Recently we’ve seen GOP candidates who were among the most vociferous reproductive rights opponents scrub websites and temper stump speeches to feign moderation. Exhibit A is Blake Masters of AZ, who went from calling for fetal personhood to mealy-mouthed assurances that he wouldn’t change anything.
In a sign that some Repubs realize that bait-and-switch may not save them, one Senate Republican is undertaking a risky gambit:
NBC News: Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., will introduce abortion-related legislation on Tuesday, according to his office. It’s expected to call for a 15-week ban nationwide, with exceptions for rape, incest and safeguarding the life of the mother, three sources said. That will give candidates a more popular position to point to when they are pressed about the issue, the sources said. Graham’s office declined to comment on the legislation, which was first reported by The Washington Post.
The Graham bill would be more stringent than current law in most states but less restrictive than the wave of new abortion laws passed in deep red states this summer post-Dobbs. Only a small fraction of abortions take place more than 15 weeks after conception. In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that roughly 93% of all abortions took place within 13 weeks.
This seems really dumb. Republicans have been building their anti-choice brand for decades, so when the radical clerics on the SCOTUS ripped a 50-year-old right away from half the population, voters knew exactly whom to blame. Graham’s bill won’t pass, but it will bring renewed attention to his party’s role in dismantling long-standing reproductive rights.
Graham’s gambit may also demobilize the anti-choice Republican base. The most energized GOP voters are all about owning the libs, so there’s a chance they’ll see this as snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Maybe I’m wrong. Graham is a breathtakingly cynical shape-shifter, but he’s held his seat and maintained his party influence by transforming himself into whatever persona South Carolina Republicans favor when election time rolls around. So maybe he knows what he’s doing. I’m skeptical.
Open thread.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Baud
Life begins at
conception15 weeks!Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
“We just want to send it back to the states,”
Baud
Hey, you know who doesn’t need to change their position on abortion — Democrats!
Baud
Abortion stops a beating
heartRepublican Party.J R in WV
Senator Graham must get up every morning and roll in a puddle of despicable to maintain his constant level of despicable. After he showers… of course. Hope this backfires one more time.
OT: Anyone wondering if there was an FBI agent with a super-shotgun microphone next to the guy with the video cam on Trump’s golf course while those crooks met to discuss how to avoid going to jail over the stolen documents?
SP123
Uh, this is complete bullshit, right? It’s not a guarantee to access pre-15 weeks in red states, it just tightens restrictions in blue states. States with 6 week bans still get to keep those.
RAM
I’m so old that I remember when Republicans flatly insisted decisions on abortion issues had to be left to the states. That was all the way back to…this past summer. Have to congratulate the GOP on the elasticity of their bedrock beliefs.
Eunicecycle
I feel like you do, Betty. I guess we’ll see, but it still treats women like incubators. It should be a personal decision and not up to the government. And calling abortion after 15 weeks “late term” is very misleading.
Baud
@RAM:
Exactly. They’re undercutting their main argument that each state can do their own thing.
eclare
On Morning Joe, Tim Ryan mentioned Dobbs at least twice.
Baud
@eclare:
👍
oatler
Blake Masters’ ads haven’t mentioned abortion recently, instead The Enemy is your standard Chi-com pedo-groomer who wants to kill you.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@SP123: Good point
lowtechcyclist
@SP123:
Bingo. It’s a cynical attempt, under the guise of moderation, to stick blue states with a 15-week ban, while letting red states continue to ban abortions altogether if they want.
Not to mention, banning abortions after 15 weeks is still a horrible policy, even if it barred more draconian bans.
ETA: ROEvember is coming.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@eclare: A friend is working with the local Ds in Iowa, and they’re being told to mention abortion as much as possible.
Brit in Chicago
This puzzles me. I had thought that most potential crimes in this country are either a matter of Federeal jurisdiction or a matter of state jurisdiction. But abortion apparently can go either way—a matter for the state in there is no applicable Federal law, but a matter which can become a Federal crime if the necessary law is passed. Can anyone explain?
(I’m almost a perfect bilingual, British/American, but every so often something confuses me.)
Baud
@SP123:
@lowtechcyclist:
Where do you see that? That’s an even dumber position than I thought.
germy shoemangler
lowtechcyclist
@Brit in Chicago: In most areas, Federal laws can overrule state laws. But in the absence of Federal laws, state laws still control.
Another Scott
@Baud: +1
I don’t see how they finesse this. Having abortion freshly in the MSM again just before the election seems like bad news for them to me. And why would their hard-liners go along with it? “We’ll get the normies back on board because it sounds reasonable”?? When the normies finally see that everything they do is seek maximum power over the rest of us and their mouth noises mean nothing? Looks like yet another “throw something at the wall and see if it sticks” desperation move to me.
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Anonymous At Work
What I hope for is that Dobbs will convince the drifting Hispanic voters that “No, Democrats aren’t being hysterical about Republicans. They really will deport you for being non-white if they can.”
