The Middle with Jeremy HobsonHow will abortion play into next year's election?
In this episode of "The Middle with Jeremy Hobson," we talk about the role abortion will play in next year's presidential election and beyond. Jeremy is joined by Ohio Public Radio News Reporter and Producer Jo Ingles; and Mary Ziegler, an author and professor at the UC Davis School of Law. The Middle's house DJ Tolliver joins as well, plus callers from around the country.
Welcome to the middle.
I'm Jeremy Hobson.
I want to welcome the listeners of WUTC in Chattanooga, Tennessee and WVXU in Cincinnati, Ohio.
This week.
Great to have more Ohio listeners because what a week it has been there.
And as always, Tolliver is here. Hi Tolliver.
Jeremy, I am a huge fan of Columbus Ohio. Okay, I want locked eyes with Donald Glover at a food truck and he ran away from me. Was the best night of my life.
Well, you know, I was in Ohio the other day before the election and saw signs for Yes on one. This was outside of Cleveland. Yes on one. That was the signs in favor of putting abortion rights into the Ohio constitution, signs for No on one right at the same intersection, and I was wondering, how is this vote going to go? And in the end, as you know, Ohio, a state that otherwise seems to be getting reader, gave another statewide victory to proponents.
Of abortion rights.
And I'm excited to hear what listeners around the country say on this show about how abortion we'll figure into their votes next year wherever they are. But first, so many people weighed in on our topic. Last week we asked what role should the US play in the wars in Ukraine and Israel and Gaza.
Listen to some of the voicemails we got.
There's Jeff Waite from Birmingham, Alabama.
This is Bobby Ganello from Chicago.
This is Paul and Smyrna Hi.
This is Piker Honigmann. I'm calling from Chapelhill, North Carolina, and I do not think we should be spending money on assisting the Israelis and doing it. I also don't think we should be assisting Ukraine and a fruitless war.
I think the United States should staying behind both those countries and we should be their allah Israel in Ukraine and my contax dollars going to support Ukraine and Israel in any way we can.
If anything, we should be helping people in our own home. I'm liberal, but I'm really very frustrated with our country, our gompliment.
We've been involved in a war for probably going on two years now, and fortunately.
We may have to just stick it out.
We made that commitment.
Stan Tall, suck it up, roll on well.
Thanks to everyone who called in all right now to this week's topic, abortion. We mentioned Ohio, which changed its constitution to protect abortion access against the wishes of Republicans who run the state. In Kentucky, the Democratic governor Andy Basheer one reelection in Democrats we'll soon have control of both houses of the state legislature in Virginia in part because of voter support for abortion rights. So what do you think what role will abortion play in how you vote in the next election?
Tolliver, what is our phone number?
It's eight four four four Middle. That's eight four four four sixty four three three five three. You can also write to us at Listen to the Middle dot com.
And while we wait for your calls, let's meet our panel guests joining us Joe Ingles, reporter at Ohio Public Radio and Television State House News Bureau.
Joe, welcome.
Great to be with you.
And Mary Ziegler is also with us, a professor of law at University of California, Davis and author of many books on abortion, including Roe, The History of a National Obsession. Mary Ziegler is so great to have you here as well.
Thanks for having me.
Well, before we.
Get to calls, let me ask each of you a question, Joe, it must feel like a roller coaster ride in Ohio. So much has happened in the last year. Can you just give us the quick version of what just happened in Ohio.
This is the cliff notes. These are the cliff notes. Okay, Roe was overturned and on the very same day, within hours, there was a six week band that was put in place. That band had no exceptions for rape and incest. It did have an exception for the life of the mother. It was in place for eighty two days, and probably during that time, you may have heard about the story that made international news about a ten year old rape victim who had to go to Indiana to get an abortion. A lot of Ohioan's heard that story and that kind of got them thinking. Doctors were upset because of the way the law was applied. So they took it to court in Hamilton County, Cincinnati area, and they said, you know, women are being hurt by this law. Some of them are close to death from the situations that they've had, and you need to do something. So the Hamilton County court said, yet, it's too vague. We're putting it on hold. And they said it you know where it's just sitting there, nothing's happening, and the state is coming in and saying, way, wait, wait, wait, wait, we don't want that on hold. They took it to the Supreme Court. The Republican dominated Supreme Court has just had a hearing on that law, and it is just sitting there right now. There are questions of where it goes from here, but with this constitutional amendment, it will make it hard to put it back in place.
