Abortion is not a winning stance

In the campaign for the Election of 2024, abortion was the signature issue on the American left. Democratic candidates, from Vice-President Kamala Harris down, campaigned on the specter of a hypothetical federal law banning abortion nationwide. No Senator or Representative has introduced any such law. They would be far more likely to introduce a joint resolution for a Human Life Amendment, but they won’t introduce that until Republicans command two-thirds of both chambers of Congress. But results in the Presidential race, several down-ticket races, and ten public questions throughout the land show that abortion is no longer the winning issue it once was for the left. Failure to realize that will cost people on the right – as it arguably did in Arizona. More to the point, abortion is a generational issue, by its very nature – and time is on the pro-life side.

How abortion fared in public questions

The closest to a neutral source on the outcomes of office races or public questions is Ballotpedia. They exist to provide the bare facts: which candidate, or side of a public question, won or lost? They provide this table of public questions on abortion in the past election, and the outcome of each:

The devil is in the details

Notice! Nebraska offered voters a direct choice: prohibit abortions after the first trimester (roughly 15 weeks), or allow it “until fetal viability.” Nebraskans voted yes to forbid and no to allow. Similarly, voters in Florida and South Dakota defeated Constitutional amendments to allow the procedure before viability.

Colorado and Maryland each passed abortion on demand, or something close to it. New York passed a measure, the effect of which is next to impossible to determine. Arizona, Missouri, Montana, and Nevada passed bills allowing the procedure with regulations allowed after fetal viability.

“Viability” is already a standard that will reduce the “allowed” period as obstetrical science continues to advance. (Chief Justice John Roberts had hoped someone would “brief” the Supreme Court to show that viability obtained at 15 weeks.)

The abortion law interactive map, as of November 6, showed that Arizona and Missouri constituted net losses for life. Laws in the other States named, remained as they were before the election. But Arkansas, though it took no action, finds an “abortion tourist trap” State on its border for the first time.

Three key Senate races

Pro-life Press highlighted the outcomes of three Senate races, in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Maryland. The losing candidates in each made moves to embrace more protections for abortion. Senator Robert P. Casey, Jr. (D-Pa.) tacked hard toward abortion, after representing himself as pro-life earlier. Senate candidate Kari Lake in Arizona publicly disagreed with an Arizona Supreme Court decision saying that a “trigger law” came properly into force and effect after the U.S. Supreme Court’s seminal ruling. (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 2022.) And former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-Md.) lost his own Senate race after claiming he was “the only Republican who can win” in Maryland.

No doubt the Arizona abortion question passed to nullify its Supreme Court decision. Perhaps no Maryland Democrat will ever trust a Republican. But Kari Lake had a winnable race, and threw it away. (This confirms YouTube influencer Brandon Tatum’s impression that Kari Lake is simply not a strong candidate. She lost, though Trump won and not one Arizona House Republican lost his seat. Tatum didn’t seem to know exactly why she lost. Maybe this is why.)

In contrast, consistent advocacy for abortion on demand did not help Vice-President Harris. She still lost – not only in the Electoral College but in the popular vote.

Some damning statistics on abortion

Pro-life Press also highlighted a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about why abortions happen. This report also had statistics from the Charlote Lozier Institute’s examination of statistics from eight States that keep adequate records. According to it, more than 95 percent of all abortions are elective. The other “indications” (a fancy medical term), in order from the rarest to the most common, were:

• Risk to the life, or a major bodily function, of the mother: 0.2 percent.
• Rape or incest: 0.3 percent.
• Abnormality in the unborn child: 1.3 percent.
• Physical health concern, not elsewhere classified/not otherwise specified: 2.5 percent.

The CDC said: 58% of women had their first abortion, 24% their second, 10% their third, and 8% four or more. Most likely, these women are having the procedure for birth control – so they are more likely to have no children.

And some of these women are vitriolic in their opposition to the idea of childbirth. The results of this last election did not satisfy them, particularly with Kamala Harris losing. A certain woman calling herself “your #1 misandrist” (man-hater) posted this on X:

Ladies, we need to start considering the 4B movement like the women in South Korea and give America a severely sharp birth rate decline:

– no marriage

– no childbirth

– no dating men

– no sex with men

We can’t let these men have the last laugh… we need to bite back

Ladies, we need to start considering the 4B movement like the women in South Korea and give America a severely sharp birth rate decline:

– no marriage
– no childbirth
– no dating men
– no sex with men

We can’t let these men have the last laugh… we need to bite back— 🖤 (@lalisasaura) November 6, 2024

In Korean, the word pronounced bi means no, hence the name of the movement: the Four Noes.Reaction to the post is mixed at best.

Whose side is time on?

What many commentators on both sides are still missing, is that time is on the pro-life side. Leftists like to assume that their ideas will always gain ever greater currency, as children demand ever greater personal license. But they forget the same thing Gilbert and Sullivan’s fictitious Princess Ida forgot:

If you enlist all women in your cause, / and make them all abjure tyrannic man, / the obvious question then arises: How / is this posterity to be provided?

So when the “#1 Misandrist” calls for “a severely sharp birth decline,” she condemns her own side to demographic winter. Meanwhile, women on the right will continue to have children – and those committing themselves more to marriage and family will have more of them. Even in the worst case, the Old Order Amish, the most family-oriented sub-group in America today, will “inherit the Earth.” Already they number 400,000, having doubled in the last 25 years and spread from Pennsylvania to Ohio and Indiana. An Amish woman will have, on average, at least four children in her lifetime, and usually six or seven! With such a high Total Fertility Rate, no wonder their population doubled in a generation!Remember: the replacement level for Total Fertility Rate is 2.1. (Considering the atrocious state of the abortion debate in Canada, the Amish might likely “invade” and take them over first. The Canadians are considering euthanasia for babies. Canada’s population “grows” by immigration only.)

So time is on the side of life, as the Death Culture celebrates death and condemns itself to it. Candidates should remember that, and ignore the demands of a political sub-group bent on suicide by attrition.