GOP Can Win on Abortion by Highlighting Left's Extreme Views

This writer is fully on board with the Republican strategy of focusing this year’s campaign on all the failed policies of their Democratic opponents.

I share the GOP's determination not to let Democrats use a singular focus on "abortion rights" to distract from the violent crime epidemic, spiraling inflation, the massive human tragedy on the border, the unchecked and dangerous aggressions of our foreign adversaries.

However, this writer disagrees with how Republicans are going about that strategy —figuratively, if not literally, recoiling in apparent fright whenever abortion is mentioned, and responding, in effect, "We don’t want to talk about that!"

This does several things, none helpful to their campaigns.

First, it cedes the field totally to the pro-abortion rights absolutists now running the Democratic Party.

This allows them to misrepresent the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization as a national ban on abortion, rather than what it is— a return of the issue to the democratic process.

It also allows them to mischaracterize even tepidly anti-abortion Republicans as "extremists," when in fact it has been pro-abortion rights Democrats advancing the most extreme measures: abortion up to the moment of birth; denial of care for babies born alive if they are disabled or were born following a failed abortion; forcing us all to be complicit in abortions through our tax dollars; and enacting policies designed to drive anti-abortion pregnancy resource centers out of existence, so women in crisis have no choice other than abortion.

While most Americans do not support these extremes, many are unaware of them, as Democrats and the media disguise their extremism, while Republicans refuse to engage the issue at all.

This Republican approach also enables Democrats to cast the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling in human terms, as an attack on "women’s rights."

Republicans, when they talk about it at all, do so solely in the context of "states' rights" — a legitimate constitutional principle, but an abstraction to most voters.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has proposed a national law restricting abortion after 15 weeks has generated much angst among Republicans, even some who are anti-abortion.

But at least Sen. Graham, by calling for "unborn children" to be included in our "compassion for those who suffer pain," is focusing some attention on the rights of the other human being involved in abortion: the innocent baby being killed — often painfully.

The GOP strategy of silence also has the potential to turn off voters — and not just hard-core pro-abortion voters, who are not going to support Republicans anyway, given the pro-abortion absolutism of the Democrats.

It also has the potential to lose voters — be they pro-life or "pro-choice" — for whom abortion is not the defining issue, but who may be turned off by what they perceive as political cowardice on the part of candidates unwilling to say where they stand on such a compelling moral issue.

And it could even lose some anti-abortion voters, tired of having their support quietly solicited by candidates who counsel caution before elections, with the caveat that "we have to get into office before we can advance the cause."

The problem with that, as the late, ardently anti-abortion Nassau County, New York District Attorney Denis Dillon once told me, is that once elected, such calculating politicians often turn their attention immediately to getting re-elected; and so they still don’t want to engage a controversial issue that might hurt those future prospects.

So, this writer urges anti-abortion Republican candidates to continue focusing on all the critical issues currently confronting our states and nation; but when challenged on abortion, to respond, by pointing out that Democrats are using that issue to distract from all their current policy disasters — and that in any event, it is the Democrats whose abortion policies are extremist.

At the same time, I would counsel those anti-abortion to be cognizant of the political realities impacting anti-abortion candidates and officials — recognizing their need to prioritize other urgent matters, and understanding the limitations they face trying to advance anti-abortion initiatives in hostile jurisdictions.

For three decades, Rick Hinshaw has given voice to faith values in the public square, as a columnist, then editor of The Long Island Catholic; communications director for the Catholic League and the New York State Catholic Conference; co-host of "The Catholic Forum," on cable. He is now editor of his own blog, "Reading the Signs." Visit Rick’s home page at rickhinshaw.com. Read Rick Hinshaw's Reports — More Here.