Vance Accidentally Admits What He Thinks ‘Bans’ Are

8.27.24

Click to skip ahead: In Strategy Watch, the nation’s foremost anti-abortion group is actually pretty funny. In the States, good news in Ohio and bad news in New York (which feels backwards?) Ballot Measure Updates looks at attacks on democracy and a new legal challenge trend in Missouri, Nebraska, Arkansas and more. In the Nation, a new ad on abortion ‘trafficking,’ and an anti-abortion group says forcing women to give birth will keep maternity wards open. Finally, in 2024 news, JD Vance gives up the game and admits he doesn’t really think bans are bans.

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Strategy Watch

Let’s kick the newsletter off with some anti-abortion strategy:

Powerhouse organization Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America released a memo in the wake of the Democratic National Convention, giving us a clear look at what kind of attacks we can expect to see this November.

Sent to GOP candidates, legislators and stakeholders, the memo urges Republicans to focus in on Democrats’ supposed abortion extremism. And I’ll be honest, a lot of it made me laugh. Remember when SBA Pro-Life America called presidential nominee Kamala Harris the “abortion czar?” Well, the group continued to make Democrats seem much cooler than they actually are by saying the DNC was an “abortion-palooza.” Which sounds amazing.

The funniest thing to me, though, was the group pasted a picture in the memo of Abortion Access Front activists dressed up as abortion medication outside of the convention. It was meant to be proof of Democrats’ horrific radicalism, but the costumes just looked really fucking cool.

Sadly, it wasn’t all hilarious. The memo advised Republicans on how to attack Harris, Tim Walz and other Democrats using two tactics we’ve been covering closely here at Abortion, Every Day: ‘post birth abortion’ and abortion ‘coercion.’

As you know, the focus on coercion has ramped quite a lot up over the last few months. Anti-abortion groups claim that the vast majority of women who have abortions have been pressured into the ending their pregnancies—a way to make it seem as if anti-abortion laws are there to protect women rather than hurt them. (In the memo, SBA Pro-Life America makes the outrageous claim that “nearly 70% of abortions are coerced.”)

They started to develop this strategy a while ago, guessing that calling abortions ‘coerced’ would put Democrats on the defensive. Anti-abortion groups also figured the messaging would make it easier for them to pass restrictions—they just claim they’re trying to weed out patients who’ve been coerced.

SBA Pro-Life America’s memo also repeats the usual nonsense about abortion ‘up until birth’ and includes a reference to ‘post-birth’ abortions—though the organization was smart enough not to use that term explicitly. Instead they claim that Harris and Walz “oppose medical care for infants born alive after failed abortions.” (This is what Trump means when he says ‘post-birth’ abortion.)

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Anti-abortion activists continue to think that this is their strongest talking point, and I think it’s their weakest. Americans already think these laws are cruel and horrific; imagine how much more pissed off voters would be if they understood that Republicans want to stop parents from being able to peacefully say goodbye to their fatally-ill newborns. Read my column on how Harris could hit back at this messaging here.

In the States

Let’s start with some good news: Over the next few weeks, Planned Parenthood in Ohio will start to offer same-day abortions! The state’s 24-hour waiting period was recently repealed thanks to Issue 1, the abortion rights amendment that passed in Ohio last year with massive voter support.

Oh, and do you want to know what the anti-abortion argument was against the repeal of that waiting period? Coercion! Brian Hickey, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Ohio said, “With this decision, women will be pressured into having abortions against their will and without opportunities for coercion screening.”

Like I said, they’re feigning caring about abused women in order to pass laws that hurt us. Pretty gross stuff.

Speaking of anti-abortion bullshit, let’s talk more about the New York lawsuit over crisis pregnancy centers and free speech. As I mentioned yesterday, a Trump-appointed judge blocked the state Attorney General from taking any action against centers that tout abortion ‘reversal,’ even though the practice is unproven and dangerous. He claimed that the groups have a free speech right, apparently, to lie to women.

What I wanted to point out today, though, is this quote from Alliance Defending Freedom—the conservative legal group defending the centers. (ADF seems to have its hands in everything!) From ADF lawyer Caleb Dalton:

“Women in New York have literally saved their babies from an in-progress chemical drug abortion because they had access to information through their local pregnancy centers about using safe and effective progesterone for abortion pill reversal. But the attorney general tried to deny women the opportunity to even hear about this life-saving option.”

This not only gets into the free speech nonsense, but hints at something else conservatives are doing around crisis pregnancy center messaging: claiming that attempts to make the groups tell the truth are actually infringements on women’s ‘choice’ to hear lies. If you’re exhausted, so am I.

