You might think of Joe Biden as a pro-choice president — and he is! — but that doesn’t mean he loves abortion. The man’s a Catholic, and his discomfort with abortion might be one of the most Catholic things about him.
He made that clear again this week, in an interview with the New Yorker:
For decades, the politics of abortion were notoriously awkward for Biden. As a devoted Catholic and a liberal Democrat, he was torn between two creeds. Even after he became a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage and transgender protections, he remained, as he put it, “not big” on abortion. “It’s always been a hard issue for him,” an aide told me. “But it became a very easy issue for him because of the Supreme Court.” O’Malley Dillon recalled that when the decision came, in a case called Dobbs v. Jackson, Biden’s immediate response was “How is it that we are rolling back fifty years of rights?”
I asked Biden what he would do in a second term to protect abortion access at the federal level. “Pass Roe v. Wade as the law of the land,” he said. Democrats would need to win control of the House of Representatives and gain seats in the Senate, but Biden expressed confidence. “A few more elections like we’ve seen taking place in the states” would suffice, he said. “You’re seeing the country changing.” Then, reiterating his position on Roe, he said, “I’ve never been supportive of, you know, ‘It’s my body, I can do what I want with it.’ But I have been supportive of the notion that this is probably the most rational allocation of responsibility that all the major religions have signed on and debated over the last thousand years.”
My takeaway from that is that, broadly, Biden isn’t a fan of abortion — but also thinks it should remain legal. Is that a contradiction? Maybe, but I don’t think so, and I’ll get to that in a bit.
But it’s fair to say that Biden’s rhetoric annoys a lot of progressives. Here’s Kylie Cheung at Jezebel:
Trashing abortion or, in this case, women and pregnant people’s bodily autonomy seems to have become Biden’s go-to schtick, though it’s entirely unclear why. We’ve been over this before: Abortion is more popular than Biden is. People who sincerely oppose abortion are probably going to vote Republican anyway, so I don’t know who he’s courting here at a time when every other day there’s a new report about people denied life-saving emergency abortions under state bans. Really, what is with this pathological obsession with shitting on abortion—the same issue he’s praying will bail him out of sinking poll numbers—when it’s already banned for so many people?
What’s unclear to me is why this matters.
As president, Joe Biden has expanded birth control access — an over-the-counter pill is going on sale this month, for the first time in history — and defended access to mifepristone in the face of conservative efforts to reverse its FDA approval. And while, if you’re pro-choice, Roe might have its flaws … well, you’d probably take its restoration over the post-Dobbs regime, wouldn’t you?
And here’s why that matters: Biden’s position represents a big chunk of the American electorate that — if anything like a restoration of Roe is to happen — that pro-choice folks will need on their side.
According to Gallup, there’s a bigger chunk of folks who think abortion should be legal than think it’s moral:
A record-high 69% say abortion should generally be legal in the first three months of pregnancy. The prior high of 67% was recorded last May after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization draft was leaked, showing that the court planned to nullify constitutional protection for abortion.
Fifty-two percent of Americans say abortion is morally acceptable, matching last year’s all-time high. This is 10 percentage points above the historical average since 2001.
Fifty-two percent is a majority, but barely. Sixty-nine percent is a supermajority. Which would you rather have? Only the folks who are hard-core on your side? Or the folks who, even given their doubts, still support your cause?
Remember a year-and-a-half ago, when the nation was shocked that Big Red Kansas overwhelmingly rejected writing abortion restrictions into the state constitution? It’s pretty clear that the folks who organized the “no” vote understood that somewhat complicated dance. Here’s Ashley All speaking after the 2022 vote:
In 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court found that Kansans have this broad right to personal autonomy in our Bill of Rights — personal autonomy to make decisions about your health care, about your body, about your makeup of your family, about your future, whatever. And within that women obviously have the right to make decisions about their health care, pregnancy, and to access abortion. So we started there. We were working to protect the constitutional rights and freedom of Kansas women to make decisions about their bodies and about their health care. That was really the unifying message for the campaign. And we did not really have to change that depending on the target audience.
Polling last year showed over 60 percent of Kansans support access to abortion. They probably have varying beliefs about it, but, broadly speaking, they support access. Working to find common ground and a shared value that we could communicate to voters was the important part of this, and the shared value is: protecting the constitutional rights and freedom of people to make decisions about their bodies.
Joe Biden has “varying beliefs” about abortion. But broadly speaking, he supports access.
My advice to pro-choice folks frustrated with his rhetoric? Take your allies where and how you find them, and move on. Biden’s your ally.
What I’m watching
“Perfect Days” isn’t a film for everybody. It’s quiet — the lead character barely speaks — and it is contemplative. A lot of folks will find it boring. Trying to describe it doesn’t do it justice: “Two weeks in the life of a quiet, routine-adherent life of a Tokyo toilet cleaner.” But it is also, visually and conceptually, gorgeous, and worth your patience. I’m so glad I saw this in a cinema. It's the rare movie I wouldn't want to see anywhere else. It needs your full attention, a complete lack of distraction and a fully dark room to experience it.