Sorry folks. I have another Iraq War comparison to make.
It wasn’t long after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 that it became clear the whole thing was a huge mistake. There were signs. One of them was that Americans were told we’d be welcomed as liberators. We weren’t. We were led to expect that America would invade, knock out Saddam Hussein, and then be able to draw down forces fairly quickly thereafter. (“No nation-building,” George W. Bush said during his campaign for president in 2000.)
And we were told the whole thing was a strike against Hussein using weapons of mass destruction.
Which he didn’t have.
Which made the whole war seem kind of pointless.
As mistake piled on mistake, some of the war’s hawkish proponents argued that actually, the war to remove Saddam Hussein from power wasn’t a bad idea in and of itself. It was a good idea! It’s just that George W. Bush and his administration — people like Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer — had executed it so badly.
Which was true. They did.
But also: The fundamental idea of going to war in the first place was a bad one. The threat we were told existed? It didn’t. Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, no doubt. I’m not sorry he’s no longer with us. But it was a waste of Iraqi and American lives. And we’re still living with the consequences.
The hawks — mostly but not entirely Republican — never could concede the point.
Which leads us to abortion, naturally.
If you’ve read me for any amount of time, you probably know my fundamental position: I’m pro-choice, but I have a lingering sympathy for pro-life folks. A lot of them — the ones I know — really think they’re defending life. I think it’s more complicated than that.
Most Americans would agree with me at this point. You’re watching Republicans (many, but not all) run away from strict pro-life positions as they realize, in the aftermath of Dobbs, that the whole thing is electoral poison.
That’s why Donald Trump — the man, aside from Sen. Mitch McConnell, most responsible for bringing down Roe v. Wade — this week tried to disavow the issue as a “states’ rights” matter that won’t be affected by federal action in the future. 1
At the New York Times, Ross Douthat makes a different case for the evident unpopularity of the pro-life position: It’s Donald Trump’s fault.
If you set out to champion the rights of the most vulnerable human beings while promising protection and support for women in their most vulnerable state, and your leader is a man famous for his playboy lifestyle who exudes brash sexism and contempt for weakness, people are going to have some legitimate questions about whether they can trust you to make good on your promises of love and care.
The problem, apparently, is hypocrisy.
That’s the price of the bargain abortion opponents made. The deal worked on its own terms: Roe is gone. But now they’re trapped in a world where their image is defined more by the dealmaker’s values than by their own.
Douthat names some other factors affecting the decline in support for the pro-life position, but this is basically the silver bullet for him. Donald Trump is a gross, rapey old-man who doesn’t reflect the better angels that can be found in the movement.
That’s probably true. But incomplete. And incomplete in the same way that blaming George W. Bush’s incompetence in executing the Iraq War doesn’t really tell the whole story.
The problem is the underlying premise.
Ask yourself a question: If the president who brought down Roe v. Wade wasn’t Trump but somebody obviously devoted to authentic Christian morality — Mike Pence, say — would the pro-life position be more popular today?
I suspect not.
The problem isn’t hypocrisy. The problem is that millions of American women see their health and freedom threatened by the end of Roe. It’s that simple. And it’s why states won handily by Trump in 2020 — Kansas, Ohio — also overwhelmingly voted later in favor of abortion rights.
Douthat has an explanation for that, naturally:
Crucially, some people might even think less of the pro-life movement in this way, or trust it less with policymaking, while still casting a vote for Trump. For instance, certain voters might like his toughness toward their enemies, his un-P.C. assault on woke and feminist politesse, without wanting that harsh style to be applied toward abortion policies that might affect them or their families. They might prefer Trump over, say, Nikki Haley on foreign policy or immigration, while also tilting more pro-choice than they would under a Haley-led G.O.P. — because you want the tough guy building the wall but not deciding on the trimester limit.
Maybe, but this all seems too complicated to me, too much in the vein of hopeful mind-reading.
Isn’t it simpler simply to believe that many Americans saw a specific freedom threatened in a specific way and decided they weren’t on board?
Doesn’t Douthat’s explanation conveniently wash the hands of the pro-life movement of the problems that have developed for it in the wake of Roe’s end?
And for that matter, doesn’t it ignore how the “love and care” that Douthat says the pro-life movement “promises” hasn’t really materialized in any significant way? Some red states offer more Medicaid assistance to new mothers now, but also: Those same red states are also rejecting federal funding for summer lunch programs for poor kids.
In Iraq, the problem wasn’t either or. The premise and the execution were both bad.
In 2024, with Roe v. Wade, the same is true for abortion.
Never believe anything Donald Trump says.
I share your slight sympathy for some pro-lifers, but I suspect that I may think Ross is even more wrong and hypocritical than you do.
I may have missed something in the news, but I don't think I have seen a scintilla of evidence of the current Republican party even "promising protection and support for women in their most vulnerable state", let alone actually providing any.
Ross isn't ignoring the fact that we don't believe that; he knows it's not true and he's trying to gaslight us.
I don’t think Ross is wrong, but it is the teeniest, tiniest part of the problem with the ant-choice “victory.” I mean, a lot of people see Trump as an amoral bastard. But a non-insignificant part of the base view him as the Second Coming. No, really.