Trump Is Right about Abortion and Lindsey Graham Is Wrong
Donald Trump last week said he opposes any national legislation on abortion, and said he supports state governments adopting their own policies. According to USA Today: “Former President Donald Trump said individual states should choose their own abortion restrictions, avoiding talk of any kind of federal government ban and drawing criticism from Democrats and anti-abortion Republicans alike on a pivotal election issue. …At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.”
Democrats naturally condemned these remarks, insisting that the only acceptable position is support for nationwide policy mandating the legality of abortion everywhere. Trump, however, also met opposition from some Republicans who continue to cling to the (clearly unrealistic) idea that a national abortion ban can somehow be forced through Congress.
Chief among these opponents is Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina who claims “It’s a state’s issue up to a point.” Graham, however, gives no indication as to where this “point” is. historically, of course, abortion was 100% a state and local issue, and it was not until an activist Supreme Court imposed federal policy on all states that it became anything other than a state issue.
At the time just prior to Roe v. Wade in 1973, however, the United States was a patchwork of state laws on abortion, with abortion legal on demand—then as now—in the two most populous states, California and New York.
Moreover, throughout much of the nineteenth century, the legality of abortion varied, as did the enthusiasm with which anti-abortion laws were enforced.
By the late nineteenth century, there were plenty of anti-abortion activists, but few suggested that abortion was a matter for federal policy. Indeed, the closest the nation got to nationwide abortion policy was federal law—beginning in 1872—that restricted the use of US postal servi
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