Okay, Mary Ziegler, You've been following abortion politics and law for years. How important is what happened this week, not just in Ohio, but in Virginia and in Kentucky as well.
It's certainly a bellweather for twenty twenty four. It's a confirmation of something that seemed to be true since Doobbs, which is that when you isolate abortion is an issue, you tend to get majorities supporting it, even in states like Ohio that, as you mentioned, Jeremy, are pretty conservative. I think it's still ambiguous how much abortion is going to be a deciding issue for voters. It seems to have been in twenty twenty two. It seems to have been an important issue for voters in Kentucky and Virginia. But how that translates to a presidential election or even to down ballot races when a presidential candidate is on the ballot, I think still remains to be seen.
Okay, let's see what the callers have to say right now. Mary is with us from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mary, Welcome to the middle.
Go ahead, Hi, I just wanted to express the thought that the abortion issue will be definitely one of the things that will be on my mind next year, and I intend to vote Democratic to preserve abortion rights. I happen to be way past the age where I would ever need an abortion I'm seventy nine. But for the younger women, I think that that right definitely has to be preserved so that those who already have families can provide better for the children they already do have, and so that they don't have educational plans and career goals disrupted because of an unplanned pregnancy.
That is abortion going to Trump? So to speak, every other issue for you more important to you than economy or climate change or anything else you might want to vote on.
No, climate change would be my number one top issue.
Okay, climate change is.
My top but abortion is up near the top. Okay, And as it so happens, the Democratic Party is on the side where I believe they should be on both is shoe?
Okay, thanks for that call, Mary. Let me just go to you, Mary Ziegler, about that. Do you think, as you've watched voters over the years, would it be unusual for a lot of voters in America to vote on the issue of abortion first and foremost?
It would be?
I mean, so this has been something we've seen changing since Dobbs. So the old political consensus would have been that the majority of Americans think abortion should be legal, especially early in pregnancy, but that that was not a motivating issue for voters, and that the people who cared the most about the abortion issue when it came to voting were the people who were opposed to abortion, and that seems to have held for a long time. It doesn't seem necessarily to have held after Dobbs. So in twenty twenty two, we have lots of polling data and I think election results to support that people who were supportive of abortion rights had it as a higher priority than people who opposed abortion rights. And so I think that it's new, but we're seeing it in a couple of elections post off, so that seems to be a new pattern that's taken hold.
Joingles there's a Senate race in Ohio coming up next year with Shared Brown running for reelection. He's a Democrat, I think the only statewide Democrat in the state right now is does he think do do the people in Ohio think right now that abortion is going to be the key issue in his race?
Well, abortion is going to be an issue, but there's going to be other things. Jeremy. For example, we have a redistricting constitutional amendment for which the petitions are being collected right now. Ohio is has jerrymandered districts right now and a super majority in the Ohio Legislature because of that. So this would this would make a big change and put it in the hands of you know, people rather than politicians. That whole thing is being the petitions are being circulated right now, so that's going to be on the ballot. You've also to fifteen dollars an hour minimum wage that could be on the ballot. You've got other issues coming to play, and Shared Brown has always been someone who talked about those working issues, so he will definitely be talking about abortion, but a lot of other things too, and the Republicans running in this space are also going to have to address the key issues facing Ohioans, and a lot of those are not abortion.
Tolliver, I know we're getting some comments on social media.
What are we seeing?
Yeah, Tim and Carlisle Pennsylvania rights. Abortion is a deciding issue for me. I support the right of women to determine what happens to their bodies without government interference, debor rights. I am a committed progressive Christian. I am constantly dismayed at how Christianity is co opted by the hardcore anti abortion crowd intent on driving women back into the dark ages.
You know, Mary Ziegeler, That actually brings up an interesting question. How much has the sort of decline in organized religion, not just in the United States but in a lot of the West inji general, How has that shifted attitudes about abortion rights.
