Abortion has been a rather critical issue for Democrats in the past couple of years.
First, it was protecting the status of Roe v. Wade against pro-lifers who were doing everything in their power to get it overturned. Then, it was reacting with disgust and horror when the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization actually did get it overturned. By the time Kamala Harris got started on her campaign to run for the presidential office, abortion was the party’s key issue.
Harris ran ads labeling state restrictions on abortion “Trump Abortion Bans,” she gave speeches on the sacredness of “women’s reproductive rights,” and she even orchestrated a campaign rally with Beyoncé to push the issue in Texas. In fact, Democrats poured “$570 million on abortion-focused TV advertising alone for federal races during the general election, according to data from AdImpact,” National Review reported. (READ MORE: Why Trump Should Act Against Abortion)
But ever since November, it’s been crickets on abortion.
So much so that Paul Kane at the Washington Post was inclined to notice. Kane pointed out that the issue has practically vanished as a leftist talking point — whether it was during a 25–minute speech that looked like a campaign rally from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), or Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s nearly 30-minute stump speech, which mentioned “reproductive rights” just once.
Even Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Fight the Oligarchy” campaign doesn’t spend any time on the issue. In an hour-and-a-half-long YouTube video streaming an Idaho event, “reproductive rights” came up just once as a sort of passing side comment from a speaker introducing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and the word “abortion” was never used.
“Most Democrats still view abortion rights as a cornerstone of party orthodoxy, embraced by the majority of voters,” Kane remarked, “but they also consider it essential for the party to expand beyond that cultural issue.” Why? Well, Kane says it’s because of the Trump administration’s decision to deport a bunch of illegal immigrants, impose widespread tariffs, and fire excess government bureaucrats.
Daily Wire commentator Michael Knowles disagreed: “If abortion were super duper popular, you wouldn’t focus on other things. Your saturation messaging would have worked and you would have won the 2024 election. But it doesn’t work cuz most people aren’t psychos who want to slaughter babies left and right.”
But if you ask the pollsters, that’s not quite the case. A Pew Research Center poll published in May of last year found that, since Dobbs, American support for legalized abortion had increased from 61 percent just before the decision to 63 percent nearly two years later. A Gallup poll published at the same time found that 50 percent of Americans thought that abortion should be legal in some circumstances, and an additional 35 percent thought that abortion should be legal in all circumstances. (WATCH: The Weekend Spectator Ep. 38: May Day, ‘Deadnaming,’ and Chemical Abortion)
When you have numbers that solid on an issue, that issue is a winning issue.
So why didn’t the Democrats win in 2024 on that issue? Why are they, by all accounts, neglecting to bring it up now?
To put it bluntly, it’s difficult for Democrats to claim that Donald Trump is some sort of pro-life monster when his administration does things like request the Supreme Court to dismiss a case on the safety of the abortion pill, mifepristone. The position is identical to the one the Biden administration took in January and is just the latest instance of the Trump administration distancing itself from pro-life positions by embracing pro-choice ones.
If that makes the pro-life crowd squirm a little bit, it should. Mifepristone is a deadly and dangerous drug. Take the cases of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, both women from Georgia who died after the drug killed their unborn children and left them with severe septic shock. They aren’t the only ones.
According to data recently released by the Ethics and Public Policy Center and referenced by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) in an article at the Federalist, “[N]early 11 percent of women who use the drug [mifepristone] to induce an abortion suffer an ‘adverse health event’ — as in a major, potentially life-threatening medical disaster. We’re talking about things like sepsis, infection, and hemorrhaging … the kind of things that could lead to death.”
To be fair to the Trump administration, it’s done something to advance the pro-life cause; just last month, it announced it would cut Title IX funding to some Planned Parenthood clinics while it investigated DEI initiatives. But that’s a pitiful platitude compared to the enormity of arguing that the abortion pill — which killed approximately 672,000 babies in 2023 and was responsible for 63 percent of all U.S. abortions — should remain on pharmacy shelves. (READ MORE: Taking Down Planned Parenthood)
In the face of those kinds of numbers, the Trump administration has yet to demonstrate that it really cares about the abortion issue.
Perhaps Trump is playing 3D chess here. Maybe he thinks that attacking mifepristone in court is less effective than eventually banning it outright via the FDA (arguably, that’s not the case, since a Supreme Court ruling lasts a lot longer than a conservative FDA commissioner’s term). While we can certainly hope that’s the case, it’s worth being wary of his approach and of calling Trump and his administration to account if the political game they’re playing gives us the same bad outcomes the Democrats would have if they were in power.