As well as a few other topics where the Beltway is intent on gaslighting America because “both sides”.
eclare
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Sounds like a good plan.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud: Not dumber, just more cynical.
It will depend on the wording of the bill that Graham says he’s going to introduce today. Either it will have wording expressly overruling more restrictive limits on abortion, or it won’t.
But if it doesn’t, all those laws banning abortion after six weeks, or once a heartbeat can be detected, or from the moment of conception, would remain in place even if this bill were to become law.
Needless to say, I’m fully expecting there will be no such wording.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Sometimes I wonder if the rapid position switches ever confuse their voters (“We hate Russia! We love Russia! We hate deficits! We love deficits! We hate deficits again! We love deficits again!”)
But no, they know their voters. George Orwell was right about “we have always been at war with Eastasia” as about so many things.
Lumpy
The exceptions are such a red herring, it’s frustrating to think that they are not getting talked about or pushed back on hard enough. For example, only a small percentage of rapes are solved/prosecuted (I think I saw 20%, but I may be remembering that wrong). Trying to prove that your pregnancy is the result of a rape is virtually impossible, but even if you could, it’s likely by that time your pregnancy has already progressed beyond the previous Roe time limits. “Life of the mother” similarly useless, as there may not be signs that the mother’s life is at risk, and in medicine you might ask six different doctors for a prognosis and get six different answers. I wish there could be a more nuanced national discussion about how useless the exceptions are. They are not a concession to common sense, they are basically worthless. I guess this is slightly off-topic in this thread, but it’s something that’s been bothering me.
WereBear
But first proved in court, it turns out. Those Republican exceptions brought to you by MAGA.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Ok, we’ll see. I stand by my view that that would be the dumbest thing possible.
Jeffro
I am seeing this hit the news today, and I can only think of three “plans” by the GOP here:
They can do 1 and 2 together, or they can do 1 and 3 together, but they can’t do all three. Either way, they seem to be forgetting that they’ve been showing their true selves all spring and summer, and no one is fooled here.
Nicole
There was speculation on Twitter last night that this proposed ban is an attempt to draw media attention away from bad news coming down the pipeline for Trump. It seems preposterous, but then again proposing this ban less than two months before the November elections also seems like an incredibly stupid move on Graham’s part, so who knows?
Ken
“Sen. Graham’s bill guaranteeing legal abortion through fifteen weeks is an excellent idea, and Democrats can get behind it. Of course we would want to restore the full pre-Dobbs protection for the first two trimesters, but that will be a matter for Senate and House debate.”
Do we have any Senators who would try that? It’s a pity we don’t still have Al Franken.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Brit in Chicago: I’ve been trying to figure out how Parliament works my whole life. Also the Queen’s death has reminded me that I don’t understand what the Commonwealth is either.
jonas
Graham’s bill is a nonstarter for the hardcore anti-abortion base. 15 weeks is an eternity and all that “rape”, “incest,” and “health” stuff are just massive loopholes that slutty tarts and their trixy doctors can use to effectively have abortion on demand. It’s also a complete non-starter for anyone who actually knows anything about reproductive rights and women’s healthcare and lives in a state that offers broad abortion rights. A lot can go wrong in a pregnancy after 15 weeks. This gives Democrats an instant campaign point: The GOP is going to effectively ban most abortions the second they retake Congress and the Presidency.
jonas
@Nicole:
Maybe also a distraction for bad news coming for Graham. He’s under investigation by the Georgia grand jury for his own role in election interference in 2020.
Tazj
I’m not sure how they’re trying to reframe the debate, maybe trying to paint Democrats as extremists again. The Democrats are so extreme they won’t even agree to a 15 week ban! Everyone should have time to squeeze in their abortion by then! Look at Europe! I’ve seen a lot of that but Europe on social media.
Clearly not worried about their leaving to the states talking points now.
...now I try to be amused
Whatever comes of this, it’s got people talking about Lindsey Graham again. Perhaps that’s his main motive. Does anyone know what McConnell thinks of the bill? Is Graham just showboating here?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Nicole: Something weird is happening in Trumpworld for sure. (But arguably, something weird is ALWAYS happening in Trumpworld.) Do we have any new intel on what that “secret” meeting at the golf course was all about?
I’m reminded of the passage in “Good Omens” about the ducks in the pond, in the park that was only ever visited by foreign spies pretending to be there to feed the ducks. They had their preference for certain spies based on the goodies they brought.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
I think the target here are low-info, low-engagement Dem/independents who are a lot more likely to vote in the midterms if they’re riled up about Dobbs, but might well stay home if they’re not. The purpose of this bill is to give them a reason to not be so riled up.
Glidwrith
Something that really burns me, they’ve still pulled us more to their viewpoint:
When was the last time the mental/emotional health of mom was even mentioned?
WaterGirl
@Baud: It’s right there.
