Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

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    • There are a lot of self-identified ‘pro-lifers’ who actually wouldn’t overturn Roe v Wade, there are a lot of libertarian conservatives I know that are strongly personally pro-choice but would overturn Roe v Wade on federalists grounds.

      The key question is separating the personal from the political on this question, and I think we are finally seeing a national consensus emerge on this issue-one that is squeamish about telling women what to do in the first trimester, but squeamish about the rights of the fetus in the second and third trimesters and federal funding for the procedure.

      That stalemate should hold at the national level-as it did even under full GOP control in the 2002-2006 period. What is far more troubling is the backdoor state by state efforts to close down clinics, restrict access to safe facilities for women, gut sex education, and the failure to expand Medicaid in some states. All of these decisions will have dire consequences for women’s health down the road, and it’s something few outlets are talking about.

      • Again from Gallup:

        A second long-term Gallup trend, this one measuring Americans’ views on the extent to which abortion should be legal, finds 50% saying abortion should be “legal only under certain circumstances,” or in other words, favoring limited abortion rights. This stance has prevailed since 1975. However, a combined 49% of Americans takes a more hardline position, including 28% saying abortion should be legal in all circumstances and 21% believing it should be illegal in all circumstances.

        Support for the strong anti-abortion rights position has hovered around 20% since 2011, just below the record-high 23% seen in 2009. Support for strong pro-abortion rights is a notch below the highest levels seen from 1990 to 1995 when it consistently exceeded 30%, but support is up from four to five years ago when it had dipped into the low 20s.

        • I would say the key demo is that nearly 80% of the country favors abortion rights in some capacity, while the official GOP platform does not favor it at all, and increasingly not favoring it in cases of incest or rape.

          That 50% is the strong silent majority turned off by the polarized all or nothing approach the lobbyists on either side of the question would favor. That said, I would say the most polarizing side is the pro-life movement itself, which is it’s own worst enemy. I appreciated that the pro-life club at U Chicago worked with the anti-death penalty groups that I was apart of that lobbied Springfield to ban the procedure. But the members were so extreme, they would never consider my moderate position as anything less than endorsing murder.

          I got called as much by Lila Rose when I interviewed her on my radio program, even my conservative cohost was taken aback and agreed to cut her call off and end the segment (which we had to take down from youtube after her lawyer asked us to). I won’t even use the label ‘personally pro-life’ anymore, since I just find that the term has been hijacked by it’s worst adherents.

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