Why are Democrats so unenthusiastic about the midterm elections? Is it about abortion?

I'm reading this CNN report on its new poll:

Overall, 27% of registered voters say they are extremely enthusiastic about voting this year, down from 37% just ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, and the decline in enthusiasm comes almost entirely among Democrats. Four years ago, 44% of Democratic registered voters said they were extremely enthusiastic about voting; now, just 24% say the same. Among Republicans, the number has dipped only narrowly, from 43% to 38%.

I wouldn't say a loss of 5 percentage points is "narrow," but the Democrats have lost 20 percentage points. That's enormous. What's going on?!

"Sweating in the sun, two dozen teenagers spread themselves across picnic blankets in a grassy park... Emma Rose Smith, 17, rose from the blankets, tucked her pale-blonde hair behind her ears...."

Interesting prose style for the Washington Post article "After Roe, teens are teaching themselves sex ed, because the adults won’t."

The accompanying photograph shows four 17-year-old girls, slouching together in a line, with glum faces and bared midriffs. 

What is the message? What I'm getting is: "the adults" had better school these kids.

"Even as roughly half the states have moved to enact near-total bans on abortion... anti-abortion activists are pushing for a long-held and more absolute goal..."

"So-called fetal personhood laws would make abortion murder, ruling out all or most of the exceptions for abortion allowed in states that already ban it. So long as Roe established a constitutional right to abortion, such laws remained symbolic in the few states that managed to pass them. Now they are starting to have practical effect. Already in Georgia, a fetus now qualifies for tax credits and child support, and is to be included in population counts and redistricting. The laws also open up questions well beyond abortion, about immigration and who is entitled to public benefits.They have the potential to criminalize common health care procedures and limit the rights of a pregnant woman in making health care decisions.... [F]or anti-abortion advocates, simply returning the regulation of abortion to the states was never enough. 'Life begins at conception,' Representative Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said in proposing the Unborn Child Support Act in Congress this month, 'and this bill is a straightforward first step towards updating our federal laws to reflect that fact.'"

From "Is a Fetus a Person? An Anti-Abortion Strategy Says Yes. Fetal personhood, which confers legal rights from conception, is an effort to push beyond abortion bans and classify the procedure as murder. In Georgia, it also means a $3,000 tax credit" (NYT).

Here's the text of the proposed Unborn Child Support Act. You might think, reading the NYT, that Johnson is talking about a federal takeover of this subject that the Supreme Court was supposedly leaving to the states, but it's about the federal government assisting in the collection of child support payments if state law imposes it on fathers of children who exist in utero. 

I see the reason to fear the general "personhood" movement, but even if you favor abortion rights, you might still want men to owe financial support to women who are carrying their children. 

"Indiana became the first state in the country after the fall of Roe v. Wade to pass sweeping limits on abortion access...."

"The bill, which will go into effect Sept. 15, allows abortion only in cases of rape, incest, lethal fetal abnormality or when the procedure is necessary to prevent severe health risks or death.... Before settling on the exceptions, Republican legislators disagreed on how far the law should go, with some GOP members siding with Democrats in demanding that abortion be legal in cases of rape and incest.... The push by Indiana Republicans to restrict abortion access stands in stark contrast with the overwhelming support for it by voters in Kansas... In Indiana, Democratic legislators described the Kansas vote as a warning to their Republican colleagues to consider the potential fallout from voters...."

WaPo reports.

"It’s been a long process... Then the Roe thing happened. That cemented it. That was the stars aligning. This needs to be done."

"To be really honest... I’m a straight, white dude in America. Typically, I’m the least worried about these things. But they might come for that one. So I was like, 'I’m just gonna get this done while I still can.'"

Said Iain Little, "a 40-year-old banker living in Philadelphia," quoted in "Snipped in solidarity: the American men getting vasectomies after Roe – while they can/Following the supreme court’s abortion decision, urologists say more men are taking charge of their reproductive health, to permanent ends" (The Guardian).

People are seriously worried that vasectomies are going to become illegal?

Little had always been fairly certain that children weren’t part of his life plan. For years, his wife agreed. Now, recently divorced and dipping his toe back into the dating pool, he felt it was an appropriate time to seriously consider a vasectomy. 

His toe, indeed. 

"Some people in the US are rushing to get sterilized after the Roe v. Wade ruling."

That's the headline at CNN.

