Abortion has been a hot topic in the culture wars at least since the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973, which was coincidentally the year Joe Biden began serving in the Senate. This month’s Supreme Court oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization brought abortion to the forefront of discussion again.
The left is apoplectic at the idea of the Court overturning Roe, as though women would immediately become baby mills and nobody would ever care for newborns. And as long as Joe Biden remains the Democrats’ standard-bearer (bless their hearts), there’s a certain obsession on the left with how the president approaches the abortion debate.
For starters, there’s Biden’s Catholic faith, which he claims is important to him. Yet he follows other prominent Democrats in supporting abortion rights, despite the fact that abortion contradicts the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Biden’s I’m-a-Catholic-who’s-cool-with-baby-killing stance has put him under fire from Catholic bishops and led to a continued debate over whether he should be denied the sacrament of Communion.
Now, the Associated Press has weighed in on the way Biden talks about abortion — or, more specifically, how he doesn’t talk about it.
Writers Colleen Long and Zeke Miller penned a piece that takes a deep dive into how the president has reacted to the prominent place that abortion has in the national spotlight. In it, they insist that Biden believes that “reproductive rights” are under threat, and they note his approach to protecting those “rights.”
“But he barely even uses the word ‘abortion’ and when his administration has been asked about what it can do to protect reproductive rights, the response has mostly been that Congress must write the landmark court decision into law, a strategy that is highly likely to fail,” Long and Miller write.
That’s right: the Teleprompter in Chief wants Congress to codify abortion into law, and the article cites Jen Psaki to confirm that idea. (Or maybe Pramila Jayapal will expect him to enact it by executive order alongside her other left-wing priorities.)
Related: As We Await a Ruling on Dobbs, the Pro-Life Movement Has Plenty to Do
The AP article goes on to lament that Biden has placed more emphasis on urgent matters like the pandemic and the economy to push for legal abortion practically up until a child starts school.
“It’s an approach that threatens to undermine Biden and Democrats heading into next year’s midterms when they need to rally the party’s most loyal voters, including women and Black people, to maintain control of Congress,” Long and Miller note. “It’s also part of a broader problem that women’s rights groups have with the Democrats’ general reluctance to fully embrace the abortion issue in the way that Republicans have.”
There’s also some bewilderment over Biden not talking openly about abortion at events.
“Biden didn’t mention abortion rights once during a recent speech looking back over the year at a holiday fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee,” they write. Maybe because abortion isn’t exactly an appropriate topic for a Christmas party?
But don’t worry: the abortion rights harpies are keeping score.
“Women’s rights activists are keeping track: He’s barely said the word in office, though there is no acknowledged strategy behind it,” Long and Miller write.
The authors go on to say that Vice President Kamala Harris may take up the mantle of campaigning for abortion rights, which ought to go really well since everything else she has touched has turned to that gold-plated metal stuff that turns your skin green.
At the end of the day, the abortion rights crowd is judging Biden over nitpicky stuff like how many times he says the word “abortion” and whether he talks about it at Christmas parties. The fact that the executive branch has little to do with abortion policy doesn’t matter to them. What matters is how closely the president hews to a far-left party line.
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