It doesn’t say abortion is safe and legal up to 15 weeks. It says that no matter what state you are in, abortion is illegal at/after 15 weeks.
lee
@Anonymous At Work: There is a lot of that thinking going on right now: From ‘The GOP would never do that’ to ‘Yeah I guess they would do that’
Brit in Chicago
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Fair enough. There’s a lot I don’t know about baseball, but I have the impression that it’s not as tricky as cricket…. (On the other hand, I think that what the rest of the world calls football—soccer—is simpler than what we call football here. Except perhaps for the off-side rule, and even that is not so bad.)
Bupalos
I guess they’re counting on voters seeing this as what it is not: “Republicans want abortion legal up to 15 weeks.” Instead of what it is: “Republicans want there to be no personal right, they want most states to ban it completely, and for no states to be allowed to confer it as a privilege past 15 weeks.” This is, of course MORE restrictive than the restrictive situation that we’re looking at right now and which voters are rebelling against. Because there is no way that such a national law could keep states from banning it outright.
But I’m not going to guess as to how dumb voters are. There certainly is always a lot of momentum around anything that can be cast as “let’s compromise,” especially when in reality it’s the maximalist Republican position.
tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat)
@jonas: It also doesn’t address the fact that many fetal anomalies aren’t picked up until after the 15 week mark. It is a tragedy when that happens, but how the woman addresses that should be between her and her doctor. From the way they talk, you’d think it’s all about the stork and happy little bundles being delivered. None of that messy reality should affect policy.
lee
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
‘The Internet’ figured out who all was in that meeting:
Devin Nunes, Kevin McCarthy, Sean Hannity, Eric Trump, Mike Lee, Ron Johnson and a few lawyers.
So a basket of the usual deplorables.
Jeffro
Btw if anyone wants to read an absolute gem of a McMegs column, she posted one late yesterday so breathtaking in its stupidity I’m still having trouble processing it.
“Biden Loses Sight of the Virtues of ‘Normal’ ” She really, really resents being lumped in with the MAGA crowd (even though President Biden did just the opposite).
Here’s my favorite quote:
Yes. She actually. said. all. that.
Got it folks? McMegs is hard at work um unfraying everything, and Biden is fucking all of that up.
Eunicecycle
@germy shoemangler: I reported that tweet too. Last time I checked it was still there.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
The report doesn’t say one way or the other. Silence in an article isn’t proof of anything.
Brit in Chicago
@lowtechcyclist: Thanks. I’m a bit surpised, as I thought all sorts of things were reserved for the states. (Isn’t there a line in the consitution about that? 10th amendment? I guess that which powers the Constitution delegates to the Feds is interpreted pretty broadly, except when doing so doesn’t suit Rupert Murdoch, or something.)
WaterGirl
@lee:
One thing that is done during investigations is watch and track all the peeps to see who interacts with whom, and when, and what might have occurred before the interaction that could have been a factor in the interaction.
So I would say that “the internet” isn’t the only entity that is watching.
WereBear
@WaterGirl: It does look like conspiracy. Just saying.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Makes sense. to me, it’s a talking point generator that Republicans can trot out whenever they’re faced with an abortion question. Repeat 15 weeks over and over again.
Bupalos
@Brit in Chicago: I think you should be confused, because this makes no sense the way Graham would be hoping that voters perceived it. All this really could be would be a federal law criminalizing reproductive choice past 15 weeks. That is, in the case that your state didn’t have a law or didn’t prosecute you, the Feds could. It would not thereby seize that issue and remove it from overlapping state law. The feds can reach down into the states and protect people’s rights against state infringement when it is a matter of things determined to be individual rights under the constitution. Dobbs killed that. It can’t say “since we passed a law on this, you can’t.”
That’s my understanding anyway.
WaterGirl
@Baud: It’s a rare moment when I disagree with Baud. I will savor it.
The wording only speaks to banning. There is not one word about legal until… or protection.
So based on what is “expected”, it’s banning.
I will agree that until we see the wording of the bill, it could say anything at all.
WaterGirl
@WereBear: It most certainly does!
The Moar You Know
@Anonymous At Work: Of all the groups in favor of deporting non-citizens, American Hispanics are most in favor of that. Especially in favor of deporting those of Central American origin.
I frankly do not know how we keep a majority of the Hispanic vote going forward. What they want is not, in general, what white and black Democrats want.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I’m not sure where we disagree. It’s clear there would be a 15 week national ban. What’s unknown is whether Graham’s bill would protect abortion rights up to 15 weeks. The article doesn’t say. I don’t doubt that Graham doesn’t care about protecting abortion rights at all. But it strikes me as even too stupid for him to propose a national ban without preempting more restrictive state laws.
WaterGirl
@Bupalos: It’s like they are doubling down on abortion even after getting hammered after Dobbs.
Hey, we are stupid enough to think all people with vaginas are interchangeable (see Sarah Palin), all black people are interchangeable (see Georgia senate race). So why wouldn’t they think we’re stupid enough to say “okay, they are giving us rape and incest exceptions” that’s enough to make this okay?
