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The latest abortion kerfuffle is decently well in the past now, and we've had a number of good threads on it in various places. I think it's a reasonable time to ask here:
Have you changed your personal opinion or political position on abortion access at all over the course of the last year or so? If so, to what, and based on what?
Was a moderate on the issue fine with some restrictions but changed to total pro-choice over the last year. I was ok with "safe, legal and rare" but unfortunately pro-life activists got greedy and broke that compromise, instead going for broke with overturning Roe v Wade, total bans and taking the mask off with closing exemptions and targeting contraception. Given that I want abortion available as an option, and that past talk of exemptions and the like proved to just be the equivalent of the gun control cake slicing meme, I started donating to pro-choice efforts and voted accordingly to swing the pendulum in the other direction.
Same thing also independently caused a bunch of my friends (Trump voting hard red state pipe fitters, electricians, etc) to flip shit because they didn't want to be forced to have more kids than they already had or get trapped into child support, and they voted accordingly. Another who'd gone from lib to DeSantis fan over COVID lockdowns and anti-woke stuff swung back to the Democrats over it. I can't emphasize this enough; people I know who use the N word as an adjective on a daily basis for household objects and even bird species + believe in Q-anon stuff were incensed and pulled the lever to give the pro-choice side a landslide victory when abortion rights came up to a vote.
Banning abortion might be popular in the pulpits of some dwindling denominations and internet forums, but it is highly unpopular outside of specific geographic and religious bubbles that are way out of touch with most Americans. Those in favor of banning abortion punch above their weight in primaries and state house compositions due to unrepresentative political systems, but they were BTFO when it was a straight up popular vote even in Kansas, Michigan, Kentucky, and Montana.
I find your post interesting because we probably have the same actual positions on abortion and directly related issues, but I've mostly taken the opposite conclusion from what happened with the overturning.
My impression overall is that the bottom line is that pro-life leaning people are roughly 50% of the population (including 50%-ish of women by the way). The Constitution, Bill of Rights, Amendments, Supreme Court, all of that stuff, is meant to cover things we have more like 90% agreement with as a society. In this view, Roe v Wade was always an ugly hack. There's nothing about it in the Constitution and it's ridiculously stunted reasoning by abortion activists to get their preferred point of view enacted as court precedent and thus immune to legislative processes. Keeping it in place only serves to ensure we are constantly fighting Holy Wars over Supreme Court nominees over whether they will or won't swear to keep the ridiculous charade in place at all costs.
The Constitutional Amendment process is very tough for a reason - only things that we have very broad and long-lasting agreement on in our society should end up enshrined at that level and protected by court rulings. If we desire to have abortion granted that level of protection, it should be done right - by passing an explicit Constitutional Amendment about it. If there isn't the support level needed to do that, then abortion doesn't belong there and issues around it should be resolved by state and federal legislation, the way it was intended to be. That's why I think this is a good thing - states where pro-life is strong will now be able to pass and enforce the legislation they wanted to, hopefully without bothering people outside their state much. States where pro-choice is string will continue to be able to have abortion on-demand. People with strong positions on the wrong side of one of those lines will be able to move somewhere that their preferred policy is in place. Democracy in action!
Bottom line, pro-life is a solid segment of our population and they aren't going away. If your political position is that their policy preference must be absolutely suppressed at all costs, then what you're advocating for is not Democracy.
I lean red overall politically, and I am aware that this may have cost red team / Republicans some degree of the gains they would have expected in the recent midterms. I think that's a reasonable price to pay to get this issue off of the national stage. Let the states make their preferred laws, let them sneer at each other, and keep the courts for things we aspirationally have broader agreement on.
I mean, the reality is, with the advent of mass media, people will only put up with what they see as people within their coalition being hurt by people outside of their coalition, and being told they can't stop it because of some lines on a map. That started, at least in the US, w/ Uncle Tom's Cabin, and has only expanded with the advent of radio, TV, and now social media. People at least get nations are nations - the argument over state's rights was shot in Appotomax, and then put into the ground at Selma.
Not to bring Civil Right's into it, do you honestly think the 60's and 70's would've gone better if interracial marriage stated illegal until the early-to-mid 80's, which is when it crossed 50% approval in Gallup polling?
We're a representative democracy bounded by a Constitution that guarantees rights - we've never been, and nobody close to power has ever really advocated for total legislative supremacy or direct democracy.
I get your first point, though I suppose that's something that all movements of any sort will have to live with in the modern age.
On the second, I don't think I agree. I'm saying we need to make a reasonably good-faith effort to follow our constitutional processes in the intended ways. As far as I know, nothing that could reasonably be described as that took place with respect to the civil rights conflicts. I think Roe v Wade is pretty far from that.
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