened in over a hundred years, and it’s unlikely to happen soon…. But that does not mean we can’t save as many lives as possible. I do believe there is a federal role on abortion. Whether we can save more lives nationally depends entirely on doing what no one has done to date – finding consensus. That’s what I will strive to do. In fact, I believe common ground already exists. There is broad public agreement that babies born during a failed abortion deserve to live. They need medical care and the full protection of the law, just like every other baby. There is broad public agreement that we should never pressure moms into having an abortion. They should get support to carry their baby to term. They should be able to get information from pregnancy resource centers – and especially about adoption. We must do better when it comes to adoption, to make it easier for adoptive parents, and to avoid children growing up in a government system with too little love. We can broadly agree that pro-life doctors and nurses should never be forced to violate their beliefs. The right of conscience matters just as much as the right to life. Surely, we can all agree that abortion up until the time of birth is a bridge too far. Only seven countries on earth allow elective late-term abortions. We’re talking brutal regimes like Communist China and North Korea. We should be able to agree that contraception should be more available, not less. And we can all agree that women who get abortions should not be jailed. A few have even called for the death penalty. That’s the least pro-life position I can possibly imagine. Those are just some areas where national consensus is already within reach. There are others too, and we should do the hard work to find them through heartfelt dialogue.
The issues Haley hits are exactly correct and, beyond being points of broad consensus, also crucially avoid the constitutional question of whether politicians of either side have the legal right to legislate abortion on a federal level. Protecting infants born alive during a Kermit Gosnell-style abortion is an obvious and popular proposition that regulates the rights of a fetus outside of a woman’s body, not the woman’s rights before the fact. Adoption and contraception deregulation are crucial, actionable, and overdue proposals that would drastically ameliorate the demand for abortion without even touching legal barriers to supply.
The rest of Haley’s speech rhymes with the thesis above. As a mother herself, she does not shy away from the physical toll of gestating a separate human being, and hearkening back to her widely lauded decision as South Carolina governor to take down the Confederate flag, Haley sells herself as the woman capable of using diplomacy to turn consensus into action.
Republicans must not and should not fear adhering to pro-life principles, but they have to take the conversation seriously. Extreme appeals may generate donations and tweets, but actually getting legislation done requires a respect for the severity of the matter, patience to find common ground, and the quiet fortitude to get a law across the finish line. In this case, men really should listen to the one woman in the arena willing to explain how to win what could otherwise prove the GOP’s greatest liability in the 2024 election.