Jharp
So much for states rights.
And that been the 7 days a week sell here in Bible country.
Brit in Chicago
@Bupalos: Thanks. That was my understanding too—that when Rose was in place it was a Federally guaranteed right, but that without Roe the Constitution was silent on the subject, so it reverted entirely to the states. But hey, Sen. Graham surely knows what he’s doing, right? Smarter and wiser than you and I, which is why he’s in the Senate and we’re not, right?
Hoodie
@SP123: Of course it is, but it’s the kind of dumb offer that could backfire because he’s opened the door for the Dems to offer a “compromise” of something like 18-20 (or even 15) weeks, but all state abortion laws expressly pre-empted, federal regulation of abortion providers and safe harbors to lower evidentiary requirements for life of the mother, rape and incest (e.g., something like “reasonable inquiry by licensed physician”). You can argue that this would be legitimate use of federal power because the “send it back to the states” con has created a situation where women will more than likely to cross state lines to get care and thus set up interstate commerce/conflict of laws as red states try to do things like criminalizing interstate travel to obtain an abortion. Then you’ve removed all the “no implied right of privacy” stuff from the debate that the constitutional moopists relied on. The whole “send it back to the states” thing only works for the anti-abortion zealots right now because they look at as just a step toward a total nationwide ban, but it also creates the opportunity for a nationwide regulatory scheme.
Bupalos
@Ken: That is what I was thinking D talking heads should do. Just run with it. Instead of arguing against it and explaining that it’s not what they want you to think it is (the argument would help create the confusion R’s are aiming at), do the “pull the chair” move from basketball. Just jump on their side and restate it clearly as codifying Roe. Fantastic idea! Thank you for defending women’s right to choose! Make them follow their momentum right through the lane and out of bounds.
WaterGirl
@WaterGirl:
And this will placate “their people” who are turned off by no exceptions for rape and incest. Great point above that women would have to PROVE rape or incest.
Hey, sorry it took so long to prove that you were raped, beyond a reasonable doubt, but your kid is 3 years old now so it’s too late for that abortion.
Hey, sorry if your 10 years old and uncle brother father teacher minister raped you, but you can’t prove that, so treasure this life that you are lucky enough to have made. (vomit)
Bupalos
@Hoodie:
How is this supposed to work?
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat): Thank you. Quadscreen is not done (to check for many often fatal fetal abnormalities) until AFTER 15 weeks: This test is most often done between the 15th and 22nd weeks of the pregnancy. It is most accurate between the 16th and 18th weeks.
During pregnancy, increased levels of AFP may be due to a problem with the developing baby, including:
High AFP can also mean that you are carrying more than 1 baby.
Low levels of AFP and estriol and high levels of hCG and inhibin A may be due to a problem such as:
Quadruple screen test
The choice of whether to carry and give birth to a child, including a child who may have a very severe or fatal birth defects should be left up to the pregnant person and their doctor.
As someone who has been pregnant 3 times and miscarried twice, including a partial miscarriage that required a D & C to avoid sepsis (medical term is missed abortion) these assholes can fuck right off, it’s not their decision.
topclimber
Looks like my first attempt at this disappeared. Apologies if this is a repeat.
It is telling that it is a man with no wife or daughters is proposing this legislation. You know, someone who has never had to support a significant other while she deals with the seldom-easy decision to terminate a pregnancy.
To channel Politico for a moment, wouldn’t the optics be better for the GQP if a Barbara Murkowski, Susan Collins or Joni Ernst was the sponsor?
Perhaps they are afraid that someone will discover that they or a female in their family have had an abortion. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Peale
@Another Scott: It gets the Democrats to vote against a “reasonable” bill to keep abortion legal so those Republicans can say “look we tried, but the Democratic extremists want a hussy to walk in the door at 8 months pregnant to terminate a pregnancy because its bikini season.”
Bupalos
@Brit in Chicago: The answer is that there isn’t any actual legislation intended. It’s pretend legislation to help Republicans pretend they aren’t what they are.
I don’t know whether it’s smart or not. I could see it working if D’s don’t come up with simple effective messaging to make sure it doesn’t work.
Bupalos
Yikes, I didn’t know they had perfected their Plan X Moderate Hybridization Scheme. We’re in more trouble than I thought.
Mai Naem mobile
There’s an ad running against Masters – don’t know who’s paying for it – but there’s an actual clip of Masters talking of passing a federal fetal personhood bill. They’ve been running the ad daily during the local news hour. They’ve also been running an ad, again a clip of him, talking about getting rid of social security. Masters has such a weasely face.
Paul in KY
@Brit in Chicago: I think I finally understand the offsides rule. They will never do it, but would like to see serious soccer matches played without the offsides rule.
I’m still not convinced it is necessary.
