Mr. President, Do You Favor Third-Trimester Abortions?

Predictably, President Biden has had nothing meaningful to say about the outrageous, criminal leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion, but he has been quick to demagogue the justices in the putative Court majority for overturning Roe and Casey, as well as Republicans and abortion opponents. What’s at stake, the president says, is “about a lot more than abortion,” and he warned that “this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization in recent American history.”

Putting aside that widespread, vibrant opposition to the taking of unborn life long predates the political emergence of Donald Trump and his “make America great again” movement (on that score, see Xan’s excellent analysis of “What Americans Really Think about Abortion”), the actual extremists when it comes to abortion are Democrats, very much including Joe Biden — ostensibly, a practicing Catholic — and one who once supported a constitutional amendment to empower states to overturn Roe.

The Clintons, when they led the Democratic Party, used to say that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” As is generally the case with the Clintons, they didn’t actually believe what they were saying. They took pains to avoid describing any kind of abortion they would outlaw for the sake of rarity. But they felt like they had to say “safe, legal, and rare” because even most pro-abortion people in America and the West do not believe abortion should be available on demand, at any time, for any reason.