Even if baby and mother are healthy, Wisconsin’s Democratic Senate nominee says abortion should be allowed after viability.
Even if baby and mother are healthy, Wisconsin’s Democratic Senate nominee says abortion should be allowed after viability.
Milwaukee, Wis. — Wisconsin’s Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mandela Barnes, whose lead in the polls slipped away in September after he was pummeled over extreme stances on police funding and ending cash bail, is trying to reset the race by focusing on abortion. But Barnes’s own extremism on the issue — openly opposing any legal limit through all nine months of pregnancy — could prevent keep him from making any gains against incumbent Republican senator Ron Johnson.
On Saturday, Barnes held a “Rally for Roe” in Milwaukee with the city’s Democratic congresswoman Gwen Moore and Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson. “We need to get to 52 [Democratic senators] in order to codify Roe,” McGill Johnson told reporters when asked why she was focused on Wisconsin out of all the competitive Senate races. “We know that the voters of Wisconsin care about access to abortion. . . . Seventy percent of Wisconsins [sic] believe that Roe should be the law of the land, and so we are here to energize them.”
There was little sign on the ground that the issue is energizing voters: The crowd that showed up for the Roe rally at Milwaukee Marshall High School (Barnes’s alma mater) filled up less than half of the school’s gymnasium. One shouldn’t read too much into the size of crowds at political events, of course. But polls so far haven’t shown that the issue is moving swing votes from Johnson to Barnes.
The big problem for Barnes is that his own extremism on abortion will make it difficult for him to make any headway on the issue.
During a press gaggle after the abortion rally, National Review asked Barnes if he thought abortion should be legal after viability — when a baby is capable of surviving outside the womb — even if the pregnancy doesn’t pose a risk to the physical health of mother and the baby is healthy. Barnes made it clear that, even in those circumstances, he opposes any legal limit on abortion:
National Review: Lieutenant Governor, last night at the [Wisconsin Senate] debate Ron Johnson said that you support abortion up until birth. You responded you support Roe. But what about after viability, when Roe said that there could be limits? Say at 23 weeks of pregnancy, if the pregnancy doesn’t pose a risk to the physical health of the mother — [the] baby’s healthy — should abortion be legal or illegal in those cases after viability?
Mandela Barnes: It all goes back to this decision being made between a woman and her doctor. That’s as simple as it gets.
For most voters, abortion after viability is indeed as simple as it gets: The overwhelming majority says it should be illegal. Viability (mostly a function of lung development) occurs as early as 21 to 22 weeks of pregnancy, and a 2013 study reported that data suggest abortions between weeks 20 and 28 of pregnancy are not performed for “reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.”
In a follow-up question at the press gaggle, I pressed Barnes again on whether he really believed that abortion should be legal after viability, even when both baby and mother are physically healthy:
NR: So even when there’s no physical threat to the mother’s life and the baby’s healthy after viability?
Barnes: I used Texas as an example yesterday. When there’s a complication with a pregnancy, who gets to determine if there is a complication? Who exactly knows? That’s why it’s important for a woman to be able to make that decision with her doctor. Ron Johnson doesn’t have a medical degree.
That Barnes would choose Texas as an example, rather than Wisconsin, is telling. Wisconsin’s abortion law makes it abundantly clear that doctors have the authority to determine when there’s a complication. The text of the Wisconsin statute says the prohibition on abortion “does not apply to a therapeutic abortion which: (a) Is performed by a physician; and (b) Is necessary, or is advised by 2 other physicians as necessary, to save the life of the mother.”
There have been reports of cases in Texas and some other states where doctors have delayed treatment for pregnant women, before viability, due to a misinterpretation or unreasonable fear of the law. But I was asking Barnes about abortion after viability — when doctors can end a pregnancy without ending a child’s life. Very late in pregnancy, after a baby clearly is capable of surviving outside the womb, a C-section that can save the baby’s life can be performed in a matter of minutes, while a late-term abortion procedure takes days to prepare and perform.
In theory, Wisconsin should be one of the states where the issue of abortion should help Democrats the most. They are campaigning against what they call the state’s “1849 law” that prohibits all abortions except to save the life of the mother. The law was enacted one year after Wisconsin was admitted to the union, enforced until 1973, and never repealed during the 49 years following Roe (even when Democrats controlled the legislature and the governorship — as recently as 2009 to 2011). The law is now facing a legal challenge, but elective abortions have stopped in the state.
One reason the general ban on abortion may not be moving many votes in Wisconsin is that it directly affects only a small percentage of residents, and its effect is very small. Before the Supreme Court overturned Roe, about 6,000 abortions were performed each year in a state of six million people, and, as the Guttmacher Institute notes, “some 97% of Wisconsin counties had no clinics that provided abortions.” Most of those abortions were performed in Milwaukee and Madison, cities close to Illinois, a state with an extremely permissive abortion policy.
“We already lose so much talent in this state. We have an issue with brain drain,” Barnes said at Saturday’s rally before condemning Johnson for “being so callous as to say women can go to Illinois — of all places.” The crowd laughed at Barnes’s jab at the rival state. “You know, honestly, people gotta go to Illinois for enough,” Barnes said, drawing more laughter from the crowd. The specter of a 50-minute car ride to Illinois doesn’t seem like the kind of issue that will move a lot of votes. But for all pro-lifers and many pro-choicers, a vote on abortion is a matter of values, not narrow self-interest, and the debate in Wisconsin isn’t over.
Barnes has been hitting Johnson for opposing abortion without exceptions, but Johnson supports exceptions in cases of rape, incest, and when the mother’s life is in danger. Johnson also supports a state referendum letting voters decide the issue and has even drafted proposed language (but the state legislature has rebuffed calls for a plebiscite). Johnson won’t say exactly how he would vote in a referendum, but he opposes Barnes’s position of supporting abortion “right up until the moment of birth.”
Right now, Johnson leads by 2.7 points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. If Barnes prevails despite the national political environment, that would suggest the abortion issue did indeed play an important role. (It’s also worth keeping in mind that Johnson’s approval and favorability ratings were suffering long before the Dobbs decision.)
What’s clear is that the stakes could not be any higher on the issue of abortion than they are in Wisconsin. “It is a 50–50 Senate,” Barnes told the crowd. “If we get rid of Ron Johnson, if we pick up one more Senate seat, we can get rid of the filibuster.” Democrats probably need 52 seats to kill the filibuster. If they get there and keep the House, they would certainly enact a sweeping abortion law that effectively imposes Barnes’s stated position on abortion — legal through all nine months of pregnancy in all 50 states.