Princess
@Baud: Depends on his audience. If his audience is pro-lifers in reddish parts of, say, illinois, they are going to love it and will turn out to vote GOP. Betty has assumed in hee framing that this bill is meant to muddy the waters. But I can see how it could be useful for the GOP in specific tight congressional races.
Ruckus
@RAM:
“Have to congratulate the GOP on the elasticity of their bedrock beliefs.”
Whatever works in the moment to maintain power, right? An actual platform, actual concepts, especially ones that people need, seems to be just outside their vision. Of course with their cranial/rectal platform actual vision does seem to be problematic.
SFAW
@Paul in KY:
What really gets me is that they now call it “encroachment” (for the defense) and “false start” (for the offense).
Peale
@The Moar You Know: The problem is that Hispanic voters aren’t in jeopardy of being deported. It would behoove liberals to stop treating Hispanic voters like they are undocumented immigrants whose stay in the country is tenuous at best. Since the last amnesty period ended 30 years ago, there haven’t been significant numbers of voters created whose path to citizenship included overcoming a threat of deportation.
oldgold
@topclimber:
Just another incellent idea from Lindsey.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Republican would never vote for this. Are they gonna say only 7% of abortions (with vast categories of exceptions) are murder, that the rest are okay – never.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
Is that why they have a shitty outlook? (Apologies to NotMax for no leaving this for him.)
Paul in KY
@SFAW: Ha! Spoken like a true Murcan :-)
Another Scott
@Paul in KY: Isn’t the problem that without the offsides rule the attacking team will just have a few players camp out by the net and overwhelm the goalie when a long punt appears?
Maybe that guy Mayhew can be persuaded to come back and give us more of the low-down.
Cheers,
Scott.
SFAW
@Another Scott:
Whatever happened to that Mayhew guy? I mean, this Anderson guy seems to know as much as Mayhew re: ACA and healthcare law, but still …
Chief Oshkosh
@SP123: Correctomundo! This maintains all of the horrific red state abortions laws and limits the rights of women in blue states.
Let’s see if our media betters figger this out…
Layer8Problem
@SFAW: Call me a nut, but has anyone ever seen them both in the same room at the same time?
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: The Graham proposal is that nationally no abortion is allowed after 15 weeks conception. If a women is forced to have an abortion prior to 15 weeks due to the law in her state, well then, she she will have abided by the federal law.
Neat trick…
Baud
@Chief Oshkosh:
Do you have a cite for that? I didn’t see it in the article.
ETA: Never mind. I see you said forced to have an abortion, not prevented from having an abortion.
The Moar You Know
@Peale: precisely. Immigration is not a “hot button” issue for Hispanics, unless it’s deportation of ethnic groups they don’t like (Guatemalans) which they are very much in favor of.
Dems need to drop immigration as an issue. It’s now hurting us far more than it’s helping us.
The Moar You Know
@oldgold: that is a thing of beauty right there.
Matt McIrvin
@Glidwrith: The Republican position has been that any “health of the mother” exception, mental or otherwise, is the same as not banning abortion at all, since people could always claim their mental or physical health is damaged by pregnancy.
So they just discount it. But, of course, the reason they could always claim that is because it’s always true. Which is why any abortion bans are bad! The Republicans are just saying outright that the person’s health is disposable here.
Matt McIrvin
@The Moar You Know: Who else should we throw under the bus?
(I remember when it was “women who want abortions”, back in 2004.)
Baud
@The Moar You Know:
I agree people need to stop thinking all Hispanics will support us on immigration. But we don’t drop issues that many of our voters care about, and many do care about immigration. You often see the same argument with guns and, until recently, abortion. It doesn’t work.
Frankensteinbeck
@…now I try to be amused:
“I got what I want. If you stupid fucks screw up now, I’ll peace out and leave you holding the bag.”
@Glidwrith:
I have heard Republicans mention it, specifically to say that it is not accepted as a medical issue in their anti-abortion law.
Betty Cracker
@The Moar You Know: I don’t think we can or should drop immigration as an issue. The country needs immigration for economic reasons, and immigrants need protection from bigots and demagogues. But any Dem politician or consultant who still assumes Hispanic voters are 100% pro-immigrant needs to find another line of work.
Anonymous At Work
@The Moar You Know: Um…didn’t TFG try to remove birth-citizenship from people whose parents weren’t
pure-lily-Aryannatural born citizens? And those born in teh US but close to the border?I can see their belief of “giving us a bad name” but my hope is they wake to the fact that that is the same as “respect us in the morning”.
Sure Lurkalot
@topclimber:
Personally, I think it’s no one’s business unless the person seeking the abortion decides to discuss it. My spouse told me his golf buddy went on and on about how it had to be relegated to the states. Say what, 70 year old man? Are you going to move out of this blue state with codified abortion rights for your deeply held conviction that affects you not at all? No, didn’t think so, so STFU.
artem1s
So Lindsey is proposing to undo the SCOTUS ruling striking down Roe? He wants to codify unrestricted abortions in the first trimester+3 weeks? Will this override all the red state TRAP laws already in place? The GQP is reneging on their promise to the tabliangelist forced-birthers to give them an unlimited supply of white babies to adopt. That’s exactly how this should be spun.
