RandomGuy
10-08-2021, 12:49 PM
I am glad I wasn't the only one to notice the quietness of the Conservative Outrage Propaganda Factory.
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Few political issues inflame passions so much as abortion. The issues of a woman’s right to bodily autonomy (for abortion-rights advocates) and the sanctity of life (for their opponents) are so elemental that scant room exists for compromise, conciliation, or cool analysis.
Yet something strange has happened since a new Texas law that practically bans abortion after six weeks went into effect this week, with the passive assent of the U.S. Supreme Court. Liberal groups have been predictably furious and upset, though they recognize that Democrats who control the White House, the House, and (tenuously) the Senate cannot do much. More left-leaning and centrist media outlets, having largely ignored the law before it went into effect, have now entered overdrive in their coverage.
But conservatives have been conspicuously silent. As Vox’s Aaron Rupar, who obsessively tracks Fox News, noted, the network paid little attention to the Texas law for much of the day Thursday. Later in the evening, Tucker Carlson did discuss it, sprinkling bad information in as he went. Some anti-abortion organizations have celebrated the news; my colleague Emma Green interviewed John Seago, the legislative director of Texas Right to Life, who was jubilant. But across much of the right, reaction to the law, and the Court’s refusal to block it, have been met with either silence or muted approval.
...
One possibility is that many anti-abortion conservatives understand that their victory this week is tenuous. Texas’s law relies on a novel mechanism: Rather than imposing a state-enforced ban on abortions, it allows private citizens to bring suits against people who provide or even abet abortions after six weeks. “The statutory scheme before the court is not only unusual, but unprecedented,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts, who would have blocked the law, in a dissent.
A second theory is that conservatives understand the law will be unpopular. This is probably true, and to some extent explains the understated reaction on the right. Polls generally find that 60 to 65 percent of Americans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade.
...
Not only is banning abortion outright unpopular, but overturning Roe might be a Pyrrhic victory for the national Republican Party, which would lose one of its strongest wedge issues. The abortion wars would not end (they never will), but the end of Roe would shift the battlefield and might take some momentum away from the right.
As the impact of Texas’s law sinks in, Republican elected officials in several states have begun to express interest in exploring their own version of the law. In part, that reflects the demands of conservative bases in their home states, and in part it reflects a recognition that as long as Democrats are eager to make a fuss about the issue, it will get attention. The quiet may end soon, but the underlying political obstacle course for conservatives seeking to eliminate Roe isn’t going away.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/why-right-so-quiet-about-texass-abortion-law/619991/
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Few political issues inflame passions so much as abortion. The issues of a woman’s right to bodily autonomy (for abortion-rights advocates) and the sanctity of life (for their opponents) are so elemental that scant room exists for compromise, conciliation, or cool analysis.
Yet something strange has happened since a new Texas law that practically bans abortion after six weeks went into effect this week, with the passive assent of the U.S. Supreme Court. Liberal groups have been predictably furious and upset, though they recognize that Democrats who control the White House, the House, and (tenuously) the Senate cannot do much. More left-leaning and centrist media outlets, having largely ignored the law before it went into effect, have now entered overdrive in their coverage.
But conservatives have been conspicuously silent. As Vox’s Aaron Rupar, who obsessively tracks Fox News, noted, the network paid little attention to the Texas law for much of the day Thursday. Later in the evening, Tucker Carlson did discuss it, sprinkling bad information in as he went. Some anti-abortion organizations have celebrated the news; my colleague Emma Green interviewed John Seago, the legislative director of Texas Right to Life, who was jubilant. But across much of the right, reaction to the law, and the Court’s refusal to block it, have been met with either silence or muted approval.
...
One possibility is that many anti-abortion conservatives understand that their victory this week is tenuous. Texas’s law relies on a novel mechanism: Rather than imposing a state-enforced ban on abortions, it allows private citizens to bring suits against people who provide or even abet abortions after six weeks. “The statutory scheme before the court is not only unusual, but unprecedented,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts, who would have blocked the law, in a dissent.
A second theory is that conservatives understand the law will be unpopular. This is probably true, and to some extent explains the understated reaction on the right. Polls generally find that 60 to 65 percent of Americans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade.
...
Not only is banning abortion outright unpopular, but overturning Roe might be a Pyrrhic victory for the national Republican Party, which would lose one of its strongest wedge issues. The abortion wars would not end (they never will), but the end of Roe would shift the battlefield and might take some momentum away from the right.
As the impact of Texas’s law sinks in, Republican elected officials in several states have begun to express interest in exploring their own version of the law. In part, that reflects the demands of conservative bases in their home states, and in part it reflects a recognition that as long as Democrats are eager to make a fuss about the issue, it will get attention. The quiet may end soon, but the underlying political obstacle course for conservatives seeking to eliminate Roe isn’t going away.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/why-right-so-quiet-about-texass-abortion-law/619991/
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