“This will be sorted out in a week or two; let not your heart be troubled,” Fox News host Sean Hannity added Wednesday night about the Arizona ban. “I can – I can pretty much guarantee it will happen.”
But the reality and internal politics of the GOP are not that simple. And that quickly became clear in Arizona.
State lawmakers immediately sought votes in the Legislature to repeal the harsh 1864 abortion law, reinstated Tuesday by the state Supreme Court. The law bans almost all abortions – including in cases of rape and incest – and threatens providers with two to five years in prison.
But the Republicans blocked them. In the state Senate, the GOP blocked a motion to change the rules that would allow Democrats to introduce a repeal bill. In the State House, a Republican who has criticized the 1864 law pushed for a vote on an existing Democratic proposal to repeal it. But it was thwarted when leaders called for a recess and then a week-long adjournment.
There may be something to be said for a real debate about how to handle the situation, and it’s about time given that the state Supreme Court has suspended the law for 14 days.
But it’s also clear that repealing or even changing the law in a Republican-controlled state legislature is not as simple as it is made out to be.
State House Speaker Ben Toma (R), for example, told Axios that he does not support repeal and would not allow a vote on it. He and state Senate President Warren Petersen filed a brief in the case before the Arizona Supreme Court, arguing in favor of the 1864 law.
Toma is also running in a competitive congressional primary in July against some big names who have taken a hard line against abortion, including former Congressman Trent Franks and 2022 Senate candidate Blake Masters. (Franks has previously protested outside abortion clinics; Masters has said in the past that he would support a national version of Arizona’s 1864 law, and he responded to this week’s news by saying, “I am proud to be pro-life and I make no apologies for that.”)
Toma’s situation is a microcosm of the Republican Party’s broader dilemma. It is one thing to say that the 1864 law goes too far; it’s another to know what to do about it. Do you take him off the books completely and let Arizona’s 15-week ban in 2022 take over? How many weeks do you set the ban for? Do you simply add exceptions for rape and incest and/or remove the threat of prison for providers?
The result could indeed be that Republicans greenlight the legalization of at least some abortions. This is the kind of thing that might prove difficult to convince your fellow supporters, many of whom sincerely believe that abortion is murder and should be treated as such. A Wall Street Journal poll last month showed that only a third of Arizona Republicans believed abortion should be generally legal.
In recent years, the Republican Party has been torn by the interests of some Republicans appealing to the far right and by the interests of the party as a whole. And Arizona in particular has seen one of the most extreme GOPs in decades. All of this looms large here.
The situation in Florida will not find a clear solution either.
There, the six-week abortion ban that the state Supreme Court approved last week was passed by the state Republican Party and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) l ‘last year. The court also greenlighted a measure passed in November that would enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution, giving voters the power to veto the six-week ban.
Given that the Republican Party just signed the ban into law, it seems unlikely that the state legislature will quickly reverse course. And it is also far from certain that voters will do it for them.
Even though measures in favor of the right to abortion have been adopted without fail since Roe v. Wade was canceled, even in red states, Florida has a higher passing threshold than most: 60 percent. This is a threshold that such measures have failed to reach in similarly situated states like Michigan (56.7%) and Ohio (56.8%).
An Emerson College poll released Thursday reinforces the difficulty the measure faces. It shows support for the amendment outpacing opposition by 17 points, 42 percent to 25 percent, but with a third undecided, leaving the measure well short of 60 percent at this early stage.
The poll also shows that just under 6 in 10 voters view the six-week ban as “too strict” – 57% – as well. suggesting that reaching 60 percent could prove difficult. (The others said the ban was “about right” or “not strict enough.”)
What we might have is a situation where a strong majority of the state votes against the GOP ban, but that’s not enough to actually blush about the ban. It’s also possible that some conservative voters who think the six-week ban is too strict may not want to go so far as to fully enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution, leaving in place what they consider it a suboptimal policy.
Trump, in a video Wednesday night, put on his political strategist hat and gambled that his focus on states’ rights — while avoiding specifics — had neutralized the abortion issue currently haunting his party.
“The only problem (the Democrats) think they have is abortion,” Trump said in a video posted on social media. “And now all I’m saying is let the states take care of it. And this totally solved this problem.
washingtonpost