One of the really interesting sort of facts about abortion in the United States is if you're tracking, if you're trying to predict, knowing absolutely nothing about somebody, whether they're going to be opposed to abortion, the best way to do that is to look at their partisan affiliation. It's not to look at how often they go to church. It's not whether they self report a strong belief in God, it's not whether they pray. So one of the things I think that's happened is that on the one hand, you've had a kind of decline of organized religion in a rise of what Pew and other folks call the nuns, right, people who don't affiliate with the particular religion, even if they self identify as Christian or as religious or as spiritual. That's coincided, I think, with a shift in what it means to oppose abortion that much more closely tracks partisan identity than it does faith. So the idea of a progressive Christian being in favor of abortion being legal isn't that unusual, Frankly. I mean, we've seen exit polling out of Ohio that a lot of self identified Evangelical Protestants butved for issue on Right, which is one of the groups we identify the most strongly with being opposed to abortion as a faith community. So the picture is a lot more complicated than just your religious you're a posed to abortion, you're not religious, You're not opposed to abortion.
TOLLIVERD you know, Ohio's vote means that voters in all seven states that have held statewide votes unabortioned since the DABS decision last year have backed access. And now the AP is reporting that advocates in at least a dozen states are trying to get abortion questions on ballots next year.
Yeah, and the debate continues. And this is one that's been going on in America for decades. Here's Walter Knkite announcing the outcome of the rovers Way ruling back in nineteen seventy three on CBS Evening News Good Evening.
In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court today legalized abortions. The majority in cases from Texas and Georgia said that the decision to end the pregnancy during the first three months belongs to the woman and her doctor, not the government. Thus the anti abortion laws of forty six states were rendered unconstitutional.
By the way. Jeremy Cronkite had about two twenty eight million viewers a night, just like the Middle.
Same as US, and we will be right back after this break.
This is the Middle.
I'm Jeremy Hobson. If you're just tuning in the Middle is a national call in show. We're focused on elevating voices from the middle geographically, politically and philosophically, or maybe you just want to meet in the middle. My guests are Joe Ingles, reporter at the State House News Bureau in Ohio, and Mary Ziegler, professor of law at UC Davis and author of many books on abortion. We're asking you what role will abortion play in how you vote in twenty twenty four? Tolliver, what is that number again?
It's eight four four four middle. That's eight four four four six four three three five three. Doll ahead and give.
Us a call.
And before we go back to the phones, I want to ask about Republicans who are not happy with what happened this week in Ohio. Joe Ingles, Governor Mike DeWine wanted voters to make it harder to change the constitution.
They rejected that.
Then he was proposing some unspecified changes to the state six week ban. What was he trying to do and why do you think voters said no to him? He's an otherwise very popular governor.
Well, Governor DeWine has said a lot of things that he's walked back, honestly during his time. So people are familiar with that his stand on guns, for example, or redistricting. There have been some changes there, so that's one reason. But he's now saying, Jeremy that he would accept the will of the people. And it's other Republican lawmakers who are actually coming in and fighting more against this change.
Mary Ziegler. In Virginia, the Republican governor Glenn Younkin was also trying to convince voters to give him a chance to find a maybe you could call it a happy medium between abortion opponents and abortion rights supporters. They rejected that what do you expect that anti abortion Republicans will do now?
Well, I think one of the things you're already seeing anti aborshan Republicans doing is looking at the federal courts, which is ironic because many of us remember when Roe was the law. There was a lot of conservative anxiety about the fact that the court was deciding this issue rather than voters, and there was a lot of calls for the issue to be returned to the states. I think now that the states are voting, you're seeing a lot of pro life or anti worshion Americans wanting to go back to the days when the federal courts are deciding things, so there's already litigation going on that would change, you know, essentially set national rules once again that would override some of the decisions like the ones we saw in Ohio. I think you're going to see more of that. And there's a playbook conservatives have that would potentially allow a future you know, President Trump to change things at the national level without Congress's intervention. And I think you're going to see some of that too as first states, the kind of things that Joe detailed, you know, that would essentially either override what voters are doing or try to at least kick the question to the Ohio Supreme Court, which is very conservative for the mo Again, the Ohio Supreme Court, unlike the US Supreme Court, there are elections, right so what the Ohio Supreme Court looks like right now and what the Ohio Supreme Court looks like after twenty twenty four may not be the same thing. So it's not the same dynamic. But I think we're going to see a lot of reliance on courts.
All right, let's go back to the phones.
Let's go to Cecilia, who's in an arbor Michigan Cecilia.
Welcome.
Go ahead, Hi, Cecilia, if you're there, go ahead, tell us what you what you think is abortionly going to play into your vote next year? The yep, we're here, Cecilia on the air, tell tell us what you think. Okay, heard I heard Cecilia Tulliver, but Cecilia did not hear me.
