The Left gets a lot of mileage out of portraying anti-abortion sentiment as the province of a relatively small group of benighted anti-women lunatics and religious nuts, often waving off their arguments as "extreme" and unworthy of serious consideration. This attitude deliberately ignores the longstanding reality that Americans are divided on abortion, and that a large majority of voters favor increased legal restrictions on the practice -- with women and young voters often being more likely than other groups to back such measures. While the Republican Party's platform language on these questions is inarguably to the right of the average American's views, Democrats' official stance is far out of the mainstream. It is, empirically, quite extreme. Because liberals tend to dominate the country's taste-making institutions, including the media, GOP politicians often find themselves cornered into discussions of unhelpful questions, especially the perennial "exceptions" debate (which addresses a tiny fraction of abortions in this country). Such framing favors the pro-choice side and places pro-lifers on the defensive. In a new ad campaign airing in Ohio, Pennsylvania and the DC Metro area, March for Life Action highlights recent polling to underscore how radical the Democratic Party is on abortion-related legislative questions:
This ad is effective in several ways: (1) It features a diverse set of women making a strong case on an issue that the other side casts as all about women's rights. Adding the authoritative voice of a medical doctor into the mix is also smart. (2) The public opinion statistics in the ad turn the "extreme" narrative on its head. It wages the political battle on much more favorable terrain and shines a bright light on just how much control the fanatical abortion lobby exerts over the Democratic Party. (3) It adopts the language of "consensus," as if to say, "we may differ on abortion overall, but after many years of debate, here are some areas of broad agreement among the American people." The idea is to pressure Democrats to defend their hardcore stances against the established consensus. (4) It uses data to back up its core premises. The survey cited in the spot was released over the summer. It was commissioned by the Knights of Columbus, but carried out by Marist's respected pollster, which receives an 'A' rating from FiveThirtyEight. I'll leave you with a flashback of Hillary Clinton engaging in "gutter politics" by comparing the tens of millions of women who affirm the emerging American consensus on abortion to radical Islamist terrorists:
Mrs. Clinton supports late-term abortion, on demand, for virtually any reason, funded by taxpayers. Short of endorsing compulsory abortions, this is about as radical as it gets.
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