South Carolina House Democrats staged a walkout as the Palmetto State moved one step closer toward signing its heartbeat bill into law.
Walkouts are supposed to be symbolic moves, but for Democrats, all this shows is that they know they don’t have much of an argument to make on abortion, beyond dramatic protests and an over-reliance on the courts.
After years of previous attempts, the South Carolina Legislature has finally passed a bill that would ban abortions after a heartbeat is detected. Democrats walked out of the debate in protest. A federal judge blocked the bill on Friday after pro-choice groups sued the state. Judges have blocked similar laws in Georgia and Tennessee.
Democrats know this, and, as the walkout shows, the courts have become their first and only line of defense in recent years. They will give a nod to women’s health when it comes to abortion, even though it’s the only medical procedure Democrats don’t want to regulate. But it’s the courts they fall back on, crowing on about how Roe v. Wade is entrenched precedent that must never be touched.
Abortion polling is notably fickle, given how important the phrasing of the question is, but abortion is never as widely supported as Democrats try to pretend it is. Democrats rely mostly on obfuscation of the issue. For example, this could mean ignoring the scientific fact that life begins at conception or pretending that overturning Roe would outlaw abortion rather than turning the issue over to the states.
The few times Democrats really go on the offensive on the abortion issue, it goes poorly. Consider when Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam endorsed the idea that newborn infants could be left to die without care if it’s what the mother wants. So they mostly stick to defensive maneuvers, such as smearing Justice Brett Kavanaugh as a rapist after he was nominated to the Supreme Court in 2018 and resisting bills that would protect infants born after surviving abortions.
The status quo of unfettered abortion access relies on the courts. This is why Democrats hold up as immutable precedent the Roe decision, even though it is still younger today than the precedent set by the Supreme Court’s pro-segregation ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson was at the time it was finally overturned.
The Supreme Court should at long last correct its mistake and release the issue of abortion from the vise-grip of the courts. Chief Justice John Roberts, who lately seems to base his judicial reasoning more on opinion polling than the U.S. Constitution, should no longer serve as the deciding vote.
And although Democrats will surely throw a fit, they will still have no argument against prohibiting abortion beyond misleading the public and staging symbolic walkouts.