Let's check in online Tolliver.
When you slutely Marshall and Louisiana writes, I will definitely look to pro choice candidates. Being Louisiana, we see first hand the need for not just women but families to have the choice, especially when minimal resources are provided after the birth of that child.
Let me go to Mary Ziegler on that question. There are a lot of people who have brought up the issue of all of this focus on abortion, but not as much focus on what happens after the child is born.
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that's really interesting, some of the most interesting polling I've seen has been there have been several polls that ask people, you know, when do you think life begins? Right, and you'll get slim majority seeing at conception, and then you ask do you think abortion should be criminalized? And a lot of the same people are answering the question, I think life begins at conception, and I don't think abortion should be criminalized. And you start to see this coming up in some of the post of states, where, for example, you saw there was a woman in Texas who was pregnant who drove in the ho V lane and said, if you know, we really are serious about this whole protecting life thing, why can't I drive in the ho V lane. We've seen people saying I was pregnant and I wasn't allowed to leave my post at work, and I had a still birth, and that's a problem if you believe life begins at conception. So I think we've seen that this sort of focus in a lot of these states on criminalizing abortion, right instead of saying, if you're apposed to abortion, you should focus on making people who would otherwise carry a pregnancy to term think about doing it because they can. And some of that is just our partisan politics. Right We live in a country right now where being opposed to abortion is aligned with being fiscally conservative and not wanting to have the state involved heavily and subsidizing things like post natal care or early childhood education. And the like, and that's left us with this sort of odd paradox, right where the same states that are the most intent on criminalizing abortion are often doing the least after a child was born.
Let's go back to the phones if we can. Let's try Cecilia. She's back from ann Arbor, Michigan. Cecilia, Go ahead, Cecilia, are you there?
Okay, you know it happens.
It does happen, all right, Well, let me go back to our guests then, because they are there, and I'm very happy about that.
Mary.
You know, how does the US compare right now to other countries when it comes to abortion rights?
Yeah, I mean the US has always been an interesting outlier. So on the one hand, right conservatives have always said, you know, viability is the limit, which is what Ohio put in place last night, is unusual a lot of European countries, which is usually where people want to go, and drawing the comparison, draw the line, you know, somewhere between twelve and fifteen weeks, with exceptions for health and life thereafter. So in that sense, the US having viability is the line in some parts of the country is unusual. It's also unusual in the rich and developed world, to have any large swath of the country banning abortion at fertilization, and to have the penalties that are attached to performing abortion and increasingly aiding or abetting abortion, which is a category that can be really broad. It can include people donating to abortion funds, it can include people driving someone to an appointment. That's unusual too. So in a kind of big picture way, if you're describing where the United States is, would find you, as the show is called, most voters in the middle, and you would find policies not in the middle, which is what makes the USNL layer. So US voters are not really very different from European voters at all in the sense that they're broadly in favor of abortion rights. They seem okay with some regulations. The picture is not very different. But when you get down to the nuts and bolts and policy and where the political parties are, sometimes the answer is different.
Joe Ingles, as you've been reporting for years in the state of Ohio, and we did mention that Ohio has been getting redder.
In general.
It used to be that you couldn't win the presidency without winning the state of Ohio. Now you can't win the presidency as a Republican without winning the state of Ohio, because of course, Joe Biden was able to win the presidency even though he didn't win the state of Ohio. Have the political views when it comes to abortion changed gotten redder in Ohio if you will, in the same way that the rest of the politics in the state have over the years.
Well, it depends whose views you're talking about, because if you're talking about the Ohio legislature, their political views on abortion are pretty conservative. But if you go out obviously, Tuesday shows us that fifty six percent of those who voted, you know, think that the new amendment is something that they want to have in place, and it's pretty far abortion. You know, it's abortion rights and it says up until diability is mary mentioned. So, you know, I'm not so sure. It goes back to that redistricting thing. A lot of it is that the legislature doesn't always represent the people that they're supposed to represent, and that was like a key you know, that's a key thing because you look at that and it shows that most people prefer abortion rights, yet the legislature has gone the other way in the past couple of decades.
All Right, I am going to try the phones again and believe you what happened. Jennifer is with us from Tennessee. Jennifer go ahead, not going to happen with Jennifer iky question, Yeah, you go ahead.
I'm from the South Side of Chicago, and growing up I always felt like racial resentments played a lot into people's anti abortion sentiments. Professor's Egler, is that something you've seen in your research?
