"Pro-life" might not mean what you think-- a quick note for reporters and political observers
Quite awhile ago now, I ran this piece at The NY Times on the GOP and abortion.
Since then, quite a few reporters have started treating me a bit like the “oracle” when it comes to the GOP and abortion policy. This is massively ironic to me, since I have always occupied firmly minority ground where my stance on abortion is concerned: I am one of the rare breed of Americans that is pro-choice, but also firmly anti-Roe.
What that means: I think Roe (and even moreso, Casey) was incorrectly decided. I think the decision makes no sense. I don’t think the U.S. Constitution protects the right to an abortion.
So, I think abortion policy is a matter for the states (and perhaps some states’ constitutions do enshrine a right to an abortion; different state constitutions are, well, different!).
But I also think states should allow abortion in the first trimester, and allow abortion in any trimester if the mother’s life is in jeopardy. Not health, but life.
Until last year, this made me a minority among both pro-choice people and GOP voters. Most GOP voters would have said they were pro-life. Most pro-choice voters would have said they were pro-Roe.
Imagine my surprise to wake up in the year 2024 to find that a major party candidate and his socially-conservative-appearing running mate would have damned near adopted my super-minority abortion position— and that the presidential nominee in question would have the balls to seriously go on stage in a debate and claim that everyone in America shares this opinion. If that were true, man, I could have saved myself a lot of arguments over the years with basically everyone.
Let’s be clear: It is not true. I guess it’s nice that Donald Trump and JD Vance and I share the same position on something. I certainly never expected it. But I’m pretty sure not that many other Americans actually agree with us.
This is one of the things I keep getting asked about: Is Trump’s abortion stance going to help or hurt in November?
I don’t have the answer to that, though I have thoughts I’ll provide at the end of this post.
What I do want to do here, upfront, is underline that the old terminology we used before Roe was overturned has become almost useless in understanding where actual real, living, human beings— especially on the so-called “pro-life” side of the debate-- actually are. This really matters for reporting accuracy and, well, for all of us understanding where our friends and family may truly be on the issue.
Here are a bunch of different positions different groups of Americans have on abortion. This is way more complicated than “pro-choice” or “pro-life,” as you will see— and about the only utility those terms now have is people signaling what branding they like with descriptions, not what they actually believe.
Let’s start with the easy category, and move to the hard category, having regard to how I view this in terms of candidates selling abortion policy to the largest group of voters:
Pro-Roe, but only pro-choice in the first two trimesters or after, in the cases of rape, incest, where the mother is a teenager or younger, or where the mother’s life or serious physical well-being is in jeopardy.
In my experience, when you press people on abortion policy and what they really think— and I’m not relying on focus groups here, I’m relying on actual conversations with real people that sometimes span days or weeks or even years— this is the most common default. But it’s not a majority.
Most people think there is a federal right to an abortion that the Constitution protects. They haven’t read Roe. They don’t really know what it says. But the Supreme Court said it, and not when that weirdo Clarence Thomas was on the bench, either. They agree with the outcome, and think that surely the Constitution does and must protect this (even if for reasons that were never cited in the Roe decision). It’s logical. It makes sense. It’s practical.
But they also don’t like the idea of anyone aborting a baby that, if the mother stuck it out another 3-4 months, would be a baby she could give up for adoption if she didn’t want it, and which has a bevy of life signs, is a separate human being to her (if a dependent one), etc., etc. It’s hard to convince this chunk of people (and groups beyond them) that a fertilized egg is alive. It’s easy to convince them that what looks like a very small, dependent baby on a sonogram is, in fact, a baby, with some rights. So, they don’t like the idea of allowing abortions after that point, unless the mother was raped, a victim of incest, or carrying the pregnancy to term will risk killing both mother and baby.
I would hazard a guess that this is the true position of probably 30% of Americans, and a higher proportion than that in blue states.
Anti-Roe, and pro-life but absolutely against abortion after the first 6-8 weeks (or should that be pro-choice for the first 6-8 weeks? See how this gets confusing and branding becomes really key in how people describe themselves, as opposed to the substance of their views dictating the language we use to describe them?) except in cases of rape, incest, and where the mother’s life is in jeopardy.