The evidence: "several gynecologists tell CNN they've seen an increase in people requesting tubal ligation." So... several gynecologists. Noted.

But there's an anecdote about a woman who's finding it difficult to get the surgery:

"I feel like women have to be more careful and more selective now in who they have intercourse with."

"If something happens with your birth control or your condom breaks, this potentially could be a partner stuck in your life forever because now you have to raise a child together."

Said Sarah Molina, 25, a "newly single" "event planner in Phoenix" who had been eager "to get back on the dating scene" until the overturning of Roe v. Wade "changed" her attitude toward sex, even though "abortion is currently legal in Arizona."

That's from "Sorry, Summer/We all know what happened with summer 2020. Then 2021 was dampened by Delta. This year, any anticipated return to revelry has been hampered by … *waves hands at everything.* Is there hope for enjoying the once fun season?" (NYT).

I read that article, then clicked a link at the bottom of that page, and it took me to this wedding story: "His Better Banter Won Her Over/Daniel Ogorzalek and Blair Dawson met in 2016 at the Brooklyn bar where she was working. He was drawn to her 'quick wit,' while she appreciated his 'incredible repartee.'" 

The last line of that, spoken by the bride, is: "At the end of the day, we both think life should be fun above all else. Laughter is an integral ever-presence and underscores every aspect of our relationship."

Fun above all else. Says a bride, binding her life to a partner forever. Once you have a partner who values fun above all else, you don't have to fret, like the "newly single" ladies, about sex leading to childbirth that could bind you forever to some random man, like back in the olden days. 

"The vast majority of people here are pro-choice. And the very vast majority of people here think that these protesters have gotten out of control."

Said Lyric Winik, who lives "several homes down from" Brett Kavanaugh," on a "narrow street of towering trees, tightly spaced homes and families with young children" in Chevy Chase, Maryland. 

Quoted in "Brett Kavanaugh’s neighbors: For abortion rights but tired of protests/Weekly demonstrations on their street prompt increased noise complaints; police warn of possible arrests" (WaPo).

Last Wednesday, officers indicated protesters were edging closer to being arrested. Demonstrators take strong exception to the reactions, saying that to whatever extent they disrupt tranquility, it is part of a much more important message — bringing attention to how a number of justices altered the lives of millions — and a message could be even stronger with the residents’ participation. As they chanted recently: “Out of your houses and into the streets!”

"Before Roe was overturned, architecture became an effective tool to limit abortion access, as states used regulatory codes — like zoning and building codes..."

"... to make it extremely difficult to operate. Known as Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, TRAP laws included Texas’s HB 2, a 2013 law that required abortion clinics to meet the same requirements as ambulatory-surgery centers, which included a lower staff-to-patient ratio; larger exam rooms, hallways, and doorways; having a room dedicated to operations; and complex HVAC systems. In just three years after HB 2 was passed, Texas went from 40 to 16 clinics. Abortions doubled in neighboring states....  There are over 70 architects from 16 states currently on the growing list of those willing to help expand or build new clinics. The list will not be publicly published, and will be shared only with clinics that are looking for architectural services, as a way to protect the architects’ and clinics’ privacy and help guard against retaliation...."

From "Architects Are Getting Ready for an Abortion-Clinic Building Spike" (NY Magazine).

Can we — most of us — come together and agree to allow access to abortion in the first 15 weeks of pregnancy — or at least the first 10?

I'm seeing this at Twitter this morning:

Roughly 15 weeks was a popular, consensus position Roe prevented for 50 years. Many on both sides will still disagree with it, but it’s likely where many states will land, and STILL more liberal than most European countries. https://t.co/JFrU63AWTl

— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) July 11, 2022

And it's something I'd discovered on my own, independently. In a post on July 2, I discussed a little unscientific poll of mine called "What sort of law protecting access to abortion do you think Congress should pass?" I'd noticed the problem with the polls I was seeing: They were just asking if there should be statutes establishing a right to abortion. But:

"Estimates of just how many babies will be born because of new abortion restrictions vary. One researcher suggests 75,000, another 180,000."

I'm reading "Many more babies will be born post-'Dobbs.' We need to help them and their moms" by Alyssa Rosenberg (WaPo).

That's 75,000 to 180,000 per year. Rosenberg doesn't seem to notice that to emphasize the number of new babies is to say, implicitly, that during the reign of Roe, that's the number, per year, that were quietly and invisibly kept from our presence.

