The New Yorker Radio Hour - For Republicans, the End of Abortion Rights Was a Dangerous Victory

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

At the Republican National Convention in July, a platform plank in place for decades that called for a national abortion ban was removed—right at the moment that such a ban has actually become legally possible, after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from hard-line pro-life positions, saying that abortion rights sitting with the states “is something that everybody wanted.” The New Yorker’s Washington correspondent Susan B. Glasser explores the tension within the Republican Party and speaks with David Remnick about her reporting, including an interview with Representative Matt Rosendale, of Montana. A hard-liner dismissive of pragmatic compromise, Rosendale believes that life begins at conception, and he is challenging his House Republican colleagues to vote their convictions and ban in-vitro fertilization. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The signal accomplishment of Donald Trump's term as president, in his terms, may be the end of Rovers is weighed. He promised conservative voters that he'd appoint anti-abortion justices, and he delivered, all with the help of Mitch McConnell, who secured Trump a bonus judicial appointment. But the rollback of abortion rights after more than half a century came at a steep political cost inside the party. Recently, a Republican state legislator in Texas made news by pleading with her colleagues to stop talking about abortion. She said, it's putting gas in the tank of Democrats. And at the Republican National Convention, a longstanding plank supporting a national abortion ban was removed, right when such a ban had actually become.

legally possible. Our Washington correspondent, Susan Glasser, has been looking at this emerging tension in the Republican Party. What's really obvious now, Susan, it seems to me, is that even Donald Trump, he's now out to tone down his rhetoric around abortion, saying, well, this will be a state matter and everybody will be happy. And what I did is I put three great Supreme Court justices on the court, and they happen to vote in favor of killing Roe v. Wade and moving it back to the states.

This is something that everybody wanted. Is that effort gaining any traction? It's not about principle for him. It's about politics. It's about votes. And what's fascinating to me is the extent to which his own party hasn't challenged him as much as you might imagine on what they have defined as an issue of principle for the last five decades since the Supreme Court decided Roe versus Wade, anti-abortion policy and politics have been at the core of this evolving Republican Party ideology. Donald Trump has basically said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I would like to take credit for getting rid of Roe versus Wade, but also not pay a political price for it.

And that's what we saw at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee. When I was there, Trump essentially took over the Republican Party platform. and, you know, a kind of a sleight of hand that's gotten less attention than you might think. They got rid of a platform plank that had been in there for decades, calling for a national abortion ban. Susan, you spoke with a congressman named Matt Rosendale representing Eastern Montana, and he's very active on this issue. Let's listen to some of your conversation with him. I think that you had a platform committee that tried to accommodate a, you know, a platform committee. larger a swath of the middle of the electorate is what I think. But I will tell you that the

base of the Republican Party is very disturbed by those very things that you just mentioned. Do you think that it means that the Republican Party has given up on pursuing a national abortion ban or simply that they don't want to talk about it on the campaign trail? I can't speak for the whole party, Susan. I can speak for me. I can speak for me. Matt Rosendale. And I can, and I've always, you know, pursued the things that I hold very strongly in my beliefs and my principles and, and where where the entire party goes. That's, that's an apparatus that, that I don't have a lot of control over. Is Congressman Rosendale right? Yeah, of course he's right. Look, everybody who gets in ped with Donald Trump is making a deal.

And I think their deal is let's get back to power. let's win in November. And I personally don't have much doubt that they would pursue a national abortion ban in Congress if they have the votes to put it through. You've also got Project 2025, the far-right platform, which calls for essentially banning abortion pills and other restrictions on reproductive rights. Trump tried to distance himself from Project 2025. He claimed, I don't know what it is.

