Friday, September 27, 2024

Abortion in 2024 doesn't mean what it did in 2021

Before 2022, the typical media representation of abortion generally involved a woman, more often than not single, who unexpectedly found herself pregnant. The issue was often framed as abortion vs. adoption. While most Americans supported the right of these women to choose, it did give the other side an opening, fairly or unfairly. Those who believed that life began at conception could argue that the woman had chosen to create this life. Even more potent was the puritanical disapproval of sexually active women. As the numbers showed, this was always a losing argument for the antiabortion side, but it was not a disastrous one. For the movent, it was probably their best framing possible.

This is no longer how most people think about abortion.

Extreme laws and, even more importantly, strict enforcement has changed the public face of the issue. Even if we put aside the question of rape and incest, there are a lot of very disturbing gray areas and unintended consequences, and those are the cases that have come to define abortion in the past two years. It is horror stories like those below that have come to be associated with Dobbs in the popular mind, and the impact of those stories will continue to grow, particularly since the Harris campaign and a large number of Democratic candidates will continue raising awareness of these tragic events between now and election day.

For more than a couple of years now, the New York Times and other establishment media outlets have been pushing the narrative that Dobbs won't seriously affect upcoming elections, but they have been using static (and often questionable) analytic methods to describe a situation that is anything but static. I don't know how reproductive rights, which now includes in vitro fertilization and increasingly contraception, will play out in November, but I do believe the potential impact is very large indeed.



Another factor that I suspect will amplify the effect is the lack of empathy and often outright misogyny coming from the right. This video forcefully makes that point. It is difficult

More details on this story here. (John McEntee is quite the piece of work. He is also almost certain to have a powerful role in the White House if Trump wins again.)



Finally, here is a dystopian but not without factual basis ad from the Lincoln Project. I'd recommend watching this first then check out the CNN discussion. We can discuss whether this cross a line (but be warned, I like LBJ's Daisy ad).








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2 comments:

  1. Matt SkaggsSeptember 28, 2024 at 12:57 PM

    "Even more potent was the puritanical disapproval of sexually active women."

    Sexual jealousy is the driving force and always has been. At the same time, the anti-abortion crowd does not want there to be more brown babies, so the fact that a black woman died of sepsis will not be seen as a tragedy. It's that bad.

    As to your point about how the abortion narrative has recently changed, I read that draconian pre-Dobbs policies resulted in newspapers publishing similar horror stories, with that being the primary driver for Dobbs. History repeating itself.

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    1. AnonymousSeptember 28, 2024 at 6:24 PM

      "As to your point about how the abortion narrative has recently changed, I read that draconian pre-Dobbs policies resulted in newspapers publishing similar horror stories, with that being the primary driver for Dobbs. History repeating itself."

      Do you mean pre-Roe?

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