Republican Voters “More Abortion Friendly” Than We Thought

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And as we said, abortion has been central to American politics ever since Roe vs. Wade gave women the right to choose back in 1973. And the Supreme Court overturning it will be a major issue in the 2024 presidential election. Liz Mair is a GOP strategist and she joins Michel Martin to discuss the fallout for Republicans at the ballot box.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Liz Mair, thanks so much for talking with us.

LIZ MAIR, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST AND PRESIDENT, MAIR STRATEGIES: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

MARTIN: So, your piece for “The Times” was titled, “Republicans Are Finding Out That Pro-Life Means a Lot of Things to a Lot of People.” Did they really not know?

MAIR: I think they really genuinely didn’t know. I’ve always considered myself to be in sort of a lucky position because the way that I entered Republican politics was through the blogosphere, which inherently meant that basically for the first two years that I was working in GOP politics, I was getting paid to pretty much just like argue policy with people online all day in comment sections and diaries and posts and counter posts and counter points and op-eds and whatnot. And so, I feel like going back to 2006 and 2007, I knew, because I had a lot of debates with people where I would present myself as being, I am a moderately pro-choice Republican. I don’t believe Roe is correctly decided, but I believe it should be legal in the first three months. I don’t see another alternative to that. And I found it really interesting that immediately when I introduced myself that way, some people would be like, oh, well, then you’re actually pro- life, or other people would say, oh, my God, you’re a heathen, like, all of it needs to be banned from day one, or you would have other people who are like, how can you be anti-Roe? And I’m still pro-life on everything else, but I’m pro-Roe. And so, to me, it’s been very evident for many, many years now that what Republicans have treated as pro-life was largely a collection of people who didn’t think, for the most part, that Roe was correctly decided, but they didn’t actually necessarily agree on what the underlying policy should be. And now, that we no longer have Roe on the books as good law, we’re having to confront that, and it turns out that it’s very uncomfortable for the party and we’re finding out that the common denominator is, I think, significantly more abortion friendly than what a lot of Republicans had thought and had hoped for and are comfortable with.

MARTIN: You say you’re moderately pro-choice, but you’re anti-Roe, what does that mean?

MAIR: Well, I think Roe was incorrectly decided, and that goes back really when I was in high school. I went to a school that put a lot of emphasis on civics education and they made us do constitutional debates. And as somebody who was at that time, I believe 15. So, I’d gone through the experience of having friends getting pregnant a couple of years before and having terminations. I was excited when I got to be on the pro-Roe team. The problem came when I actually went and read the decision and then read counterarguments to it, legal counterarguments, not things that were what’s alive, what’s not alive, at what point does life exist? How do we measure that? Just straight legal arguments. I just thought that the decision really was badly written up and made very little sense from a constitutional basis. And so, you know, being somebody who ultimately did go on to become a lawyer, my view has always been that Roe was incorrectly decided. But I also think that for — specifically thinking about the kinds of situations that my friends were confronting, I don’t know how you legislate to ensure that people in those situations can have abortions unless you have a policy like the one that I guess I would say, I think most states would be well advised to adopt, which is keep it legal in the first three months and stop it after that, with exceptions where the life of the mother is in jeopardy, right? But even that is significantly more pro-life than what it turns out a bunch of people who have been describing themselves as pro-lifers have had as a position for years and years. That’s what we’re learning.

MARTIN: And what is that? What is that position that you’re saying that kind of surprises you?

MAIR: Well, I guess what I’m surprised to learn is when you look at the results of what happened in Ohio, or you look at various election results in Kentucky, and I talk to people, I’m finding that there are quite a lot of people who have traditionally described themselves as being pro-life Republicans who basically think you can cut it off after about month five, except where the mother’s life is in jeopardy or where there’s rape or incest. But that’s significantly more sort of lacks and accepting of keeping abortion legal than even what I would say, right? But for my position, the way I look at it is, if you’re arguing that it should be legal really at all, that puts you in a position where I think you’re more pro-choice than pro-life. But I think it just is testament to the fact that these words really don’t mean what a lot of people thought that they meant. I think there are a lot of people running around in the Republican Party who thought that when people said they were pro-life. It was a firm, concrete statement, not something aspirational, and I think that they really believed that that meant that people thought from the moment of conception that embryo, you know, whatever we’re talking about, that embryo, that fertilized egg, the fetus when you get to that point, from day one, that would be protected except in the case of if you’re one exception pro-lifer, where the life of the mother is in jeopardy, or if you’re a three exception pro-lifer, where the life of the mother is in jeopardy, where it’s rape, or where it’s incest. And it just turns out that that’s actually a relatively small proportion of people who would call themselves pro-life.

