The roar of post-Roe commentary has yet to subside, and abortion activists and Democrats are working hard to make a narrative—any narrative—stick. The leak of the original SCOTUS draft has backfired. Instead of motivating people to action, it instead prepared them for the decision that came. When we finally got Dobbs—a couple of days earlier than most people expected—it surprised nobody. Against the predictions of everyone (including the Justice Department, which warned pro-life groups and churches that violence was likely), the disparate pack of lone wolf domestic terrorists with Jane’s Revenge have perpetrated fewer fire–bombings before the fall of Roe than after.
On every media platform and cable network, Democrats are insisting that the pro-life laws in red states are not just wrong, but cruel—specifically, to “people of color” and “poor people.” But as Dr. Charles Camosy recently pointed out, this narrative has some problems—the most prominent of which being that it is garbage:
Indeed, in 2021 Gallup found that economically vulnerable people of color are significantly more anti-abortion than rich white folks are. For those in households making under $40,000 per year, only 30% want the official position of the Democratic Party: that abortion be legal in all cases. For those in households making over $100,000 per year, those who want unlimited abortion rises to 39%.
Of economically vulnerable people, 42% want abortion legal only in certain cases, while 50% of those with economic privilege do. But wait for this one: 1 in 4 economically vulnerable people want abortion banned altogether, while only 1 in 10 economically privileged people want the same.
In addition, in every circumstance in the same Gallup poll, people of color were more anti-abortion than were non-Hispanic whites. The differences were even more stark when asked about whether they identify as pro-life or pro-choice. Economically vulnerable people were +11 percentage points to the pro-life side while economically privileged people were +24 to the pro-choice side. Slightly more people of color identify as pro-life than pro-choice, while the opposite is true for non-Hispanic whites.
Indeed, most of the data indicates that the average American is socially conservative and fiscally liberal—the mythical “social liberal, fiscal conservative” that is so beloved of libertarian free marketers with political science degrees and electoral ambitions constitutes a mere 15% of voters. In some ways, both parties have misread their bases for some time. Democrats are doubling down hard on the sexual revolution, not realizing that the majority of non-white voters aren’t with them on their feticide and genderbending. The GOP has spent years giving tax breaks to corporations who then lobby against the policies their social conservative voters want. As I’ve noted before, it’s long past time for a realignment.