But Rosenberg calls our attention to the importance of making life in America good for parents and children. The end of Roe creates an opportunity to lobby for things like better child care and health services. I would think most of those who longed for an end to Roe would want to join forces with women's rights advocates and work to lighten the burdens of parenthood. 

That's Rosenberg's pitch:

"The breeding kink—intense sexual attraction to the idea of getting pregnant, or getting someone else pregnant—is having a moment right now."

"A deluge of viral TikToks of users are professing their yearning to breed and be bred. A porn creator told Vice this week about a recent surge in demand for 'breeding' content. There is quite literally a WebMD article on breeding fetishism, not to mention an entire genre of horror movies and documentaries about unethical fertility doctors secretly fathering hundreds of kids. And the discovery of Elon Musk’s eighth and ninth (known) children on Wednesday led the richest man in the world to triumphantly tweet: 'Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis,' and 'I hope you have big families and congrats to those who already do!'

I'm reading "Does Elon Musk Have a 'Breeding Kink?'/To ascertain whether or not Musk has a breeding fetish is to wade into territory that I'm not sure I have the stomach for—but I'm doing this for journalism" by Kylie Cheung (Jezebel).

Cheung answers her question:

"I was surprised that the dissenters never tried to defend the right to abortion and never try and offer an alternative ground. They relied entirely on stare decisis."

Said Larry Kramer, in "Liberals Need a Clearer Vision of the Constitution. Here’s What It Could Look Like. The legal scholar Larry Kramer on why the left’s embrace of judicial supremacy was a mistake" (NYT). 

"[D]ozens of celebrity Democratic supporters and activists... joined a call with White House aides last Monday to discuss the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. The mood was fatalistic...."

"[Deborah] Messing said she’d gotten Joe Biden elected and wanted to know why she was being asked to do anything at all, yelling that there didn’t even seem a point to voting. Others wondered why the call was happening. That afternoon, participants received a follow-up email with a list of basic talking points and suggestions of Biden speech clips to share on TikTok. The call, three days after the decision eliminating federal abortion rights, encapsulates the overwhelming sense of frustration among Democrats with Biden. It offers a new window into what many in the President’s party describe as a mismanagement permeating the White House...." 

From "After string of Supreme Court setbacks, Democrats wonder whether Biden White House is capable of urgency moment demands" (CNN).

Will post-Roe legislation protect embryos left over from the process of in vitro fertilization?

I'm reading "Infertility Patients and Doctors Fear Abortion Bans Could Restrict I.V.F./The new state bans don’t explicitly cover embryos created outside the womb, but legal experts say overturning Roe could make it easier to place controls on genetic testing, storage and disposal of them" (NYT).

[M]any fear that regulations on unwanted pregnancies could, unintentionally or not, also control people who long for a pregnancy.... So far, the texts of the laws taking effect do not explicitly target embryos created in a lab.... By using the word “pregnancy,” most trigger bans distinguish their target from an embryo stored in a clinic....

Some medical and legal experts have proposed... creating one embryo at a time by storing sperm and eggs separately and thawing them only to create individual embryos as needed... 

[Another option] is called “compassionate transfer.” 

A 2020 position paper by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine says the term refers to a request by a patient to transfer embryos in her body “at a time when pregnancy is highly unlikely to occur, and when pregnancy is not the intended outcome.” For people who see the frozen embryo as human life, a compassionate transfer is a kind of natural death for the embryo, rather than having it destroyed in a lab. 

Katherine Kraschel, an expert on reproductive health law at Yale Law School, noted that clinics could be forced to store embryos that embryologists have determined are unlikely to result in a pregnancy. “It could also mean that ‘compassionate transfer’ is recommended not to honor a patient’s moral valuation of their embryos but because the state has imposed its moral valuation upon them,” she said. 

Another concern is that special consideration for the women who participate in I.V.F. can — and therefore will — be portrayed as racist:

Judith Daar, dean at the Salmon P. Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University and an expert in reproductive health law, said that passing a state law that would distinguish infertility patients from those seeking an abortion risked having a discriminatory impact, “given that the majority of I.V.F. patients are white, while women of color account for the majority of all abortions performed in the U.S.”

How will the Supreme Court nominees of Democratic Presidents answer the question "Will you vote to overrule Dobbs?