It's really complicated. I mean, so, on the one hand, right, I think it's fair to say that until recently, the like what you view as the sort of pro choice establishment was very very white, and the pro life for anti worsh establishment was very very white. And there have been overlaps between white supremacist movements and anti worshi movement. So if you you know, if if people remember, the guy who bombed the Olympics in the United States in the nineties was an anti wortion activist who was also a white supremacist. There have been several other instances. So the kind of extremes of the anti abortion movement, I think beyond that, what seems to motivate abortion opponents is more complicated. There's a racial component in the sense that there's a lot of language of civil rights.
Right.
If you listen to anti abortion activists, they often will say this is the civil rights issue of our time. The unborn child is a lot like an enslaved person whose humanity is denied. But the people saying this are overwhelmingly all white people. So the racial politics abortion, and you'll hear anti wortion people saying abortion rights people are racist, right. Clarence Thomas made this argument in twenty nineteen and it's mentioned in the Dodds decision too. Essentially, hey, abortion is this eugenic thing, right, that it's disproportionately affecting not only children with Down syndrome, with children of color, which is true descriptively, there are more people of color having abortions. So I think the motivations there are definitely some people for whom race is an issue who are opposed to abortion. There are plenty of other people for whom that isn't true. And I think that So the short answer, which is the answer you get out of historians all the time, is it's complicated.
You know.
I want to ask each of you about something that has come up, which is abortion is something that happens. I think there are more than six hundred thousand Americans have abortions, or more than six hundred thousand abortions occur every single year in this country. But it is something that people don't often talk about, even if they have had an abortion themselves. Joe Ingles and your reporting in Ohio as you were getting ready for Issue one, did you come across that that people didn't want to you know, that maybe they said one thing publicly, but in fact, in their own personal life they had either had an abortion or they had a different view about it.
I think a lot of people are like that, and I think a big reason people don't want to talk about it is that people feel very strongly about it. You don't get too many people who say, well, I really don't care, and so you know, they don't want to. It's the same reason they don't talk politics. A lot of different politics that they know are really hard to talk with other people who disagree with you. So I think that's I did find that, And we also did see people who had said they didn't want to put up a yard sign in their yard for the same reason. They just didn't want to have their opinion out there, but they intended to vote.
Mary Ziegler, what about you in your research and your reporting over the years, how big of an issue is that that people just don't want to talk about it even if they have had an abortion.
It's a pretty big deal. I mean, there's been a movement in recent years to sort of destigmatize abortion on the left, and I think among some younger Americans that's more common. You'll see sometimes younger Americans describing themselves as pro abortion rather than pro abortion rights or pro choice. But I think there is a lot of I mean, it's tracks pulling that a lot of Americans who think abortion should be legal may or may not think it's moral, which makes it harder to talk about. And there's a fear of alienating people. That's compounded right now by the fact that abortion is a crime in a lot of places, and a lot of Americans are not exactly sure when it's a time when they've crossed a legal line who else they could get in trouble. And so you have both something that's hard to talk about politically, maybe hard to talk about personally, and now something where people are afraid of getting people in trouble. Right So I think there's the sort of layers of silence that we're seeing build around the issue.
Do you think that if more people did speak openly about abortion that over the years, the politics of this would have been very.
Different potentially, Yeah, I mean we're One of the ironies I think we're seeing is that one of the most pronounced changes, or at least interesting changes, is that in a lot of pulling, we're seeing that in states where abortion bans are in place, And I think one of the callers or people on social media mentioned this, people are more opposed to bans when they live under them than they are in abstraction. Right where when you say to somebody in practice, does it sound okay to ban abortion it fill in the blank weeks, a lot of people say, sure, you know, I'm not super into the idea of abortion, But then when you actually try to implement a criminal ban, it's different. So I think part of what you're seeing play out now is that even though there's still these silences around abortion, people didn't really understand what criminalizing abortion meant until they lived with it. And now I think you're starting to see that in the large parts of the country because it's to me It's mind blowing, right that if you knew a pole in a state where there's an abortion ban and you get more people opposed to the ban than in a state that doesn't have one, you have to then stop and think where are the states that don't have them? They're much bluer, right, They're the places you would expect people to be much more unhappy in the abstract about bands. So that tells you a lot I think about. You know why when you criminalize things, they're unintended consequences and intended consequences that people don't love.
