abortion ban

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the latest in the Jan. 6 and Georgia indictments, along with Republicans’ eleventh-hour gambit to sink an abortion amendment in Ohio.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

As he stood before one of the friendliest crowds imaginable this weekend, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was still hesitant to spend much time touting the passage of a strict six-week abortion ban in Florida, a law that he only briefly described as “a landmark piece of legislation for this state.”

DeSantis made a big show of signing his state’s 15-week ban into law last year. He televised the bill’s signing and dragged in a bunch of Republican state lawmakers, children holding pro-life signs and a packed crowd to applaud his signature. But when he signed his six-week ban into law in April, he did it privately. His office marked the occasion by putting out a press release in the middle of the night. When he gave a speech at Liberty University the next day, he didn’t even bring it up.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) is a rape survivor who has spoken out about her party’s egregious and restrictive stances on abortion before, specifically when red states pass legislation banning abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest.

As it becomes increasingly clear that extreme Republicans positioning on abortion is, in actuality, helping Democrats win elections, Mace is begging her party to figure out how to position itself in a way that looks, at the very least, like cosplaying as compassionate toward women. Make no mistake, Mace is supportive of some restrictions on the procedure, but she tends to not get specific — like the rest of her party — beyond cautioning her colleagues away from “extremes.”

Last week we unpacked how Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-SC) dodgy messaging on abortion in New Hampshire and Iowa during his soft launch of a possible 2024 campaign was emblematic of the omnipresent issue the Republican Party faces: that it has no idea how to message where it stands on the issue to a national audience.

Republican strategists both publicly and privately have been sounding the alarm for weeks, urging the party to figure out how to coalesce behind specific messaging. Some have suggested coalescing behind Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) proposed 15-week ban as a policy supposedly moderate enough to fly in the 2024 general election, particularly among independent voters who have voted with Democrats on the issue in recent elections.

The Republican Party still has no idea how to position itself nationally on abortion after its Dobbs success. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that, electorally, it will continue to be a winning issue in driving independent voters toward Democrats.

In the wake of Idaho’s passage of a new, first-of-its-kind law that bans some interstate travel to receive abortion care, new data sheds light on just how crucial out-of-state travel has been and will continue to be in this post-Roe America.