Matt McIrvin
Trump tried to ban Muslims from entering the country and had ICE round up whole families, steal children away from parents and put them in concentration camps. We’re supposed to be OK with that happening so we can win elections? Fuck that. I don’t care how many votes it gets us.
gvg
Every “abortion” after 15 weeks though is one of those heavy issues that really is none of their damn business. It involves medical emergencies and tragic news, and facts they refuse to understand. Those are the cases that they don’t want to admit happen which will make terrible publicity for them and tragic deaths that people won’t forgive them for. Husbands won’t forgive them for!
Actually, their whole movement lives in fantasy land and doesn’t seem to know any real people, but I don’t think this solves anything for them. There are tragedies at every stage of this issue. Always know real people and real science.
Matt McIrvin
@Anonymous At Work: Not just Trump, the whole Republican Party wants to cancel jus soli citizenship for people born in the US and make it depend on how pure your granddaddy was. It might even be a majority-popular position because people aren’t thinking this through (I know self-described liberal Democrats who are for it because they saw some scare story about birth tourism and it struck them as unfair). I am never going to swallow that shit.
GoBlueInOak
Sounds like a bunch of flip floppers to me.
Frankensteinbeck
@gvg:
As @germy shoemangler: quotes:
They live in a fucking fantasy world.
randy khan
I guess his theory is that Republican candidates can say they support this bill without voting on it, since there’s no chance it will reach the Senate floor with Schumer in charge.
Also, I think the 15-week ban idea is now past not just its sell-by date, but past the date when you throw it on the compost because it’s actively decomposing and stinking up your refrigerator. It polled well before Dobbs, but in the post-Dobbs world basically nobody supports it. (Even cuddly moderate Glenn Youngkin realized this, and decided that he would not propose a 15-week ban in the special session of the Virginia General Assembly that he had called for the specific purpose of proposing that legislation.)
tokyocali (formerly tokyo ex-pat)
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: I hear you and I feel it. I was one of those women as well. The only difference was I was in Japan when all my dreams surrounding my first pregnancy came crashing around me. In my case, the baby was diagnosed with anencephaly. We chose to terminate. Six months later I was pregnant again and gave birth in London to a healthy baby, something that might not have happened had I been forced to carry to term. These people do not care at all about women or family planning.
gvg
@Peale: Bull. Dreamers exist.
Plus the process is so slowed by intentional slowdowns that people can’t get legal citizenship. I have have had students whose parents have been deported. They were married to citizens sometimes but still were deported. It takes years to get citizenship and is designed to discourage and confuse.
I think some are illegal too, but if there are no legal routes due to quotas, what do you expect? I know many are legal, as I mentioned married to citizens. doesn’t matter, they get deported after years.
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: Years ago I remember reading about Latin American countries where they went through this whole same cycle, strengthening their abortion bans so that abortion wasn’t just illegal but SUPER DUPER illegal, where women with ectopic pregnancies were dying because they couldn’t treat them until their fallopian tube exploded.
And the line was exactly the same: that there shouldn’t even be exceptions for the life of the mother, because pregnancies that threatened the life of the mother did not exist. Just flat denial.
GoBlueInOak
@The Moar You Know: Latino vote was always gonna turn Italian & Irish at some point.
Mike in NC
To most of us Linseed Graham is a Trump humping imbecile, but in SC all you need to get elected is that R next to your name.
Matt McIrvin
@gvg: They go after legal immigrants who have been here for decades and deport them because they had some trivial misdemeanor on their record. I mention this and people just go “well, serves them right, you wouldn’t want CRIMINALS coming in here, would you?”
UncleEbeneezer
@Jeffro: “it is the president and his advisers who are being recklessly cavalier, performing for their donor base and their followers on social media rather than undertaking the hard, patient work of actually rebuilding our frayed social norms.”
And by “frayed social norms” she’s referring to the First Constitutional Comandment that: Thou Shalt Not Ever Call Out Republicans for their Racism, Fascism etc. We must ALWAYS pretend they are reasonable, respect their bigotry and downplay (or completely ignore) the threats they actively pose to Democracy, Freedom, the planet etc.
UncleEbeneezer
@Frankensteinbeck: And Global Warming isn’t happening (but if it is, it’s fine!), Guns Don’t Kill People, The Vaccines Don’t Work, etc…
Barbara
@Brit in Chicago: There are lots of federal laws that establish “minimum standards” that don’t preclude “stricter” state law standards, e.g., privacy of medical data. So I assume that this law would prohibit all abortions after 15 weeks, but permit states to ban abortion at earlier stages. The federal government could do the opposite, e.g., not permit states to prohibit abortion at a point earlier than 15 weeks, but I doubt if that’s what they are trying to do here. What they are trying to do is stop blue states from securing a right of abortion and serving as a safety valve for women in red states.
