Predictably, President Biden has had nothing meaningful to say about the outrageous, criminal leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion, but he has been quick to demagogue the justices in the putative Court majority for overturning Roe and Casey, as well as Republicans and abortion opponents. What’s at stake, the president says, is “about a lot more than abortion,” and he warned that “this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization in recent American history.”
Putting aside that widespread, vibrant opposition to the taking of unborn life long predates the political emergence of Donald Trump and his “make America great again” movement (on that score, see Xan’s excellent analysis of “What Americans Really Think about Abortion”), the actual extremists when it comes to abortion are Democrats, very much including Joe Biden — ostensibly, a practicing Catholic — and one who once supported a constitutional amendment to empower states to overturn Roe.
The Clintons, when they led the Democratic Party, used to say that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” As is generally the case with the Clintons, they didn’t actually believe what they were saying. They took pains to avoid describing any kind of abortion they would outlaw for the sake of rarity. But they felt like they had to say “safe, legal, and rare” because even most pro-abortion people in America and the West do not believe abortion should be available on demand, at any time, for any reason.
That is why Democrats continue to play word games and struggle with their abortion rhetoric. They are extremists who perceive the need to camouflage their radicalism.
They are good at this. Politically, the hardest cases for the pro-life side involve pregnancies that result from rape and incest. Although rape and incest cases account for a microscopic percentage of total abortions in the United States, they dominate the Democrats’ description of the pro-life position, and the media pepper pro-life candidates and elected officials with tough, specific questions about such cases. By contrast, Democrats spout nonsense about “safe, legal, and rare,” figuring no one will challenge them on what exactly that means. The result is that the pro-life position, though it is closer to the mainstream position, is portrayed as wild-eyed radicalism, while the pro-abortion position — even down to the euphemistic description of it as “pro-choice” — is cast as the very essence of reasonableness and consensus.
This should not be allowed to continue. Every day, Biden and his flacks should be asked specific questions that will make them squirm and illustrate their abortion extremism because they cannot deliver a straightforward “no” answer.
“Mr. President, do you favor the availability of third-trimester abortions?”
“Ms. Psaki, does the president favor the availability of abortion, at any point in pregnancy, when neither the life nor health of the mother is endangered?”
“Can the White House describe a stage of pregnancy after which abortion should not be legally available?”
“Can the White House describe any limitation on the permissible reasons for seeking an abortion that the president would support?”
Biden cannot allow himself to state support for any of the very popular restrictions that, though not banning abortion outright, limit its availability. He cannot allow himself to suggest that the American people can be trusted to enact abortion laws for themselves through their elected representatives — precisely because he knows that Americans in most states would not vote for the abortion-on-demand regimes favored by progressive Democrats.
It is past time to make that clear by asking Biden and his aides the questions they can’t answer and bristle at being asked — which, unlike abortion, actually is a rare occurrence. That would demonstrate who the real extremists are.