As “pro-life” Republicans play politics, abortions increase in the US

As we approach the 2024 election, so-called pro-life Republicans have decided to “clarify” the party’s position concerning abortion by turning the issue into a game of politics, even as the number of abortions increase in the US.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, abortions have reached some of the highest levels in years (via TheHill.com):

Abortion procedures rose in the U.S. last year, even with state abortion bans passed following the Supreme Court’s overruling of Roe v. Wade, according to a study published Tuesday.

An estimated 1,026,690 abortions were reported in the formal health care system in 2023, according to research from the Guttmacher Institute. It’s the highest number measured in the United States in more than a decade.

This is equal to about 15.7 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age and a 10 percent increase since 2020, researchers found.

2023 was the first full calendar year since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, eliminating the 1973 precedent granting the constitutional right to abortion. (Emphasis mine)

This should come as no surprise to my regular readers and listeners. I wrote before and after the Supreme Court decision that murdering unborn babies would continue because the writing was on the wall that Republicans would use the decision to abandon the life issue in the name of political expediency.

There was no lack of hysteria and extremist rhetoric coming from the defenders of a woman’s so-called right to murder her unborn child following the Supreme Court ruling to “overturn” that right, but the sad reality is the court didn’t end abortion, it only ended the lie that it was a constitutional right.

When the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Mississippi abortion case banning abortion after 15 weeks — Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — they took the case to decide “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”

“Pre-viability” is a politically correct word often used by pro-abortionists to rationalize the murder of an unborn baby based on the child’s ability to live outside the womb. In a nutshell, the Supreme Court was only ruling about when or where a baby can be murdered, not whether an unborn baby has a right to life or not.

Of course, the pro-abortion forces in Washington knew this to be so but using the “never let a crisis go to waste” approach to government when it comes to advancing an agenda, far-left extremists were completely willing to play their usual game of politics on the backs of the unborn.

Unfortunately for the million-plus number of babies murdered since the SCOTUS Dobbs v. Jackson decision, Republicans have adopted a “Mission Accomplished” attitude concerning abortion — choosing instead to begin backpedaling on the life issue in the hope of winning elections.

After decades of pretending to defend the unborn, “pro-life” Republicans abandoned faith, values, and science following the party’s shellacking in the 2022 midterms, choosing instead to push the idea that human life may or may not begin at conception, so it’s OK to adopt the incrementalist approach to ending abortion by allowing unborn babies to be murdered as long as it was done in the first 15 weeks or so of pregnancy.

Take Arizona Republican candidate for US Senate and Trumpist, Kari Lake . . . please (apologies to Groucho Marx). Lake went from being “100% pro-life” as a gubernatorial candidate to promoting “rare and legal” abortion shortly after the Dobbs decision (via AP News):

In her most expansive comments on abortion since the ruling last month, Lake told a Phoenix talk radio host that it should be “rare and legal” before saying twice that it should be “rare but safe.” Ross Trumble, a spokesman for Lake, said she meant to say only “rare but safe.”

Now, however, the Republican candidate for the US Senate representing Arizona has moved further left concerning abortion. On her campaign website, Lake now says she would oppose a national abortion ban, preferring to leave the issue to states. “Arizona’s law currently allows abortions up to 15 weeks, and Kari does not support a federal ban on abortion,” her website says. “Abortion is, as the courts decided, an issue for states to decide, not the federal government.”

If Lake’s new position sounds familiar, it’s because it is nearly identical to the position held by the Republican Party’s moral and spiritual leader, Donald Trump, including the idea of a 15-week ban — although he’s now considering support for the idea. Trump often touts himself as the “most pro-life president ever,” but that didn’t stop him from calling six-week abortion ban signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis a “terrible thing and a terrible mistake.”

Another sellout on the abortion issue where Trump is concerned comes to us from a member of the Fellowship of the Pharisees, Robert Jeffress, who defended Trump’s objection to an abortion ban. According to Jeffress, Trump is “very pro-life”, but his comments are his way of simply “pointing out a political reality” concerning the unpopularity of abortion bans among many voters.

While Republicans play politics with the abortion issue, the far left is pushing a boatload of ideas for ways to continue the abortion holocaust, but tops on their list is codifying the right to murder unborn babies into federal law. In his address to the nation following the Dobbs decision, Joe Biden made this perfectly clear:

“Let me be very clear and unambiguous: the only way we can secure a woman’s right to choose—the balance that existed—is for Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade as federal law.”

The move to codify abortion has been in the works for years in the form of the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that will overturn state-level abortion restrictions and guarantee the right to murder an unborn baby “without limitations.”

The Women’s Health Protection Act states that abortion laws and regulations will be considered illegal if they “do not significantly advance reproductive health or the safety of abortion services.” In order for a law to be considered legal, it cannot “make abortion services more difficult to access.” The bill also specifies that abortion laws and regulations cannot “single out” abortion services with restrictions “that are more burdensome than those restrictions imposed on medically comparable procedures.”

Putting aside the likelihood that such a law would now be ruled unconstitutional, the idea of federalizing abortion proves Republicans could have ended abortion years ago because if a law can be passed to protect the right to abortion, a law can be passed to protect life.

From the very beginning, we knew that overturning Roe v. Wade would fail to protect the unborn. But that hasn’t stopped pro-life Republicans from playing politics with abortion, even as the number of murdered unborn babies is exploding.

Abortion hasn’t ended; it has simply changed battlefields.

 

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David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.

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