These people believe Roe was a ridiculous act of judicial activism and that of course the Constitution doesn’t protect abortions (they will oftentimes say things like “abortion wasn’t even a thing when our country was founded,” which isn’t really, uh, true, but sounds good— and yes, OK, I’m sure the founders weren’t thinking much if at all about it). They think if an immediate and swift termination is sought and obtained, that’s OK. But they want an early cutoff point that in practice could mean that some pregnant women don’t realize they’re pregnant before they hit the cutoff date.
They usually consider themselves to be pro-life and would absolutely never, ever think to call themselves pro-choice— but I think they are, in the post-Dobbs landscape, super, super moderately pro-choice, should describe themselves as such and be described as such. But they usually really value the “pro-life” label, and they really hated Roe. So maybe we’ll call them “moderate pro-lifers.”
Including all the rape, incest and life of the mother exceptions, this is probably about 20% of the population, though perhaps higher in some purple states (e.g., Georgia).
If you take out rape and incest exceptions and just keep life of the mother, the number falls again, maybe to 15%— but oftentimes, I find these folks are more focused on the cutoff point than the exact exceptions offered, so I’m lumping them all together here because hell, I am not actually writing a book.
Anti-Roe, pro-life from the moment of conception except in cases of rape, incest, and where the mother’s life is in jeopardy.
This is what I personally call “three-exception pro-lifers.” Like category 2, they believe Roe was a judicial travesty. They think abortion policy should only rest with the states. And that states should lock down against abortion pretty hard. For what it’s worth, they also tend to consider that any woman who got pregnant as a teenager or younger had to be the victim of rape— which is important to understand, even if I personally knew an eleven year-old who got pregnant through consensual sex with a kid who was not going to meet the criteria for being a statutory rapist. I think they’re about 10% of the population, but much higher in red states.
Tied for third place: Pro-Roe, but only pro-choice in the first trimester or maybe month 4 of pregnancy, in the cases of rape, incest, where the mother is a teenager or younger, or where the mother’s life or serious physical well-being is in jeopardy.
This is a smaller category than category #1, because too many people hear about the outlier case involving the 22 year-old who really, genuinely didn’t realize she was pregnant until she’d missed four periods in a row, maybe because she never had regular periods anyway, and so they default back to category one. I think this is perhaps 10% of the population, but again, higher in blue states.
Tied for third place: Generically “pro-life,” but in practice wouldn’t vote to ban abortions really under any circumstance in the first five months.
A lot of these people don’t (or didn’t) have firm views on Roe, and in my experience, they are more concentrated in the Midwest and Northern Appalachia. They call themselves “pro-life” but in practice, they’re more pro-choice than someone like me. They basically want what they consider to be “practical” solutions and don’t fret the details nearly as much as a lot of the rest of us do. “Pro-life” is more a signifier to them, not an actual expression of policy. Again, I think they’re about 10% of the population, but higher in the regions I’ve mentioned, which makes them politically more important to appeal to.
Tied for sixth place: Anti-Roe, pro-life from the moment of conception except where the mother’s life is in jeopardy.
This is a fairly small population— we’re now moving into single digits except in, perhaps, the reddest of red states. The people I know who take this position are mostly from places as red or redder than South Carolina. This is also the category where I have personally found you start generating the most support for a nationwide ban on abortions that goes well beyond just the final trimester. The other categories are more mixed. These people are probably about 5-7% of the population, but again, higher in the Alabamas or Oklahomas of the world.
Tied for sixth place: Anti-Roe, pro-choice.
This is me. Most of the people who fall into this category are people who have studied law, or are major league political dorks. Also, people who did a lot of debate at college/university. But I repeat myself…
These people have usually read the Roe decision or, even worse, the Casey decision. We all find it mind-boggling and think it’s absolute crap.
