Republican debate: Mike Pence and Tim Scott are right: A federal 15-week abortion law is good policy
The first substantive issue on which Republican candidates disagreed in the first GOP debate was abortion. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and current Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) opposed a 15-week abortion ban on the federal level, while former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) supported it.
Scott and Pence were right, while Haley and Burgum were wrong. Scott rightly pointed out that it is immoral to allow states like Colorado and Maryland to allow abortion in the eighth month. A civilized country shouldn’t tolerate that.
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Burgum was wrong in arguing that the Constitution relegates abortion to the states. Congress has the right to protect unborn children from abortion. Just as Congress sets a federal minimum wage and states can set a higher minimum wage within their own borders, it is sensible for Congress to ban late-term abortions and for states to decide which first-trimester abortions to ban, and with which exemptions.
Haley was wrong in saying that a 15-week ban was politically untenable. It’s true that Democrats and the media successfully cast a 15-week abortion bill as a “national abortion ban,” which sounds like a total abortion ban. That’s unpopular. The average American would allow first-trimester abortions and then after that only in certain extraordinary cases.
In Harvard’s Harris Poll last year, an overwhelming majority of voters said abortion after 15 weeks should be illegal. Less than 1-in-3 voters said abortion should be legal past that point.