In the states…
Newly re-elected Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine responded tersely to a reporter who asked him whether or not the case of a 10-year old rape victim changed his viewpoint on exceptions for abortions. “I'm pro-life,” DeWine said. He also cut off the reporter and refused to answer when she started to ask if he’d support a ban with no exceptions: “Yeah, I'm not gonna go today beyond what I said.” You can watch DeWine’s response here—which I’m including because of the absolute lack of empathy he exhibited when questioned about a raped child. Says all I need to know.
Now that Florida Republicans have a supermajority in the House and Senate, they no longer have to remain hush-hush about their plans for abortion: Namely, that they plan to do everything that they can to restrict or ban it. Remember how I said (literally yesterday!) that Republicans were going to go hard on the idea that a 15-week ban is ‘reasonable’ and possibly make the same argument about a 12-week ban? Well, just on cue, incoming Senate President Kathleen Passidomo said that she wants the 15-week ban approved last year reduced to 12 weeks. Incoming House Speaker Paul Renner was unwilling to name a particular week limitation, likely because he wants an outright ban on abortion. “I personally am pro life and would like to see us move more in that direction,” he said.
Just as a reminder, a large majority of people in Florida—67%—want abortion to be legal in all or most cases. Laura Goodhue, executive director of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, said what Republicans are pushing “are not reflective of what their constituents want. It doesn’t matter the number of weeks, they’re just opposed to politicians interfering in their pregnancy decisions.”
Much better news out of Minnesota, where elections favoring Democrats mean that both houses in the state will have enough votes to pass abortion-rights legislation and a governor who will sign it into law. According to Minnesota Public Radio, lawmakers may also push for a 2024 ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Senate Minority Leader Melisa López Franzen said, “One of my favorite lines is when you come for our rights, we will come for your seats. And we did. And we got it done.”
Nebraska pro-choicers also have an abortion-related ballot measure in the works. And the state’s Democratic party chair, Jane Kleeb, says, “We’re confident that Nebraskans want to see abortion rights preserved and don’t want to have politicians in the doctor’s room for women. We want to make sure that our daughters and our granddaughters don’t have less rights than we do today.”
Meanwhile, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin says he is “cautiously optimistic” about passing abortion restrictions in the state. Fuck that guy.
And Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told a conservative talk show this week that Republicans might try to modify the state abortion ban—not because women are being hurt, or because doctors are being forced to delay or deny vital health care—but because he wants to make sure that the GOP can’t be sued over the law. “One of the things that I want to make sure is that we have a law that can withstand court challenge,” Vos said.
In the nation…
The Associated Press did a survey about what voters cared about in the midterms, and—of course—abortion played a huge role. Three in ten female voters said that abortion was the single most important issue in their vote. According to the AP, women also said that Roe being overturned made them angry, and had a huge impact on how they were thinking about candidates. Women who were surveyed also made a connection between the future of democracy and abortion rights—believing, correctly, that abortion rights being reversed was a sign of a failing democracy.
The survey also looked at religious voters, and how faith played a role in how Americans felt about abortion and their vote. Just one in ten voters believed that abortion should be illegal in all cases, for example—and even among white evangelical voters, only two in ten thought it should be illegal in all cases.
Apparently some NPR readers were upset at the public radio station because it carried an article about a North Carolina abortion doula—responding that there is no such thing as a doula for abortion, only childbirth. I appreciated NPR’s response about the work of full-spectrum and abortion doulas, and taking on that education role—because there really is so much about abortion that Americans are completely unaware of.
I hate this so much: At a black-tie dinner for the conservative Federalist Society, Justice Samuel Alito got “a long, loud ovation” from the audience of thousands when a speaker praised his opinion that overturned Roe. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was also there, and in response to the resounding applause in her direction, she said “It's really nice to have a lot of noise made not by protesters outside my house.” Fuck both of these people. They don’t deserve a moment of peace. Ever.
One of the ways that abortion-rights groups campaigning for the midterms were able to win the support of moderate voters was talking about abortion as an issue of personal freedom. The Washington Post reports that this kind of messaging proved to be the most effective. Rachel Sweet, the hero who ran the abortion rights ballot measure campaigns in both Kansas and Kentucky, said, “There are a lot of people that are in that middle group and are like, ‘I don't think abortion is good, I would never get an abortion myself, but I also don't think it's the government's place to make that decision.’” The article mentions how frustrated anti-abortion groups were by this (successful!) messaging because they felt like it downplayed the seriousness of the issue, and I just had to include this quote from Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America: “Abortion is not like wisdom teeth removal.” Dannenfelser, for once, is right. Abortion is not like wisdom teeth removal, because abortion is safer.
Speaking of things that anti-abortion activists say. Remember how I told you yesterday that the new strategy of anti-choice groups would be to say that ballot measures are somehow anti-democracy, despite the fact that they put an issue directly in voters’ hands? Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel at Americans United for Life, says, “It’s absolutely clear that when abortion advocates bypassed legislators and governors and fought with ballot initiatives, they won. And they’re going to do more of it in 2024.” (Emphasis mine)
Ms. magazine spoke to Democratic pollster Celinda Lake about how important abortion was in voters’ midterm decisions, and why so many pundits and ‘experts’ predicted otherwise: “Never underestimate the power of the patriarchy. It was conventional wisdom in the beltway, and 95 percent of the time, the beltway is wrong.”
Adrienne Barbeau, the actress who played Maude’s daughter in the iconic sitcom Maude, wrote for The Guardian about what it was like to star in the show that featured the main character having an abortion that she was happy about. The episode aired 50 years ago, and was a HUGE deal at the time. Barbeau writes about how strange it is to have been part of that groundbreaking moment just to see the nation moving backwards:
“When Maude’s Dilemma was filmed, women had to consult men for their medical treatments; they didn’t have control of their own lives. We’re going back to that today. We’re going back to our own dark ages.”
Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson gave an interview to CBS News about what the future of abortion rights might look like after the issue’s big midterms win.
NPR looks at ballot measures as the possible future of abortion rights; The New York Times has a good roundup of where the midterms mattered the most for abortion rights; The Guardian reports on 50 years of abortion on television shows; and POLITICO relays the bad bit of abortion news from the midterms: Just how many anti-abortion state Supreme Court justices were elected.
You love to see it…
Gen Z will save us all. I love this op-ed from Dolores Hernandez, a junior at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, on what got her and her friends to the polls on Tuesday—and the huge role that abortion played in it all:
“The victory for abortion rights is empowering students to discuss their views on a range of issues. Now students on campus are talking more about healthcare, education funding and immigration. The abortion debate became a foot in the door for what I believe will be a lifetime of activism for many of us.”
And your regular reminder that AOC just gets it:
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