Biden Fumbled the Ball on Abortion
Thursday’s debate was an unmitigated disaster for Democrats. For perhaps the first time on a national debate stage, former President Donald Trump seemed relatively calm and articulate. In contrast, President Joe Biden was doddering, incoherent, and often seemed unable to string an intelligible sentence together.Â
While questions surrounding Biden’s cognitive abilities have already defined the 81-year-old president’s campaign, any plausible deniability about his mental acuity was effectively destroyed by his abysmal performance on Thursday.
While Biden’s clear cognitive decline has dominated reactions to the debate, he made another, underrated fumble.
Questions around abortion and the post-Dobbs abortion bans sweeping dozens of states should have been an easy slam dunk for Biden. According to one poll released in March, one in eight voters rank abortion as their top issue. When abortion has come up on the ballot, voters have resisted bans—even in red states like Kansas and Kentucky.
However, Biden’s comments on abortion during Thursday’s debate were a barely coherent stumble, one that highlighted—rather than minimized—weaknesses in the Democratic position on abortion.
“I supported Roe v. Wade, which had three trimesters,” Biden said in response to a question about whether he supported any abortion restrictions at all. “First time is between a woman and a doctor. Second time is between the doctor and an extreme situation. And a third time is between the doctor—I mean, it’d be between the woman and the state.”
While Biden’s meaning wasn’t fully clear, I think a good-faith reading of his comments goes something like this: first-trimester abortions should be between a woman and her doctor (i.e. always acceptable), rarer second-trimester abortions should also be legal but are effectively only used in extreme medical circumstances, while post-viability third-trimester abortions should be left up to in
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