Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) brilliantly put Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) on the spot this week during a hearing on the consequences of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. It was a pretty clever move. He produced a copy of a constituent letter Durbin had sent in 1989. In that letter, Durbin pledged his support for overturning Roe v. Wade. At that point, he was a centrist congressman from downstate Illinois and at least talked a pretty good pro-life game, as many Democrats did in those days.
“The doomsday calls from those on the Left are ignoring common sense,” Lee said. “They’re ignoring what human instinct tells us about protecting the most vulnerable among us. Members of this committee, including some who are now attacking the Dobbs decision, once shared these views.”
The point Lee made is a smart one. It is not that politicians can never change their views. It is that they cannot change them and then honestly pretend to be outraged or horrified by the fact that someone holds views they once strongly espoused. Had Durbin really thought about abortion rights so little back then that he can pretend to be horrified now?
Durbin could have just said the obvious — that he wasn’t really much of a man of conviction. That he wanted to win a statewide election in Illinois, not just a conservative-leaning downstate district. But instead, he tried to offer an explanation that I really don’t think works.
“I thought to myself, ‘As an individual member of Congress, are you ready to pass a law that applies to every woman in America?’ No. It really has to be her decision. And we can regulate it as we should, but at that point, I made my break,” he added.
Oh, I see — so it was the rape and incest victims that convinced Durbin to support legal abortion. I can understand that.
Except hey, wait a second. If Durbin was pro-life before and then he was convinced that abortion was necessary because of rape and incest cases, then you would expect Durbin to support something like a ban on abortion with exceptions for the rare cases of rape and incest. Durbin doesn’t support anything like that — somehow, he has miraculously come to embrace the exact mainline Democratic Party position on abortion: that it should be legal from the moment of conception until the child goes to college.
OK, I exaggerate slightly, but I’m not even criticizing the position. Clearly, someone or something at some point convinced Durbin that abortion through all nine months of pregnancy for any reason is justified. He was not convinced based on the existence of rape and incest cases. Durbin just recently voted for a bill that would have codified in federal law his nine-month always-legal abortion position.
Maybe Durbin has always supported legal abortion and he only decided after that 1989 letter that he didn’t need to keep up the pretense anymore for his downstate constituents. Maybe someone else persuaded him. Either way, Durbin’s reasoning has nothing to do with the explanation he tried to give. Maybe someday he will truthfully explain why.