Now, this betrays, doesn't it, some nervousness on his part where the abortion issue is concerned and about the right wing in general? Absolutely. I think he is very concerned about the power of the abortion issue. He's seen over the two years since the Dobbs decision that again and again and again, it has brought voters out even in otherwise red states such as Kansas. He knows that Harris has been almost constantly on the campaign trail in the two years since then focusing on. reproductive rights. One of his unfortunate superpowers as a campaigner is his ability to look you right in the eye and lie to you and say things that are just patently absurd. It is obviously absurd to say that Project 2025 has nothing to do with what a future Trump administration would look like, given how closely aligned the people who created this policy agenda for a second Trump term were with Trump's own administration, his own campaign. And now his own vice presidential

running mate, it turns out, wrote the foreword for the book from the Heritage Foundation. But Donald Trump has this brazen power of not seeming to mind when he makes absurd statements because he somehow still implants the falsehood with people. He creates the plausible doubt But Kamala Harris, I thought she was really effective in campaigning on this when in her debut as the presumptive nominee, David, when she went out there and she, I think it was her first rally in Wisconsin. Do you remember this? He and his extreme project 2025 agenda will weaken the middle class. Like, we know we got to take this seriously. Can you believe they put that thing in writing? Now, even without a real national abortion ban, there are. ways to go slice by slice by state by state and cut down on abortion in an even more radical way than we have now, is that's something you think we'll still see them try to do? Or has the backlash to Roe v. Wade been so profound that a potential Trump administration would be much more cautious? Yeah. Well, look, let's obviously reconvene this conversation after November. But I would say absolutely not.

that in fact, the agenda is the agenda. And mission-driven politicians aren't likely to stop, even if the public opinion numbers don't look good for them. I think that they've shown the ability to challenge majority public opinion on issues such as this for a long period of time and to unfold the campaign over decades. What they haven't always had is a political opposition from Democrats, from women who support reproductive rights that has been as fierce, determined, and long-term

as they themselves have been. I'm speaking with staff writer Susan Glasser. More in a moment. Congressman Matt Rosendale, who you spoke with, is certainly one of those mission-driven politicians. He stands apart in his opposition to IVF in vitro fertilization. He's challenging members of his party with a bill that would remove federal funding for IVF or military families.

families. And that issue kind of blew up on Republicans in February when Alabama's Supreme Court essentially banned IVF, saying that embryos created during the process should be considered children. IVF is a treatment used by nearly 100,000 people every year to get pregnant. So Susan, how much of an outlier is Rosendale on this issue? I think he's an example of the outlier who suggests the potential, at least, for where the extremes become the party's position. And right now, Rosendale is very disliked by many of his Republican colleagues in the House for essentially exposing, in his view, the hypocrisy of a lot of their positions, you know, that he's exposed sort of the craving political calculations in some ways behind this movement.

after the Alabama, a decision came out, I started doing a lot more research because I could see that this was going to be something that Congress and state houses across the nation were going to be having to start to deal with. We're trying to get information about how many embryos are being accurate information, about how many embryos are truly being created this year, how many of them are being frozen. what kind of testing is being done on these embryos? How many of them are being destroyed? How many of them are being kept in a frozen state for how long? And we're not able to get this information. And so that's where it all started. So I see now my role is to help educate a lot more of the members of Congress

who really weren't aware of this because they also, these same members, Susan, have co-sponsored legislation that says, we believe that life begins a conception. We've had 131 members of Congress co-sponsor legislation that says, we believe life begins a conception. And so if you're going to sign off and sponsor legislation like that, then the natural path is to say, if life begins in conception, And we have all of these conceived children out there that are being kept in a frozen state, that are being destroyed or that are being experimented upon, we've got to address that.

I mean, there's an internal logic, I guess, in there. How are Republicans attempting to square these things? That's right. Well, for now, of course, they're attempting to square by preferring not to talk about it, in part because, Whether it's consistent or not, it's bad politics or that's their fear. But the reason that I think it's an important conversation is for a couple things. First of all, we know, courtesy of the Alabama Supreme Court, that Rosentale is not the only person in America who thinks that this is where the anti-abortion movement is headed. You may have Republicans in Congress who don't want to talk about this.

The Southern Baptist Convention actually, in effect, endorsed Rosent. and Dale's position. That is a very large movement of American Christians. It certainly represents a significant potential boating block. You know, the last few years have taught us a lot of things about American politics we might not have assumed before. And one of the things is that ideas and views that we once saw as so fringe and far from the mainstream that they couldn't possibly become law have actually come to dominate our politics. and have been remarkably successful in some ways. So I wouldn't discount something that to us looks like a fringe notion right now.

