The Republican Party, of course, is still very much the party of abortion bans. This week, Florida, the third most populous state, began prohibiting the procedure at six weeks. In an interview with Time magazine, Trump said he wouldn’t try to stop states from prosecuting women who have had abortions, and refused to say whether he would veto a national abortion ban. If he wins in November, conservatives have plans to use the Comstock Act, a federal law from the same era as the Arizona ban, to restrict abortion nationwide. Idaho is already in the Supreme Court fighting the federal government’s attempts to make emergency rooms treat women with failing pregnancies before they’re on the verge of death. And in Louisiana, where almost all abortion is illegal, lawmakers are moving to criminalize the mere possession of abortion pills.
Still, in swing states, Republican Party leaders are trying to distance themselves from the anti-abortion movement, treating it much the way skittish Democrats once treated the movement for abortion rights. Back in the 1990s, Democrats relied on pro-choice votes, but haunted by old taunts about representing “acid, amnesty and abortion,” they held activists at a remove, and their leaders often expressed either disapproval or ambivalence about terminating pregnancies. Bill Clinton vetoed anti-abortion legislation and put pro-choice judges on the Supreme Court, but he also said the procedure should be “safe, legal and rare.” As late as 2005, Hillary Clinton called abortion a “sad, even tragic choice.”
Now, however, the Democratic Party is united in championing abortion rights, with the vice president recently making history by visiting an abortion clinic, and it’s Republicans who are flailing as they contend with a pro-choice backlash. It remains to be seen whether anti-abortion forces can acclimate to their new status as the embarrassing stepchildren of a coalition that once coddled them.
At the Arizona Capitol last week, when abortion opponents packed the House chamber to protest its vote to scrap the state ban, few blamed Trump or Lake, and some didn’t even realize the ex-president had opposed the law. After Lake’s event, however, Rees said she was disappointed in Republicans.