And in case you need a snappy comeback to the absurd idea that 15 weeks is “late” in pregnancy: most women aren’t even wearing maternity clothes at 15 weeks.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Matt McIrvin: Another thing that gets forgotten or is not well known, US Military veterans who are undocumented or were brought to the U.S. as children legally but not naturalized, have and are being deported in the same way.
Unified Deported vets support
Barbara
@Frankensteinbeck: You have to understand this as a normative not a descriptive statement. If you value women’s lives at zero, it is never “necessary” to save a woman’s life at the cost of the life of a fetus.
cmorenc
What is the purported constitutional basis for Congress to pass legislation protecting a Roe-like right to abortion, since in Dobbs, SCOTUS rejected that there was any inherent constitutional right to abortion? Without some alternative constitutional grounding for federal power to pass such legislation, won’t the RW SCOTUS majority hold such legislation as an invalid attempt to exert federal authority over the states? The lazy answer is to rant that the RW Federalist Society-infected SCOTUS is gonna do what it’s gonna do damn the actual constitution, but a far more useful answer would explain what alternative constitutional arguments the Justice Dept could raise arguing that Congress does have such power.
Bill Arnold
Graham is doing triangulation from the right-wing; he and people like him are trying to find a political sweet spot, in this case the test is whether roughly 1/2 of Americans say “yeah, we’re OK with stripping rights from women at 15 weeks of pregnancy, and turning them into sentient incubation devices with limited human rights for the remainder of their pregnancy.”
The Republicans do not control the argument any more. American women do.
Barbara
@cmorenc: It’s a good question. This is really not my area of expertise, so I am reluctant to offer any kind of overview, but the lack of explicit constitutional basis for various things is one reason so many federal laws make federal funding (e.g., Medicaid) contingent on the adoption of minimum state standards — “we’ll fund you but only if you meet specific thresholds.” I honestly don’t know what the theory here would be.
Calouste
I think the headline in the Guardian is exactly the messaging the Democrats should have on this:
”Republican Senator proposes nationwide abortion ban”.
No time for subtleties, and if someone says something about “15 weeks”, point out that two months ago the Republicans said it was “up to the states” and now it’s nationwide, so those 15 weeks will turn into zero weeks in no time.
Barbara
@Bill Arnold: It just seems so . . . out of the box from that perspective. The only rationale I can think of me is trying to light a fire under the stalwart evangelicals who might not turn out for a midterm and already think they have won the abortion wars with Dobbs.
J R in WV
@lowtechcyclist:
The “heartbeat” laws are based upon a fraud. That “heartbeat” is a ultrasound unit receiving a tiny electrical signal from a fetus that doesn’t have a heart of any description yet,, and rendering it as a sound.
It was (I assume) intended to boost the morale of a prospective mother, to “hear” the baby’s heartbeat ASAP, and has no medical meaning, as there is no heart to beat at the time these signals can be received.
Actual heart beats in a developing fetus happen far later in pregnancy than 6 weeks. Fraud in every sense of the word!
Barbara
Well, it’s as horrifying as you would expect, and yes, it is set forth as a “minimum” standard to protect fetuses:
Link to Text
Baud
@Barbara:
And it is as stupid as people thought. Expressly preserves more restrictive state laws. I’m flabbergasted that Graham thought this would help take the focus off of the abortion issue for Republicans.
J R in WV
@topclimber:
Does Lindsey even have any female relatives? Any female friends?
Probably only female employees, who have to agree with him on everything to remain employed.
RaflW
Graham went on record in May saying he was in favor of letting states decide. This national ban after 15 weeks (NOT ‘late term’ as he orwellianly calls it) is a gift to Dems.
That he moved the goalposts from earlier indications of 20 weeks shows, among other things, that the 15 weeks is just a temporary position. If they gain seats, they’ll move it to 10. Then 6. At six, as Texas shows, it’s functionally over except for some medication abortion.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: I would hope the defenders would be back if the offensive guys were camping out.
Think it makes the game easier to officiate. The flag dudes can now look for other things.
Damien
Republicans are really trying to get to “she died WITH septic pregnancy, not FROM septic pregnancy” stage of their medical stupidity (in both the sense that they are stupid about medicine and it seems to be a chronic condition with them)
Baud
@Barbara:
RaflW
OMG these f*cking ghouls. Of course Graham’s bill will have no money for this counseling. They really think rape is a gift to these women. I’m shaking with rage.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: That was always such a fucking lie. I’m still angry over 20 years later from listening to that pig antonin scalia give a sanctimonious lecture at ole miss while I was in law school. The SOB smugly said that we should overturn Roe v wade and just “send it back to the States.” This was less than a year after SCOTUS affirmed a federal law banning D&X abortions nationwide for no reason other than the fact that Anthony Kennedy thought it was cky. They were never going to leave iabortion up to the States once they got control of Congress and the Judiciary.
