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Notes -
I guess I'll start us off with a quick one:
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2024/03/17/trump-gop-must-endorse-three-exceptions-for-abortion-to-get-elected/
This isn't an article so much as a clip-n-quote of something Trump said. I'll copy paste here because it's not long and this way you won't have to click the link:
I'm pro-life and believe life begins at conception, not just as a Christian, but much more importantly because I consider it the cleanest and most sane policy from a secular perspective. Because to me it seems obvious the only way to avoid making Tenochtitlan-sized mistakes at some point along our path is to avoid meddling with the primeval forces of nature and attempting to play God in the first place.
Once you start introducing 'exceptions,' you're just immediately back to condoning all abortion. "My health is at risk because if I'm not permitted to abort I might harm myself" is a free at-will golden ticket as long as you're able to memorize and repeat a sentence of that length.
Trump, quite obviously, doesn't really feel strongly about abortion and is attempting to pick the most palatable position. That's the problem about integrity in politics - none of the voters have any so it's almost always counterproductive for your electability if you do.
But taking the tack that "the GOP must accept exceptions" instead of "the issue must be returned to the states" is another huge own goal from the New York liberal Trump. If you're going to have a slippery real estate mogul as your standard bearer, you're going to end up with some very ugly and counterproductive wheeling and dealing for the movement.
Setting aside preferred abortion policies (I seem to care less than most people, so I'm happy to set it aside), I disagree that this is bad electoral politics. I think Republicans that probably do personally share your robust pro-life position have attempted to thread the needle with the latter statement and have mostly found that people just interpret that as them wanting to ban it but knowing that it's unpopular at the federal level. They don't seem like principled federalists to the median voter, they seem like religious fanatics that don't even have the courage to state their position openly. In contrast, pretty much everyone knows Trump isn't principled, but the pro-lifers are unlikely to discard him in any great number and more centrists may well grumble and go along with him if he says, "look everyone, we're going to do the best laws, we're going to have a new Roe, and it's going to be great again, everyone will have their rights, and we're also going to protect the babies".
More generally, this is just an issue where standing on principle results in taking an L. I understand that some people are sufficiently principled that they're willing to take that L and lose on a whole raft of other Republican priorities because they're against compromise. To some extent, I admire the conviction, even though I think it's foolish.
One part of this that I also think flies under the radar a bit is that Biden seems somewhat like the flip side of the coin - while he might not be the most stringently adherent Catholic (lol) I do think he has the cultural memory of an old Irish-American Catholic and has just never much liked abortion on a personal level. His private position probably basically remains the old-school "safe, legal, and rare". When he speaks about this, I get no sense that he's in favor of the most extreme pro-abortion policies. If you pit Biden against Trump on abortion, Biden's probably a slight winner on electoral politics, but if you put Biden against a more staunch conservative, I think it's a huge disadvantage for the pro-lifer.
“Return it to the states” is actually most unpopular with pro-lifers since it guarantees that New York, California and other highly populous states will never ban abortion, which is deeply unacceptable to them.
It guarantees that no state can ban abortion for any intelligent or sophisticated woman, any woman who can afford a bus ticket. You can only force births of children you'd probably prefer hadn't been born.
Given the existence of the pill, condoms, IUD, implant, cycle trackers etc (which most high functioning women will avails themselves of if having sex without the intention of having children) some would say this already the case for all pro-life activism.
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Not as though I've been appointed spokesman of all the pro-lifers, but maybe re-read my OP where I explicitly stated the general preference would have been for Trump to stick with 'leave it to the states' instead.
Kind of difficult to have a productive conversation when Person A says 'this is my preference and here's why' and Person B says 'no actually, that's deeply unacceptable to you'
I respect that, I’m just saying that most pro-life activists I’ve discussed this with online have said leaving abortion to the states isn’t long term acceptable to them.
I can entertain that our reading past each other is from me saying 'Pro-lifers think Trump should have left it to the states [as the next move in the long-term game]' and you saying 'return it to the states [as a long-term permanent solution] is unpopular with pro-lifers' and that both are true.
If Trump weren't Trump he might've thought to punt it down the road so the judiciary could work on it for another generation or two, rather than think he was clever enough to make 'the best deal' that everyone's gonna love. But long-term, the idea that New York, California, etc would continue having late-term abortion on demand because it had been 'left to the states' is deeply unpopular among pro-lifers, for sure
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