But if holding pro-life views is as devastating as we’re supposed to believe, why then is Gardner faring better than Ken Buck, or any other Republican running for statewide office in Colorado in a decade? Now, Gardner may still lose, mostly because Colorado has turned blue, yet it was “Mark Uterus” who lost the endorsement of the pro-choice Denver Post editorial board and stumbled when answering a simple question about his support for late-term abortion limits (he has none). If anything, the Udall race illustrates the complexity of the issue, not the definitive end of the debate.
Udall is not alone. Democrats have increasingly wandered away from their cautious “rare and safe” arguments to absolute support for abortion no matter what the circumstance. It was simultaneously horrifying and refreshing to read Hannah Rosin’s review of Katha Pollit’s new book, which advocates that liberals stop pretending abortion is awful or even morally neutral and began treating it as a “social good.” We can’t exactly call this evolving on an issue. It is honest. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and others have long intimated that there is an even uglier Malthusian side to abortion that doesn’t play well in politics. People like Udall are only a small step from making the very same argument.
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