But we think even though the system designed by the framers of the Constitution clearly leaves abortion to the states, states shouldn’t actually ban it. Some of us think states shouldn’t ban it at all. Some think states should ban it but only after the first 4-5 months. Some people think states should ban it after three months.
Since this is about 5-7% of the population, getting into the minutiae and math of “at what stage” state-level bans should apply isn’t going to be terribly useful, so I’ll leave this here, with a second reminder: Donald Trump may think everyone thinks this. But hardly anyone actually thinks this.
Ironically, a lot of the people who do think this tend to be the people who hate Trump the most. Yes, really. Even more than progressives. It’s mostly libertarians and weirdo-moderate-centrist-dorks. We don’t live in one state more than another, which makes us politically not easy to cater to (in addition to mathematically kind of useless).
Tied for sixth place: Pro-Roe, pro-life.
I swear to God, I didn’t make this up. These people do exist!
They’re mostly (but not entirely) Republican women in the 55+ age bracket who come from well-off redder states, in my experience, and who have personally benefited from feminism to a huge degree and really don’t like shitting on the sisterhood, or being seen to shit on the sisterhood.
Kay Bailey Hutchison is an example of one: Firmly adopted pro-Roe and pro-choice language to describe herself, but also voted for lots of abortion restrictions in practice.
If you think these people make zero sense, you are not alone— they are probably the most confounding group that pro-choice and pro-life activists (and political consultants) have to deal with. I think they largely think that unless it’s to save the mother’s life, as a personal ethical decision, no one should ever, ever, ever abort, but they don’t like the idea of “dictating” that overly to other women, or being seen to take that kind of position. They might not say they think it’s part of the patriarchy, but they do think that (usually), and they’d rather pay all of the teenaged niece or granddaughter’s medical bills and her rent and childcare bills going forward in order to have her carry an unplanned pregnancy to term.
I have met more women from Texas and the Mountain West who fit this profile than anywhere else, for what that’s worth.
I’d say this chunk is about 5-7% of the population also. But they don’t always vote in swing states or states in which big media tends to be clustered, so people don’t tend to notice them as much.
Pro-Roe, and for allowing abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.
This is a position that only the most hardcore defenders of abortion rights and Democratic politicians who cater to them will take. These people often focus on stories of the mother who found out in month eight that her baby has a condition that means that when born, it will basically gasp for air and suffer tremendously as it suffocates to death, or be born with so many undeveloped organs that the chances of survival are less than 1 percent. They believe that you have to keep abortion legal in all nine months so that women in this situation can abort and spare their babies, and themselves, what would be worse trauma, caused by continuing a pregnancy all the way to delivery. There is a lot of sympathy for women in these cases, but few people actually agree that this is the right policy solution or that the relatively small number of cases that fit this kind of description justify allowing a perfectly healthy 3o year-old to abort in month 8 just because she feels like it. So, in practice, I think this is about 3-5% of the population, but again, higher in blue states. And very, very loud.
Hopefully, after reading through all of this, you see what a massive pain in the ass abortion policy really is when you get down to brass tacks— and why it’s just so much easier for us to just sort into “pro-choice” or “pro-life” even though those terms mean absolutely nothing in many, or even most cases— especially since a ton of voters do not actually vote on policy at all.
(Hopefully, also, my numbers added up… look, I managed to score in the 35th percentile on my maths SAT and I did not have the maths here checked by CFO hubby or maths-whiz kiddo).
You can also see why politicians like Vance have wound up where he is on the issue out of political necessity (Trump is another matter; I have never believed Trump is pro-life in any meaning of the term; if you held a gun to my head and told me I had to place a bet on whether or not Trump has ever paid for an abortion, I would bet he has— though I have no evidence, just gut instinct; the dude donated to Planned Parenthood, which in my experience is not what people who are actually pro-life do).
As Vance has correctly ascertained, “pro-life” encompasses a ton of people who don’t actually want to ban the overwhelming majority of abortions— maybe even moreso in his state than many others.
This all brings us to the part you guys really care about, which is “who has the better abortion position politically, Trump or Harris?”