RaflW
@Jeffro: “they seem to be forgetting that they’ve been showing their true selves all spring and summer, and no one is fooled here”
I find the combination of their effort to keep talking about abortion even though it’s killing their political chances (MN’s gov race is basically over* for the Republican, who is an abortion extremist) and then they also talk openly about chipping away at Social Security as if we don’t also know what their end-goal is there?
Do they really never step out of their bubble? It sure seems like they don’t.
*ETA: I sure hope MN Dems keep hammering & working their turnout plan. We need to keep our D S.O.S. and A.G., and try to flip some state Senate seats, so turnout needs to rock.
Barbara
@Citizen Alan: I think this is the law that is being used as the basis for Graham’s legislation, so whatever constitutional principle was used as a basis for congressional authority then will presumably be used as the basis for this legislation.
J R in WV
“To Protect Pain-Capable Unborn Children…” is the horrible title of Lindsey’s horrible proposal. There you go, not protecting mothers at all, just the Republican-voting Unborn Children. Man is a monster.
Citizen Alan
@Jeffro:
Is there any possible benefit to even mentioning the existence of a Megan mccardle column? Every time I even see her name,I grit my teeth. To this day I’m still proud of my temporary ban from the comments on the Atlantic because I called her a sociopath
Citizen Alan
@The Moar You Know: I think part of the problem is our tendency to rely on the term Hispanic Americans as a ridiculous catch all. It is foolish to think that the socio-political views of Mexican Americans are perfectly congruent with those of Hispanic Americans who came from central or South America, to say nothing of the Cubans. We have the same issue with the term Asian American which encompasses immigrants and the children of immigrants from everywhere in the world from the Philippines to Pakistan.
Barbara
@Jeffro: I have gotten to the point with any number of columnists that I just don’t bother and she’s one of them. She is among the worst, IMHO, because she is truly a case of failing upward based on family and school connections. At least Maureen Dowd had to work her way up, once upon a time.
Citizen Alan
@Bupalos: Through the supremacy clause. With a few exceptions, Federal laws will always preempt state laws within the same area.
Bill Arnold
Three points. Uncomfortable with this but may be useful when fighting people driving by Christian Supremacist “theology (not, really)” involving abortion.
– A 15 week old fetus does not have the neural infrastructure to support consciousness: The Emergence of Human Consciousness: From Fetal to Neonatal Life (Nature, March 2009, Hugo Lagercrantz & Jean-Pierre Changeux, worth a skim.). Some argue that consciousness really begins at birth, with prematurely birthed infants in an even more minimal state. Some wave hands and say that we don’t know when human consciousness begins, so best be safe.
– A 15 week old fetus does not have a working heart with valves, etc. (Does after a few more weeks.)
– What is the Uniform Declaration of Death Act (UDDA)? (Last updated June 12, 2018) : Death of brain, cessation of heartbeat. Are life-begins-at-conception religious supremacists opposed to organ transplants? These can involve the use of live cells from the fresh corpse of a person who has legally died. Will they insist that all cells die before organs can be transplanted?
Capri
The entire idea of CPR is that life is not directly linked to a heartbeat. Lots of folks lose their heartbeats for various periods of time and then are brought back. The fixation on moving hearts is something else that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Msb
Thank you, Lindsey, for reminding Americans, just before an election, just how much Republicans hate women. Please proceed, Senator.
Another Scott
WH.gov:
Good, good.
Cheers,
Scott.
Citizen Alan
@Baud:
I would say that there is a difference between (a) Democrats having a policy position and (b) Democrats loudly trumpeting that policy position despite its widespread unpopularity. Case in point: The current stance of the Republican party regarding abortion was a minority position even within the Republican party. So they kept their mouths shut about it and pretended that they would not ban abortion if they got the power to do so. And then, when they got the power to do so, they did so. I have no problem with democrats downplaying immigration reform until they get a democratic president and Congress who have the means to pass it and then just getting it done.
Citizen Alan
@Mike in NC: Yeah, the sad thing about it is that Lindsey Graham could literally switch to the Democratic Party and change absolutely nothing about his stated political beliefs or his voting record except who he would support for senate majority leader, and that would be enough to render him completely unelectable in South Carolina. And the same is true for every red state when it comes to senators and for nearly every red district when it comes to the house.
lowtechcyclist
@Barbara:
You got that right. Specifically, the bill says:
So Tennessee and Texas and all the other states governed by the human equivalent of the stuff in my septic tank would still be free under this law to ban abortions after a heartbeat can be detected, or after six weeks, or ban them entirely, as the mood strikes them.
GibberJack
It’s amazing and yet not really that so many millions of women support this, their own subjugation.
But stupid and foolish are not the same things. And there is religion in the mix too.
This effort is designed to peel off the the clueless and those who would rather accept a three-fifths compromise than a fight.
This is especially so in fundamentalist evangelical and catholic women. They do not see what modern women see as a desirable goal.
So divide and conquer. They do it because it works.