Quick hits:

• An Iowa OB-GYN talks about what abortion bans are doing to reproductive and maternal health access rural communities;

• In Idaho, a doctor warns that the state’s abortion ban is killing women;

• And the Sixth Circuit ruled this week that the federal government doesn’t have to restore Tennessee’s millions in Title X funding. (The state refuses to comply with the funding rules that require they simply tell patients that they can get abortion care in other states.)

Ballot Measure Updates

It wouldn’t be a day in abortion rights news without a Republican attack on democracy! Remember how I told you just yesterday about a lawsuit brought against Missouri’s abortion rights ballot measure? Two Republican lawmakers and an anti-abortion activist are claiming that the amendment violates the state constitution’s single subject rule. (Because it would protect abortion rights and the “fundamental right to reproductive freedom,” which they say is “unlimited in scope.”)

Well, it appears that everyone got the memo: A group of anti-abortion physicians are using the same argument in a legal challenge against the ballot measure in Nebraska. They claim that in addition to protecting abortion rights, the proposed amendment would also legally redefine fetal ‘viability’—a second issue that violates the single subject rule. Where to begin?!

The measure from Protect Our Rights says that fetal ‘viability’ would be determined by a health care provider, which makes sense because there is no real medical standard for ‘viability.’ The notion of viability is a made up legal term. That’s part of the reason there’s been so much controversy among pro-choice activists over using language about viability—not only does it stop short of protecting everyone who needs abortion care, it’s an arbitrary line that opens us up to attack. (Which we’ve seen happen in places like Florida.)

The anti-abortion lawsuit here claims that because the amendment would allow health care providers to determine fetal viability, it “opens the door to non-physicians, such as midwives, nurses, and doulas, to make viability determinations,” which they claim is “simply unsafe.”

I’ll keep you updated as the suit moves forward, but it’s definitely distressing to see how many different ways Republicans have figured out to keep voters from having a say on abortion.

Speaking of—I told you a bit yesterday about how Arkansas Republicans successfully kept abortion off the ballot using a paperwork technicality. Law professor Mary Ziegler has thoughts on the strategy over at Slate, where she writes this could be how Republicans end the pro-choice ballot measure winning streak.

In part, Ziegler writes, what makes the tactic a smart one is that it relies on “obscure election officials or state judges, who rarely lose reelection campaigns.” She also thinks that using seemingly boring election rules could help Republicans with abortion rights backlash:

“This shift allows Republicans to reframe ballot initiatives not as part of a battle about reproductive health—a fight that the GOP is definitely losing—but as a fight about election integrity and the rule of law. And by focusing on the most arcane election rules, conservatives can hope to make it harder for voters to understand what has happened or to organize in response.”

I agree that confusion around the rules is a real issue, but I actually think that shitty moves like the one in Arkansas will make the backlash against Republicans worse. It’s never been more clear that they’re fighting to keep abortion banned in spite of voters’ wishes.

Finally, The Oklahoman asks why voters in the state aren’t using their ballot initiative process to restore and protect abortion rights, reporting that “Oklahoma voters seem content to blindly entrust the 149 people in our Legislature to continue to implement one-size-fits all decisions about what women should do with their bodies.”

In the Nation

This is just incredible. If you’re a regular reader, you know that one of the ripple effects of abortion bans has been an OB-GYN exodus out of anti-choice states. Understandably, doctors don’t want to live and work in a state where they could be arrested for doing their jobs. And because OB-GYNs and maternal fetal specialists are fleeing, maternity wards in these states are shuttering—making reproductive and maternal health deserts even worse.

Studies aren’t just showing that doctors are leaving, but that anti-abortion states can’t recruit new doctors: residency applications are on a massive decline in places with abortion bans, and established doctors aren’t eager to move to these states, either. That’s why New Mexico, for example, is running a billboard campaign in Texas urging doctors to come across the state border where they’re “free to provide.”

Never ones to accept or tell the truth, the anti-abortion movement is now claiming that those stats just aren’t true, and that abortion bans aren’t causing any sort of doctor shortage in anti-choice states. The Charlotte Lozier Institute, known for pumping out fake and retracted studies, released a policy paper today arguing that anti-abortion states are doing just fine and that any issue with maternity wards shuttering or doctors leaving has nothing to do with bans.

It’s the typical sort of nonsense we’re used to seeing from them, but I just had to share this incredible argument from the group: They say that the reason maternity wards are shutting down and doctors are leaving is because there aren’t enough babies being born in these states—a problem, they claim, “pro-life laws could be expected to help solve.”

That’s right: The Charlotte Lozier Institute says that forcing women to give birth will help to keep maternity wards open. These people are twisted. For a better read today, check out Rewire on how abortion bans are causing OB-GYN residency deserts.