That's my question, jumping way ahead after reading the New York Magazine headline, "Could Dobbs Be Reversed Like Roe Was?" 

That's by Ed Kilgore. I'll have to publish this post and click on my "Ed Kilgore" tag to see what I've thought of his published musings over the years, but come on. Obviously, Dobbs can be overruled. We won't be able to stop talking about overruling Dobbs. Remember, we talked about overruling Roe for 50 years before it happened? Do the Dobbs haters have that kind of passion and stamina? 

At some point in the next 50 or 100 years, there will be a majority of Supreme Court Justices who want to overrule Dobbs and get back to Roe (or forward to a new, better Roe (Casey was already a new, better Roe, and Roe can be re-improved)).

Now, let's see what Kilgore says:

"On Capitol Hill, House Democratic leaders are discussing ways to force Republicans into uncomfortable positions on abortion..."

"Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sent a letter to colleagues Monday noting that leadership had been discussing potential votes related to abortion... House leaders have asked committee chairs to flag legislation that they could consider voting on to hold Republicans accountable on numerous protections, according to two House Democratic aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to outline private deliberations. A House GOP aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their member’s thinking, acknowledged that such votes could put them in a tough spot with their base. Some senior Democratic aides in the Senate have voiced wariness of deploying a similar strategy in their chamber, worrying that holding such kinds of votes might allow Republican senators who voted to confirm Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe to claim they acted to uphold women’s reproductive rights. Those dynamics arose in the Democratic caucus meeting where a group of women senators discussed strategy ahead of the court ruling — tamping down the possibility that there might be a string of 'show votes' to demonstrate Republican opposition to abortion rights and potentially other freedoms. Instead, the three Democrats familiar with the meeting said, a likelier strategy is to attempt over the summer to pass bills on the floor by unanimous consent — a maneuver that would publicly demonstrate GOP opposition to popular measures but would not require all senators to cast votes on them."

From "With Roe overturned, Democrats present a patchwork of countermeasures/The ruling created a new rallying cry for Democrats, but also revealed some divergences in the party and unsettled questions about the path forward" (WaPo).

"One day I hope to become a mother. But for now I have sex just because I like it. Sex is fun. For the puritanical tyrants seeking to control our bodies..."

"... that’s a problem. This radical minority, including the right-wing faction on the Supreme Court, probably won’t stop at banning abortion. If we take Justice Clarence Thomas at his word — and there’s no reason not to — the right to contraception could be the next to fall. Why? Because many in this movement are animated by an insatiable desire to punish women who have sex on our own terms and enjoy it.... They are part of a movement intended to curb the hard-won freedom to pursue careers and joys outside the confines of wifehood and motherhood.... In the America where I came of age, I was told my life was worth more than my ability to have babies. And my sexuality was nothing to be ashamed of.... Later, when I was a student at the University of Michigan, the movement for sex positivity was thrilling and liberating. We learned that pleasurable sexual experiences between consenting adults of all genders and orientations were to be celebrated.... " 

Writes Mara Gay, in "The Republican War on Sex" (NYT).

What sort of law protecting access to abortion do you think Congress should pass?

That's a question I asked yesterday, because I was dissatisfied with the question Emerson polling had asked — "Should Congress pass a law legalizing the right to abortion?" There's such a wide range of things Congress could do, notably protect a short period of entitlement to abortion. 

I don't expect Congress to take advantage of the opportunity to come together and do something practical and helpful, and obviously my little unscientific poll shows an overwhelming preference for Congress to do nothing at all, but I just wanted to suggest that it would be sensible for Congress to create a statutory right to abortion in the first 10 weeks, leaving the rest of the legislative choice to the states.  

I'd like to see some proper polling of this question. I understand why Democrats in Congress are concentrating on the "viability" line that the Court had identified. But I wish they would consider an earlier point, in order to get a modest time-limited right in place to meet the real needs of women in states, like mine, who now have no right to abortion.

 

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul "has filed a lawsuit... seeking to block the state's 173-year-old ban on abortions that was triggered after the collapse of Roe v. Wade ...."

Wisconsin Public Radio reports. 

Kaul has no plans of enforcing the ban, though local law enforcement officials could choose to do so. [Governor Tony] Evers said Tuesday he would grant clemency to those prosecuted under the ban....

But those 2 won't be in office forever, and acts done now could be prosecuted after they are gone.