Well, he seems to think Rosendale does, that some Republicans will come around on this issue. He told you that the majority of Republican politicians don't understand the issue. Why is he so confident that this is a political battle that Republicans can win when at the same time polling suggests that IVF is, in a sense, hugely, popular. People want this option. Well, in part because of Republicans' own experience again and again and again in the last few years, David, they have taken positions that are very unpopular with the voters and yet they've continued to pursue them. Look at some gun control proposals, for example. Huge

majorities of Americans support many gun control proposals. And yet Republicans have essentially taken a minority view and made that into the law of the land. I think they've done that with their abortion policies. Overturning Roe v. Wade is not supported, something like two-thirds of Americans now support the idea that abortion in some form should be legal. And so Republicans, like Rosendale, are not afraid to take minoritarian positions and use the system of our democracy quite successfully. It's seems to me to impose those minority views on a large majority of Americans. So you did ask Rosendale about the human issue here, how much he sympathizes with the many families trying to get pregnant. And he told you this. My heart aches for folks that are having problems,

trying to start a family and conceive children naturally. God blessed me with three sons, and now I've been blessed with two granddaughters. And I have appreciated every, phase of life that they have gone through. But we need to invest more time and money in what are the causes of this infertility. And when you start introducing young girls at the age of 13, 14, to birth control pills so that they can control their menstrual cycles and they utilize this for 20, 25 years and then decide to start a family, that has a huge impact. we have already seen and had documented that the COVID vaccination has caused young women

problems with their menstrual cycles. We have seen men who have had terrible diets with a lot of preservatives and chemicals that have hurt their fertility. And so we need to start focusing on what can we do? And most folks, studies show that if we focus on helping them with their, address their fertility, issues, that that is as successful as an IVF program. Well, as you can hear there, clearly his mention here of the COVID vaccine in particular is not supported by science, but more broadly, right, it's not that anyone is against doing

research on infertility, but it's a very complex debate that he's opened up. Now, what did you think when he said that? Is that enough for people to be convinced? Short answer, no. No, it's not. I think that he is already trying to appeal to a relatively small fringe of Americans, but ones who exert disproportionate political power in our system. Already, you've seen many Republicans in Congress in the wake of that Alabama Supreme Court decision come out, share stories. And this is Republicans as well as Democrats, share stories of their own struggles with fertility and relying on IVF to have a family.

Tim Walse has also talked in speeches about using IVF in his own family. Yeah. And that's very powerful stuff. It reminds me in some ways of the early discussions over support for gay marriage, for example, and LGBTQ rights. You know, it's personal. And everyone in America at this point probably knows somebody who has struggled to start a family or, you know, back then who had a gay member of their family or lesbian member of their family. Remember when Dick She said, as hard line of a conservative as there could be who finally came out in support of this and talked about his own family's experience. So this is one thing I think where this hard-edged right-wing ideology comes into conflict with human experience. Maybe this is a question that requires a daring short answer and you're never anything less than daring in your honesty. imagine a debate in September, October, and it comes to the abortion issue, and Kamala Harris just forthrightly puts across what her position so obviously it is. And Donald Trump forthrightly, you'll pardon the expression, puts forward his position, as you've described it here, politically, politically.

politically, who's the winner for that exchange come November? David, in our politics, if you're talking about the other person's issue, you're losing. So Donald Trump doesn't want to talk about abortion. If he's talking about abortion, he's losing. If Kamala Harris is talking about immigration more than a sentence or two, she's losing. That's the race right now. Yeah. It's who can turn to offense and hit.

their points again and again and again. Susan Glasser, I always learn from talking to you every day. Thank you so much. Oh, it's great to be with you. Thank you, David. Susan Glasser is a Washington correspondent for the New Yorker, and she spoke with Representative Matt Rosendale of Montana's Second Congressional District. Susan's best-selling book about Donald Trump's presidency is called The Divider. I'm David Remnick. That's our program for today. Thanks for listening.

See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer. With guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deccan.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Trurina Endowment Fund.