Virginia and national Democrats are hoping to God non-gender binary specific deity that the recent Dobbs decision is somehow going to pull their 2022 mid-term election numbers around on a dime.
Problem is, not only is this not happening even a little bit, but the Democratic Party’s open position on abortion up to and even beyond the moment of birth is both hurting their incumbents but painting their candidates into a corner as the party of dead babies.
To wit, the 2022 Generic Ballot over at RealClearPolitics shows a solid 1.1+ gain for Republicans since the Dobbs decision, reflecting that public opinion on the question of abortion is already rigid and turning out voters at its maximum possible rate of enthusiasm.
While the generic ballot remains at a solid R+2, Democratic President Joe Biden’s disapproval ratings continue to remain at or near 57% — with the most recent Monmouth polling showing Biden upside down by as much as 23 points. For comparison purposes, Biden was upside down 15 points when Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) carried Virginia by 50,000 votes.
Meanwhile, Virginia Democrats are certainly doubling down on the rhetoric, looking to do anything to preserve the existing abortion regime while exclaiming how any regulations whatsoever constitute a threat against the whole. Former Delegate David Toscano (D-Charlottesville) writes in the pages of Slate Magazine:
Unlike some nearby states, Virginia no longer mandates counseling, ultrasounds, or waiting periods prior to obtaining an abortion. The procedure is currently lawful during the first and second trimesters of a pregnancy; in the third trimester, it is permitted but only if three doctors say that that continuing the pregnancy “is likely to result in the death of the woman” or “substantially and irremediably impair [her] mental or physical health.”
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) says that he will seek an abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy, and continues his attempts to deny public funding for the procedure. At present, these could not pass because Democrats have a 21-19 majority in the Senate and control committee assignments. But if Republicans gain one vote, they can control decisions in this area, because the Republican lieutenant governor would cast the deciding vote.
Yet note in Toscano’s argument two very distinct claims: (1) that abortions in the third trimester be preserved even in instances where the mental health — up to and including not feeling all that well — is impaired (as if babies are an imposition and not a minor miracle), and second and perhaps most damning, (2) that any restriction, any regulation that makes abortion “safe, legal, and rare” — what Democrats used to believe — is deemed “draconian” and “a tremendous blow to those who have sought to preserve a women’s ability to obtain a safe abortion (sic).”
The problem with this argument is that Toscano hides in euphemisms what his true aim is — to keep the abortion industry in clover without restrictions, compromise, common sense or apology. What is this clover, you ask? According to the Guttmacher Institute, two-thirds of all abortions are committed against minority women; 75% of all abortions coerced because mothers either believed that the fathers would abandon their new family or because the husbands, fiancés, boyfriends or otherwise were coercing the mother get an abortion or threatening abandonment — yet another form of coercion.
Guttmacher confirms other sobering details of the abortion industry Toscano defends. On principle, most Americans do not believe that abortion should be used as a form of birth control, yet the abortion industry’s own tally confirms that 93% of all abortions are elective abortions. Just 1.5% of all abortions are the result of either rape or incest, the most common exception used by the abortion industry to disprove the general rule that every human being has the basic right to exist.
These numbers should force Democrats to re-evaluate their relationship with an industry predicated on social injustice. After all, Planned Parenthood’s genesis was as an organization committed to what it called social hygiene — yet another euphemism for eugenics that attracted the admiration of certain political parties in Germany during the 1930s.
What the Democrats miss is the fact that abortion is a tragedy. No matter where you side on the question, every abortion is a traumatic and tragic event. Only the most callous and hardened of hearts “celebrate” the act of an abortion. For Democrats to pin their hopes on a pile of dead babies doesn’t strike a soul as a vision for America that is either hopeful or predicated on the principles of social justice — merely convenience where young mothers become victims of an industry built to convince them that a one-time cash transaction is worth the years of pain, therapy, and regret.
Thus far, organizations such as Democrats for Life are attempting to free their party from the grip of the abortion industry. Meanwhile, Republicans nationwide are looking for ways to provide the food, clothing, diapers, job opportunities and housing that non-profit organizations have been providing for decades, while companies such as Amazon are paying for abortions while refusing to provide adequate maternity leave for young mothers and their new babies. If that doesn’t sound like some dystopian Handmaid’s Tale nonsense, nothing else will.