When the Supreme Court gave an at-least-temporary go-ahead to Texas’s law banning abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, we and many others asked a question: Had Republicans caught the car on abortion?
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They have long pushed for overturning Roe v. Wade, but for decades that was much more hypothetical — a great motivator of the base — than reality. What happens politically when it looks as though that push might ultimately pay off by severely undercutting a Supreme Court precedent that a strong majority of Americans support?
A new poll suggests that even what we knew at the time might have undersold just how dicey the Texas law could be for Republicans.
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The Monmouth University poll, as with many before it, shows Americans support leaving Roe on the books by 62 percent to 31 percent. It shows a similar 2-to-1 split when it comes to people supporting abortion being legal in most cases. And when asked specifically about the Supreme Court allowing the Texas law to go into effect, Americans disagreed with that decision 54 percent to 39 percent.
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But those margins pale in comparison with how some of the other specifics of the Texas law poll.
One of the most contentious aspects of the law, beyond the six-week time frame, is in how it allows regular citizens to enforce it — by filing complaints about those who obtain abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. Asked what they think about “having private citizens use lawsuits to enforce this law instead of having government prosecutors handle these cases,” Americans disapprove of the idea 70 percent to 22 percent.
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The pollster then noted that the law provides for compensation of $10,000 for private citizens who win such cases — what has been labeled a “bounty.” In this case, opposition was even higher: 81 percent to 14 percent. Even Republicans oppose this idea 67 percent to 24 percent.
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That’s about as consensus an issue as you’ll find in modern politics. And it’s a consensus against a central part of the Texas law.
It’s possible that might oversell the true opposition, at least to some extent. If you give people a choice between regular people enforcing the law and the law being enforced by, well, law enforcement, it’s perhaps not surprising the latter wins out. Perhaps that framing affected how people felt about the question on the $10,000 rewards. But it’s still 81 percent of Americans and two-thirds of Republicans who say they don’t like citizens being rewarded for blowing the whistle on breaking the abortion law. And that comes on top of their opposition to both the Texas law and outlawing abortion in most cases.
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The purpose of the “bounty” aspect of the Texas law was abundantly clear: to make it more difficult to challenge in court. Conservative states have pushed the envelope on trying to effectively outlaw most abortions in a bunch of ways that haven’t passed muster. Providing for enforcement by private citizens got this one past a key hurdle, for now.
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But clearing that hurdle also opens up a Pandora’s box of political consequences. Suddenly, those pushing for, more or less, outlawing abortion have a more viable path. And pressure has built on Republicans in other states to put their states on that same path and pass legislation to put them in line with Texas. It’s becoming something of a litmus-test issue. Even former senator Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who has been relatively moderate on abortion rights in the past, is calling on his state to adopt Texas’s approach as he runs for governor.
National Republicans have been conspicuously — and perhaps tellingly — quiet about celebrating the decision on Texas’s law. And if they had their druthers, they would seem to favor a more incremental approach — specifically, one that wouldn’t outlaw as many as 90 percent of abortions in one fell swoop and could be more likely to stand over the long term.
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That more incremental approach would seem best exemplified by a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks and that the Supreme Court will review later this year. And it’s this law that could ultimately be the one we’re all talking about when the Supreme Court weighs in more authoritatively and lastingly on whether it will scale back Roe.
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But on issues that stir emotions as much as abortion, it’s not always the most strategic who are guiding the process. State legislative Republicans will often pursue more-extreme policies because they are more feasible in states that are redder than the country as a whole. They are also generally less concerned about how those issues play nationally, because they need not personally worry about things such as control of the U.S. House and Senate.
It has become clear in the weeks since the Texas decision that Democrats are much more inclined to use all of this as a campaign issue. That pertains mostly to the fact that the Texas law would prohibit most abortions, not so much to the “bounty” aspect, which might strike people as more of a process issue.
But the overwhelming opposition to turning ordinary citizens into “bounty hunters” seems to reinforce just how little appetite there is nationally for a law like Texas’s — even as Republicans might still be tempted to emulate it.