“Hospitals throughout Idaho are having difficulty getting folks to want to come to Idaho and practice. It's affecting the entire pipeline of physicians: Our trainees are seeing the governmental interference into the practice of medicine, and it’s causing them to question whether or not they want to practice in Idaho."

- Dr. Mary Barinaga, assistant dean at Idaho WWAMI

The Lincoln Project is always at the center of debate these days, and this new ad (below) depicting a teen and her dad being arrested for leaving an anti-abortion state is no different. I’ve seen people claim that the ad is fear-mongering and that this would never happen. But we’re already there.

Multiple states have passed laws that make it illegal to take a teenager out of the state for an abortion, labeling it ‘trafficking.’ And as I’ve pointed out so many times before, these laws were written so broadly that a grandma who lends her grandkid gas money to leave their anti-abortion state could be imprisoned, as could someone who simply texts a teen the url to an out-of-state clinic.

We know this doesn’t stop with teens. A handful of counties in Texas have already made it illegal to take an adult out-of-state for abortion care. (The penalties there are civil, not criminal.) Women who are on parole or probation already have to ask the state for permission before they can leave their states for an abortion. And Alabama’s Attorney General wrote in a legal brief recently that the state has the right to restrict women’s travel if it wants to. In fact, AG Steve Marshall is in a court battle right now because he wants to be able to prosecute abortion funds and activists who even share information about out-of-state abortion. He calls that a criminal “conspiracy.”

The other thing to remember is that even if laws like this aren’t enforced, the point is the chilling effect. People are already terrified about traveling for abortions. When I interviewed a young woman who had to flee Texas in order to end her nonviable pregnancy, for example, she didn’t tell any friends or family because she was so afraid of possible arrest or punishment. These laws are stripping people of their community support. And for those who don’t have the ability to leave a state on their own without financial or logistical help from friends, they’re being trapping them in places where they can’t get care.

So again: this is already happening.

2024

I warned yesterday that JD Vance’s promise that Donald Trump wouldn’t sign a national abortion ban depended entirely on a false definition of the word ‘ban.’ Essentially, conservatives are quietly claiming that ‘ban’ only refers to total abortion bans without exceptions even for women’s lives. As such, it’s easy for Republicans to vow not to pass a national ‘ban’—because to them, so long as a ban has an exception for the life of the pregnant person, that law isn’t a ‘ban’ at all.

I had a chance today to look at Vance’s full interview on “Meet the Press” and the slick play on words was even worse than I thought. First of all, Vance said, “No Republican with any reasonable power is saying that we should have a complete national abortion ban.” That word ‘complete’ is doing a lot.

Most importantly, Vance had an exchange with reporter Kristen Welker that proves the vice presidential candidate doesn’t believe that bans are bans. The moment came when Welker said something about Sen. Lindsey Graham’s support for a national abortion ban. Check it out:

Vance: “Lindsey Graham himself has not advocated a federal abortion ban. Lindsey Graham has advocated…”

Welker: “A 15-week federal abortion ban.”

Vance: “…a federal minimum standard.”

Doesn’t get much clearer than that! Vance doesn’t believe that Graham’s legislation—a 15-week ban that would force women to carry nonviable pregnancies to term—is actually an abortion ban. And while Vance goes on in the interview to say that Trump doesn’t agree with Graham, he is making clear that when the Trump/Vance ticket talks about opposing a national abortion ban—it doesn’t meant shit.

Trump is hoping that by pretending to be pro-choice, he can help his chances with moderates and suburban women voters. That’s why he had his spokesperson Karoline Leavitt put out a statement this week claiming that Trump “will NOT sign a federal ban.” But what I want to know is what he’d say if a reporter asked him about federal ‘restrictions’ or ‘standards.’

Similarly, Leavitt promised that Trump “supports universal access to contraception”—but what does contraception mean to him? Does Trump believe that IUDs and emergency contraception are birth control? Or is he going to appease conservatives by going along with the lie that these contraceptives are actually abortifacients?

Meanwhile, NPR reports that anti-abortion activists are pissed off over Trump’s supposed ‘softening’ on abortion rights. I’m just going to make the same reminder that I did yesterday: this is what these groups did around the GOP platform. They pretended to be upset with Trump in order to distract mainstream outlets.

Again, this kind of thing is exactly why I’m so obsessive about language. (If you appreciate the fact that you had a heads up about this tactic a year before anyone else, consider upgrading your subscription to say thanks!)

For more on how dangerous abortion rights have become to Republicans, The New Yorker Radio Hour dedicated an episode last week to the topic: