Title: I Am an Abortion Rights Activist. I Hope the Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade. - POLITICO Magazine
Headings: I Am an Abortion Rights Activist. I Hope the Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade.
On The Bench
I Am an Abortion Rights Activist. I Hope the Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade.

Content: In 2017, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Ben Ray Luján, said that there should be “ no litmus test ” on abortion—that being opposed to abortion rights didn’t necessarily disqualify a candidate from party backing and financial support. When it comes to the question of bringing in more moderate voters, as Luján and other big-tent Democrats like him illustrate, support for the unceasingly controversial issue of abortion is the first thing to go. Democrats similarly bartered abortion access away during the Obamacare debate in 2009. That year, 64 Democrats in the House (including 17 who would be considered pro-choice) and seven in the Senate voted for the Stupak-Pitts and Nelson Amendments to the Affordable Care Act, respectively. Those amendments banned abortion coverage in any plans in the federal insurance exchanges, and debate that resulted from them was instrumental in garnering the last few votes needed to pass the health bill. ( Neither amendment was ultimately included in the enacted legislation, having been replaced with less aggressive language that allowed states to decide whether or not to ban abortion coverage in their own exchanges.) As long as abortion was technically legal, Democrats appeared to think, why should they fall on their swords to protect access to it if Barack Obama’s signature health law was at stake? In recent years, such complacency on the issue of abortion seemed rational. Assuming a Democratic victory was coming in the White House in 2016 and that the Supreme Court would be in progressive control, most people on the left were not planning for the possibility that a staunchly conservative court was just a few months away. And so Democrats have done little to stem the tide of legislation that has winnowed away access to abortion across the country, even while it has remained technically legal.