There’s no easy way to answer that question, and the actual election result won’t answer it either (though maybe exit polls will give us a glimpse— though that is also assuming anyone actually understands the candidates’ abortion policies as opposed to some historical abortion policy advocated by their respective parties, and I sure wouldn’t bet on that).
But here are some ways to think about the question:
Which policy position is the closest to the largest number of voters?
On this count, I think Harris wins, but maybe not by much, and maybe only because people who really are pro-life actually are not getting policy they want out of Trump going forward— and because Roe has already been overturned.
Anti-Roe people, pro-life or pro-choice, already got what they needed from Trump. Now they have a lot of reasons to care about state policy, but few reasons to care about federal policy (except for the small group of people who actually want a federal abortion ban).
Pro-Roe, pro-choice people have a lot they want that is not currently on the table. Harris offers it. Trump is purporting to, but most of them were pro-Roe, not anti-Roe, pro-choice, so I just don’t think the math works that well for Trump here. True, he can’t win without the anti-Roe, pro-life people, and he can’t win without a good chunk of people who one way or another are functionally pro-choice, which is why he’s staking out this position. But I think no matter what, he’s at more risk of numerical attrition on the issue than she is.
As everyone who paid attention to Bruno Gianelli on the West Wing will tell you, if your business is politics, not policy, you want the issue, not the resolution of it. Trump gave most pro-lifers the biggest thing they ever asked for: Getting rid of Roe. It’s hard to motivate people on an issue if you already delivered the result.
Who exercises outsized influence within the political system, making their 5 or 10 or 15% more valuable than it should be?
This is, I think, the real problem for Trump and the big advantage for Harris. Strongly pro-Roe, pro-choice people have a massive incentive to donate to her and volunteer for her, whereas Republican phone banking and door-knocking operations have typically been staffed a lot by nice little old ladies who are firmly pro-life and close to single issue voters (or actual single issue voters!).
Again, Trump gave these people what they wanted. I’m unconvinced as of now that they’re doing what he wants— i.e., donating and volunteering to the degree needed for him to secure a victory.
In Georgia, for example, I keep hearing that traditional GOP grassroots are MIA, and it’s all down to Elon Musk’s paid army. That might work. This is not a good environment for any Democrat to be running in (see inflation column!). But it’s totally untested, so we just don’t know. If I were Trump’s campaign, this would probably be one thing waking me up in the middle of the night.
Reporters, in my opinion, underrate the importance of these kinds of turnout activities for campaigns. In my opinion, this is where the Obama campaigns truly excelled. Anecdote: On Election Day 2012, the Obama people had been into my building in Northern Virginia before commuting time and left notes for everyone on their list of committed Obama voters reminding them to vote. In the early afternoon, more notes—Post-Its— appeared reminding people where to vote and when the polls closed, for those who apparently had not voted.
McCain had a really solid operation where military and veterans were concerned, especially (side note: The Obama campaign actively did try to disenfranchise some of these voters). We probably performed a point better in Virginia than we should have, entirely thanks to veterans calling military and other veterans on their lists in the run-up to Election Day.
It’s harder to report on this stuff and get it right because a) campaigns don’t want what they are, or are not, doing publicized (no one wants to telegraph strategy to the opponent) and b) writing up the latest poll numbers is so much easier. But this is where the presidential election will be decided, with three weeks left to go. It’s not going to be message. It’s not going to be ads. It’s not going to be comms. It’s not going to be whatever October surprise. Early voting has begun, absentee ballots have gone out, and this is about everyone turning out every single voter in their camp now.
This is why abortion policy really matters— though yes, I do think the pro-Roe, pro-life voters in a place like Arizona could be important, and I do think Catholic voters being a little bit more committed to fighting state level abortion battles could also matter in places like Pennsylvania (so, too, could be women in category #1 above, enough of whom might just see Dobbs as deal-breaking for them).
We’ll see how it all plays out soon enough. My one wish ahead of that is that we can stop dumbing this stuff down to “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” The terms have become useless now, and it seems like JD Vance might be one of the few people who has actually noticed.