MARTIN: So, let’s just talk about where we are now in terms of the politics of it, the states, right? As we are speaking now, the story of — very much the story of the moment is this young woman in Texas, who’s already a mom, 30 years old, has two kids, had a very much wanted pregnancy, and has now learned that there’s a fetal abnormality, the fetus is unlikely to live at all, and her health is compromised. It’s not just that her health is compromised, but that her ability to have future children is compromised. That’s the advice she’s been given, OK? So, now, a lower court has said she can go and have an abortion, but the Texas Supreme Court has said that she can’t.

MAIR: Yes.

MARTIN: She’s left the state so that she can have the procedure to — as she says, to preserve her future fertility, but that the attorney general has made it clear that he’s basically would hold doctors to account in the state if he felt that they made the wrong decision. And you can understand where this just like a — what do you as a person who thinks about this both politically and morally, how do you think about that?

MAIR: I’ll start with the political side, because believe it or not, that’s actually easier, which is that –which is kind of a troubling thing to say. Look, politically, I think one thing that the Texas attorney general is going to have to do business with sooner rather than later is that his state has been moving in a purple direction really fast. Really, really fast. And what you’ve seen is you’ve seen a lot of influx to Texas of people who are socially more liberal, but they don’t like the tax regimes that you’re finding in blue states. Texas doesn’t have personal income tax, for instance. So, it’s very appealing to a lot of people. I think one of the things that Ken Paxton is going to find is in addition to the fact that he has a number of other liabilities that I think are going to make it at some point really difficult for him to retain political power and position in Texas just as such. I’m pretty sure that if you looked at where the electorate as a whole is, he’s in the significant minority here. So, you know, at the end of the day, what he and other Texas Republicans choose to do about that, their call, not my call, they’ve gotten lucky in some regards, because as Texas has shifted purple, the Texas Democratic Party has also fielded awfully weak candidates. But at the end of the day, I think they’re going to end up confronting a reality here, the same as J. D. Vance has.

MARTIN: In Ohio. The Ohio senator.

MAIR: J. D. Vance has basically said at this point that the only political terrain that is going to be fruitful for Republicans to fight on is stop late term abortion, but make sure you’ve got exceptions. That’s what you’ve got to do, is have the party become the party of stopping late term abortions and offering exceptions, which is very similar to what Donald Trump has said. Morally, I don’t feel that I know enough about the case to make a personal judgment here. So, I’m going to decline to do so. I will say I definitely do see a lot of abortions or hear of a lot of abortions that happen out there that I personally think are completely avoidable and should have been avoided. And I do think that there is a moral imperative for people who are pro-life to go and sort of advocate for that and work on changing hearts and minds.

MARTIN: Well, just the question I have is, what if she dies? What if this woman dies? And so — and what are they going to do then?

MAIR: I mean, it sounds like if she’s gone out of state too, to have the abortion, probably that’s not what’s going to happen.

MARTIN: No, that’s not going to happen. In her case, she had the financial means, the wherewithal, the education to reach out to an attorney to represent her in this case, and felt safe in going public, which a lot of people don’t. But what if someone dies?

MAIR: Yes. So, I think that’s the question because, at some point, that could happen. And we’ve obviously had situations where things have been caught in the headlines and a lot of people have made assumptions about what’s factual, what’s made up, what’s not. And we found out, at the end of the day, that the story was pretty much exactly as bad as what we were led to believe from the get-go. And so, those are the kinds of stories that, I think, cause a lot of people to look very differently at the question, do you want to have a stringent regime? I would say look at Oklahoma actually rather than Texas because they really are like from the moment of conception pro-life, right? From the moment of conception or do you want to have something that basically allows to the moment that you’re in delivery, like you would have in certain police states? And I think that’s a horrible choice That most Americans are not going to want to choose either one of those things.

MARTIN: Last month, Ohio, which has been considered a swing state, but has gone solidly for Trump, voted to enshrine access to abortion in the state constitution. So, what did that event signal to you?

MAIR: Well, I think what that event signaled is, based on my understanding of what that means legally, I don’t think legislators in Ohio are really even capable of eroding that. That’s now a firm constitutional protection. And so, Ohio’s abortion regime looks considerably more like what you have in a very, very blue state, a very progressive state, a very comfortable with abortion state like California, than a state that is redder, like in Oklahoma, or apparently, a state that’s not as red like Texas, right, which, you know, getting back to this, that’s what’s interesting about the politics here is that if that happened in Ohio, you know, how are pro-life Republicans in Texas reading the tea leaves and how are they responding to it? I wouldn’t envy their job.

MARTIN: Well, you’ve talked about what it means to be pro-life. You know, a lot of people have started to become acquainted with the fact that America’s maternal mortality rate is horrible for an advanced industrial country with presumably health care that is, for some people, the best in the world, but for other people, not at all. I mean, and for black women, the situation is particularly dire. Black women have the highest maternal mortality rate of any racial or ethnic group. And so, the question becomes, like, if people are really pro-life, why is there not more policy focused on preventing mothers from dying in childbirth?

