"We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled," Justice Alito writes in an initial majority draft circulated inside the court
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473
1) On the heels of the Roe leak, top Democrats - from Nancy Pelosi to Joe Biden himself - argued that Republicans have become more "extreme" on abortion. But only one party has dramatically altered its stance on the issue, and it isn't the GOP. A quick history
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/only-one-party-has-become-more-radical-on-abortion/
2) When the news of Roe's potential demise broke, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer released a statement saying the GOP "has now completely devolved into the party of Trump." Days later, Biden argued the GOP had become "most extreme political organization...in recent American history." https://twitter.com/njhochman/status/1522309587591909376
3) But what, specifically, about the GOP’s line on abortion has become more extreme? Pelosi, Schumer, and Biden didn’t say. In fact, throughout all of the various iterations of GOP politics since the passage of Roe, the party has been *remarkably* consistent on its pro-life stance.
It’s true that the GOP wasn't always pro-life. In 1970, New York's GOP governor, Nelson Rockefeller, signed “the most liberal abortion law in the world,” in the words of abortion activist Alan Guttmacher.
4) Even Reagan signed an abortion-liberalization law as governor of California.
The Democratic Party was also far from united on the issue. Catholics, for example, were a heavily Democratic constituency, and their opposition to abortion was reflected in the views of Democratic elites. As John Murdock wrote in a 2020 essay for National Affairs: https://twitter.com/njhochman/status/1522309593602404353
5) But after the passage of Roe, things changed quickly. The Religious Right began to organize as a serious political force within the GOP. In 1976, Gerald Ford dropped Rockefeller from the vice-presidential ticket, and Reagan disavowed the abortion bill he signed as a "mistake."
That same year, the GOP added a plank advocating a pro-life constitutional amendment to its official party platform.
6) By 1984, the GOP platform had added an endorsement of "the appointment of judges at all levels of the judiciary who respect...the sanctity of innocent human life": https://twitter.com/njhochman/status/1522309599172468737
7) At the same time, the growing influence of feminists and other social liberals in the Democratic coalition was pushing the party leftwards: By the 1990s, the party that nominated a pro-life VP candidate in 1972 had fully embraced Bill Clinton’s famous “safe, legal and rare” adage.
But that was only a momentary waypoint for the party's leftwards slide. Whereas the GOP's position has been consistent since the late 70s, Clinton's suggestion that abortion should be "rare" is now seen as
8) unacceptably outmoded in the Democratic Party:
https://www.theblaze.com/news/andrew-yang-accused-of-demonizing-abortion-for-saying-that-it-is-not-something-to-celebrate
9) And it's not just rhetorical. On policy, Democrats today hold the most unequivocally, unapologetically, and grotesquely radical line on abortion of any major political party in the Western world: https://twitter.com/njhochman/status/1522309606831276032
10) The GOP’s stance on abortion has been public and clear for decades. It's Democrats that have radicalized. So, President Biden, tell us again—and speak slowly, so we can understand: Who, exactly, is "the most extreme political organization" in "recent American history"?
https://twitter.com/njhochman/status/1522309608877998080
/end/
@CDuBois
i think democrats have always been extreme, but they managed to hide it for the most part. now, all wheels come off.