Republicans Are Trapped by Their Party's Anti-Abortion Extremism

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(The Nation) In 2019, Tennessee state Senator Richard Briggs, a heart surgeon turned politician, voted for a near-total ban on abortion, in a law that was designed to be triggered if Roe v. Wade were ever overturned. Despite being listed as a cosponsor of the bill, Briggs put remarkably little thought into his vote. As ProPublica reports, “Briggs admits he barely read the two-page bill forwarded to his office.” The lawmaker, ProPublica also notes, “never thought it would actually go into effect.”

Anti-abortion politics was an easy enough game for Republican politicians like Briggs—just so long as Roe was the law of the land. Lawmakers could happily say they were pro-life, decry abortion as murder, and pass a few restrictive laws without much fear of either real-world consequences or significant political backlash. Republican politicians were in the fortunate position of criticizing the status quo by offering hypothetical alternatives that couldn’t be evaluated.

But after the Supreme Court overturned Roe in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Organization decision last year, Briggs and other legislators woke up to the reality that they had passed laws that were exceptionally cruel, and which would lead to women dying. As a heart surgeon, Briggs was especially sensitive to complaints from fellow doctors. Briggs has now joined that small contingent of Republicans who are having second thoughts about the anti-abortion prohibitions they once supported. Briggs is pushing to add clear exceptions for rape, incest, the health of the mother, and severe fetal anomalies to the Tennessee ban.

Briggs isn’t the only Republican doing a partial about-face on abortion. Politico reports, “GOP lawmakers pushing for changes to their state abortion laws are pitching them as both good policy and broadly supported by the public, pointing to polls that show their near-total abortion bans are wildly unpopular.” Representative Nancy Mace of North Carolina recently warned that her fellow Republicans are being “tone-deaf” in pushing for anti-abortion laws (although she contradicted herself by voting for two such laws put forward by the new GOP majority in the House of Representatives).

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Further, Republican defections from anti-abortion orthodoxy are already meeting with a backlash from the base. As Politico reports, “Anti-abortion groups are butting heads with an unexpected opponent as state legislative sessions begin this month: Republican lawmakers.” ...............(more)

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/gop-anti-abortion-extremism/