Abortion’s Dead Center

Stop catering to a disappearing middle-ground

If you want to know how Americans feel about abortion, just look at what happened in Wisconsin this week: Pro-choice judge Janet Protasiewicz won by a huge margin, ending a years-long conservative hold on the state Supreme Court. And while there was plenty at stake in this election, it was abortion that drove the campaign and voters. 

Between Protasiewicz’s victory, ballot measure wins in places like Kansas and Kentucky, and the entirety of the fucking midterms, it’s pretty obvious that abortion wins elections. 

Yet both Democrats and Republicans seem intent on misunderstanding what these results really mean. Women are furious. Young people are terrified. And all of America can see the harm and suffering abortion bans cause. 

These votes are absolutely smoking with rage, but for some reason politicians and activists on both sides of the issue are catering to a rapidly-evaporating middle. Conservatives are adding empty exceptions to their abortion bans in order to convince voters that they’re willing to compromise, while Democrats push for the restoration of Roe and nothing further—hoping that supporting restrictions on later abortion will help them avoid accusations of extremism.

But what’s happening with abortion has nothing to do with the middle. There’s nothing moderate about women in the ICU with sepsis, there’s no compromise to be made with those who would force raped 10 year-olds to give birth. 

The ‘center’ on abortion disappeared the first time a woman underwent a hysterectomy because it was the only legal way for doctors to end her life-threatening pregnancy.

That’s why the conservative strategy to win over voters—drafting fake exceptions and advocating for what they call “reasonable” 12 to 15-week bans—is bound to fail. They’re doing damage control that won’t stop the damage. And Americans know it. 

Rape and incest exceptions fall apart under the barest scrutiny. Even if a victim is able to jump through all of the hoops that Republican legislators set out, they still wouldn’t be able to find a doctor to give them care. In Mississippi, for example, there is not a single physician willing to provide a rape victim with an abortion. 

Exceptions for women’s health and lives don’t work either. Every woman who has come forward with a painful story of being denied care has lived in a state that claims to make the exact allowances these patients couldn’t get. And with every new language tweak or attempt to ‘soften’ their laws, Republican legislators make things worse: In Idaho last week, politicians rejected allowances for abortion in cases of “life-threatening conditions” because, they said, there were just too many of them. 

Given all of this, the notion that a 12-week or 15-week ban could suddenly appease voters or ease suffering is absurd. After all, most of the horror stories coming out of anti-choice states are from women who were later in their pregnancies, and Republicans show Americans every day that they’re incapable of legislating with even the slightest bit of empathy or common-sense. 

That’s why the pro-choice movement needs to get out of their defensive crouch. The consequences of widespread abortion bans are no longer theoretical. We don’t have to ask voters to imagine how bad it would be if abortion was restricted, we can simply point to the nightmare already in progress: Cancer patients being denied care, mothers forced to carry dead and dying fetuses, states losing half of their OBGYNs. That sort of horror is immune to talking points. 

I understand the fear some pro-choicers have. They believe pushing for abortion rights without restrictions will give conservatives ammunition to call us extremists who want abortion 'up until birth'. But here’s the thing: They’re going to say that anyway. 

In Ohio, for example, pro-choice groups drafted a ballot measure that doesn’t protect abortions past ‘viability’ (an arbitrary limitation). But in Newsweek, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America writes that the proposal would allow for abortion “right up until birth.” She just...lies. Because that’s what they do. 

Conservatives and anti-abortion activists will always find a way to call us murdering extremists, no matter what kind of policy we propose. In that same Newsweek piece, for example, Majorie Dannenfelser also writes that the Ohio ballot measure would legalize abortion “past the point at which [the fetus] can feel the pain”—which she claims is 15 weeks. The minute activists ceded ground on viability, conservatives found another, much earlier, and just as false goalpost. 

So why would we ever base our policies on the constantly-moving, bad-faith attacks of those who want to ban abortion entirely? Especially when abortion wins every single time it’s put to voters?

We will never win with politeness. We will never stop widespread suffering with concessions. And the truth is that Republicans aren’t losing because of their messaging or political strategies—they’re losing because of the very real consequences of their laws.

So if there was ever a time to fight for what we want, and for the world that women and girls deserve—this is it. There’s no “middle ground” on our freedom.

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