MAIR: Well, I think that’s something that we’re starting to see actually. One thing that has been interesting to me is that before you had Roe go away, right, all of this attention was focused on literally, like, what abortion bans? What could we use to push the needle? What would happen if you had this justice appointment — appointed? How might — and confirmed? How might that adjust the calculus on the court, right? Now, that it has been overturned, I’m hearing a lot about laws toughen up on child support payments from dads, right? Like, single moms cannot do it alone, and they should not be expected to do it alone. And if we’re going to be serious about being a pro-life society and advocating pro-life policy, that’s one thing we can do, because the more that women feel that they’re going to be supported financially, the less likely they are to choose abortion. And I think that also goes to maternal health. Now, that’s something that I think has been discussed in the pro-life community a lot less historically. And I think part of that is we’ve had, in the last couple of years, a lot more and a lot better data about when we’re looking at maternal health outcomes, particularly, as you say, amongst African American women, right? I feel like if we were talking five or 10 years ago, we just weren’t hearing as much about that and I don’t think the data was as good. So, inevitably, that wasn’t going to be a focus. But I think now we’re in a place where people are seeing that data and they are getting concerned about it and they are talking about what can be done from a policy standpoint.

MARTIN: So, you’re a campaign strategist, strategize something. I mean, as we are speaking now, you know, Donald Trump is still the front runner for the Republican nomination. The platform for the party last time was basically, like he said, like whatever he said, do you think that the part — I mean, that’s what it was, right, like what he said.

MAIR: Right.

MARTIN: So, do you think that it should be —

MAIR: Well, it’s true. I mean, I don’t disagree.

MARTIN: — explicit this year? I mean, in 2024, should the Republican Party set out a platform and say, this what we believe? And give these folks a place to stand?

MAIR: As a general concept, I do think that platforms are important documents for parties. Although, I also think that it’s important for people to understand that very few candidates are actually going to adhere to those platforms. I will say that for people who are concerned about continuing to sustain the losses, like, what happened in Ohio and ending up with states that are relatively red, having abortion regimes that look like California, for those people, actually having a platform in 2024 that’s like, whatever Donald Trump said, that might actually be a great thing for them, right, because if there’s one thing that we know, I am not a Trump fan, I don’t have any intention of voting for him or for Joe Biden in 2024. But at the end of the day, one thing we do know is that most Republicans are not like me and most Republicans really do think that whatever Trump says is pretty much what they should go with and whatever policy they want to adopt. I mean, if Donald Trump says, the sky is pink, probably a solid 81 percent of self-identified Republicans are going to say, yes, it’s pink. And so, this one area where Trump taking the position that he’s taking might actually turn out to be politically beneficial for the party. Certainly, a lot more beneficial than him spending the entire campaign talking about how he thinks the 2020 election was stolen.

MARTIN: OK. And what is his position?

MAIR: His position has never been 100 percent clear. But what we do know at the moment is that he thinks that the position that Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has taken is way too strict. He — I believe he’s used some pretty harsh words. Like, I think he’s actually used the word harsh. He may have used the word draconian, but something to that effect, right? So, I think basically what Trump is saying is he’s saying focus only on banning late term and you have to have exceptions. So, you have to have life of the mother. You have to have rape. You have to have incest. And my suspicion is that if you pushed him on it — while Donald Trump is certainly no master of legal wordsmithing or legal drafting, my suspicion is if you pushed him on it, he would probably want some sort of a health exception in there too, because I think he probably worries as with this Texas case that where you have a life of the mother exception, that might not quite provide clarity to absolutely everybody in a situation like this one. And that is really — you know, I will say, as a recovering lawyer, that is really one of the problems and pitfalls that I think the pro-life movement faces with things like what was put on the ballot in Ohio. Drafting this stuff can be really tough, and writing policy in such a way that you don’t inadvertently prevent somebody that actually you think absolutely should have access to abortion from having access to abortion is incredibly fraught with peril.

MARTIN: What should the Democrats do?

MAIR: Probably, if the Democrats are being smart, they would like to tee up as many constitutional ballot measures as they possibly can on this issue, right? Because it seems that where they tee it up and where the language sort of pro-life side of the equation is sufficiently strict, which I think it tends to be given where the electorate actually is on this, which is, you know, more permissive on this than I personally would be, they do seem to see some gains and this does seem to be something that can drive turnout for them. Personally, I hope that they don’t listen to a word of this and that they drop the issue. I would very much hope that we do not see more states emulate the example of what we’ve seen in places like California. We’re really honestly, on my read of it, pretty much until you’re in that delivery room, you can terminate, and I think that that’s not a good thing from a moral and an ethical standpoint. But from a political standpoint, it seems that if you present people with a choice between a Texas or Oklahoma style legal regime and a California style legal regime, even people who call themselves pro-life will vote for the California legal regime.

MARTIN: Liz Mair, thanks so much for talking with us.

MAIR: Thank you.