Lindsey Graham’s abortion bill isn’t real legislation. It’s a bad attempt at GOP spin

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the paragon of insincerity who effortlessly shifted from Sen. John McCain’s close friend to former president Donald Trump’s golf buddy, now wants us to think he cares about a national limit on abortion.

The South Carolina Republican introduced legislation on Tuesday that would make abortion after 15 weeks illegal nationwide. The bill – “Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act” – is deceptive on its face. An abortion at 15 weeks, when a typical pregnancy lasts about 40 weeks, is not “late term.”

Graham is using “late term” for marketing, but no amount of spin will sell this bill. It won’t pass a Democrat-controlled Senate. If Republicans take control in November, Republican leader Sen. Mitch McConnell has said he will not drop the filibuster to pass an anti-abortion bill.

So this bill isn’t about protecting a fetus from pain. It’s about protecting Republicans from losing seats. Abortion rights advocates see Graham’s bill as draconian and more restrictive than his previous proposals, which set the limit at 20 weeks. But this nonstarter may actually be a signal ahead of the midterms that Republicans will not back a national ban on all abortions.

The GOP became the proverbial dog that caught the car in June when five conservative Supreme Court justices took away a nearly half-century-old right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade. They left it to states to decide whether and how to restrict abortion. Now Republicans can’t agree on what to do with their success.

Conservative state legislatures quickly showed a taste for total abortion bans and even restrictions on traveling out of state for an abortion. But those proposals have alarmed many voters in a nation where 62 percent of those polled by the Pew Research Center said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Even voters in conservative Kansas overwhelming opposed a state constitutional amendment banning all abortions.

Graham is keenly aware of the unpopular legislation being debated in South Carolina, where a “fetal heartbeat” law took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The law bans abortion at about six weeks but is suspended pending the outcome of a legal challenge from Planned Parenthood. Meanwhile, some South Carolina lawmakers backed a bill banning all abortions without exceptions for rape or incest. Others support some exceptions but stand by the six-week limit on most abortions.

Many Republicans who opposed Roe v. Wade said their objection was not to abortion, but to the Supreme Court’s declaring access to abortion a constitutional right. They said that the abortion laws should be decided by those closer to the people – state legislators.

Republicans got what they wished. Now there’s the spectacle of legislative bodies dominated by men tightening or seeking to eliminate access to abortion. It’s not a good look, especially as voters prepare to go to the polls. .

Now comes Graham with a proposal to do exactly the opposite of letting the states decide. He wants a national abortion law that would impose a 15-week abortion limit in states that now allow more time, but would let stricter restrictions stand in other states.

The New York Times noted Tuesday that in June Graham told Fox News host Martha MacCallum, “All of us in the conservative world have believed that there’s nothing in the Constitution giving the federal government the right to regulate abortion.”

It’s hypocritical, yes, but it’s Lindsey Graham.

At the confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh, a justice who voted to overturn Roe V. Wade, Graham scolded Democratic senators for bringing forth an allegation that Kavanaugh assaulted a girl when he was in high school.

“Boy, do you want power,” he said. “God, I hope you never get it.”

Republicans got their long-desired power over the U.S. Supreme Court on abortion. Now Graham may wish his party never got it.

This story was originally published September 13, 2022 at 2:53 PM.