The Republicans will never outlaw abortion on the Federal level

Over at RedState Erick Erickson wrote an op-ed titled "The Pro-Life Movement Must Stop Being Whores of the Republican Party".  It is full of whining and complaining that the Republican politicians who promise to ban abortion don't.  In this specific instance, the angst is from the fact that a Republican opposed the latest attempt at kinda-sorta banning abortion because it did not include exceptions for rape.

"I know there are many angered by the title of this post, but the truth hurts. I cannot tell you the number of times I have been to political events where a politician kisses babies and talks Jesus so the pro-lifers in the crowd get thigh sweats and send the politician to Washington. When the politician takes up with his mistress or pays for an abortion or, as Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) did, undermines the pro-life cause, they are just horrified."


I don't understand why pro-lifers are surprised at this.  I've only been paying attention to politics since just before 2000, and I knew within a very few election cycles that at the Federal level, the Republican party will NEVER seriously attempt to give pro-lifers what they want.  (A total ban on all abortions, ever, period.)  Why would the Republican Party give up it's SINGLE most effective tool to get it's base to the polls to vote against their own interests?

"In short, the pro-life movement must stop being the whores of the GOP. The Republican Leadership knows the pro-life movement is in its pocket. They have nowhere else to go. They have no one else to vote for. As much as Republicans look at black voters and tut-tut that they are being taken advantage of by a Democratic Party that knows black voters will not go anywhere, the Republicans are doing precisely the same to pro-life voters."

Except the Dems don't treat minority voters like that.  Mr. Erickson thinks they do, because almost all Republicans seem to be projectionists.  Since the Republicans do it, the opposition MUST be playing the game with the same underhanded tactics they use.

"Our shared agenda will never advance if they keep serving as agents of the GOP. National Right to Life, among others, must stop working so hard to give seals of approval to the GOP and must start fighting the GOP. The pro-life cause must stop being a job protection racket for otherwise failed political consultants and must be a child protection effort willing to fight those failed political consultants and the politicians they back."

Or maybe you could put actual LIVING women first, by providing them the ability to truly be free:  free-to-the-end-user birth control, anonymously and widely available, evidence based sex ed, and yes, abortions on demand and without apology.  THAT would truly reduce abortion rates to nearly zero.  Why, in 2015 is there a single woman in the US who is pregnant without wanting to get pregnant before hand?  Because of shit like this.

"The pro-life cause must stop acting like the Republican Party’s whore and must, instead, show New Testament grace to the world and Old Testament vengeance to politicians."

 I'm not even sure what to say.  Perhaps you could start using evidence, reason, empathy and compassion to women facing difficult choices, instead of trying to punish women for daring to have sex in any way other than YOUR personally God-approved preferred circumstance?

Religion drives the division on the abortion issue, not gender

On BigThink Orion Jones has a piece up claiming that the General Social Survey (an opinion poll of US adults going back decades) supports the idea that abortion is not an inter-gender issue.

   "The greatest difference in opinion over abortion rights exists between women at opposite ends of the political spectrum, not between men and women as is often supposed in popular culture."

I am tentatively in agreement.  (I have not had a chance to review the raw data yet.)  When I ran for Congress in 2012, I got asked about my stance on abortion more than anything else.  (The second most popular question was whether I would send my kids to public school if elected.  Yes, of course I would.)  While I didn't take rigorous notes about the people asking, my memory says I fielded this question from roughly ten times as many women as men.  And of the women who asked, almost all of them were concerned that I would work to make abortion more accessible.  (This was in a major metropolitan area too.)

The women who were opposed to abortion were, every single one, highly religious.  Most of the men who asked about abortion were also highly religious but again; I was asked about my position on abortion by at least ten times as many women.

The abortion issue in our modern day is I think mostly fought by women; highly religious women on one side, less or non-religious women on the other.