We've got a note from Paul who says, my problem with abortion comes from what I learned in biology class. At the point of fertilization, life is the outcome besides being alive. It is clearly human. Therefore, on day one there is a human life. Joe ingles, how do people in Ohio who are staunchly pro life, like Paul sounds like is feel this week?
Well, heartbroken was the word that was used by the head of the Citizens for Christian Virtue. They're very upset right now because they see this, as you know, basically putting everything that they've worked for for thirty years. Into play. And they don't want to see Ohio's laws that limit or restrict abortion. They don't want to see those go away. They don't want to see them repealed.
You know, Tolliver.
Abortion always looms large during election cycles, and we've seen it come front and center time and time again, especially during presidential elections.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Here's former President George W. Bush affirming his stance on abortion during a speech at the two thousand Republican National Convention.
Good.
Some people can disagree on this issue, but surely we can agree on ways to value life by promoting adoption, parental notification. And what Congress sends me a bill against partial berth abortion, I will sign it into law.
And that he did well, write back with more of the middle. This is the middle.
I'm Jeremy Hobson. We're talking about what role abortion could play in the twenty twenty four election. How will it affect your vote? My guests are Joe Ingles, reporter at Ohio Public Radio and Television, State House News Bureau, and Mary Ziegler, professor of law at UC Davis, an author of many books on abortion. Our number is eight four four middle. That's eight four four four six four three three five three. You can also reach out to us at Listen to the Middle dot com. Tolliver cross those fingers for me. Let's just see about Rebecca in Minnesota. Rebecca, Hi, you hear me? Oh good, Rebecca, go ahead.
A huge issue for me. I become so dispayed when I hear this battle cry of killing babies. But they just have no seem to have no idea that it's not black and white issue. There's such a huge gray zone in between there, and not just the rape and the incests and such, but all the other things that both my sister and I could have died just from the conditions that we had. Like that topic pregnancy takes all the things that you would never choose to have a abortion, but those things happen, and it takes away your right to choose what happens in your life. So and then I think it's pretty telling the way they say. The Republicans tend to say, you know, less government less government, tend to manipulate the Supreme Court to get their representatives in there, even though in the hearing the dancer on the issue, and they won't admit that they are anti abortion. So now we have a conservative court. Yes, that is also very frustrating.
Well, Rebecca, thank you so much for your call. I am so happy that that the phone works so we could hear you. Let's, you know what, let's press our luck here, Tolliver, and let's go to Tom in Las Vegas. Tom, go ahead, welcome to the middle.
Now, Hi, this is Tom. I can hear you.
I hope you can hear me. O, yes, I can hear you.
It would use the abortion question as a kind of witless chest for some Kennedy. And you know, if they're too narrow minded to decide for somebody else, if they don't even know whether that person should be able to decide whether they want want to have an abortion or not, then they're not the kind of person I would want to put in elective office. That's my attitude on it, you know, because they might be no minded on other things as well. And I really think you need to have the old saying is that a parachute and a human mind both function best when they are open.
Okay, Tom, thank you so much for that call. You know, Mary Ziegler, both of those calls brought up something that we haven't really gotten to, which is probably one of the things that drove many voters in Ohio to vote the way that they did, which is a feeling that their freedom is being taken away.
Yeah.
I mean, it's really unusual in the history of the US to have something be declared a fundamental right and then be taken away by a court. And then I think that that really was hard for a lot of people. And also we know just from behavioral psychology, having something taken away from you is harder than never having had it in the first place. And so I think this feeling that a right was taken away is motivating a lot of voters. And I think there's also a feeling that the Supreme Court didn't care that what it was doing was unpopular, which is also sounds like, Okay, that's unremarkable. You know, the Supreme Court is not elected. They're not supposed to care what people think. But historically they always have.
Right.
There's the old joke about the Supreme Court follows the election returns, and that was true, right. I mean, in US history, the Supreme Court rarely ignored what people think on an issue and suffered a backlash when it did. And I think to some degree that's what you're seeing now that people didn't want the majority of Americans didn't want Roe to be overturned, and when it was, they were upset that the Supreme Court hadn't cared what they thought, and they were upset that a right they thought they had no longer was there.
Let's go to Phil, who is in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Phil, welcome to the middle.
Go ahead, high professor. Why do rich white men think it's okay to regulate every woman's body? And my other thought on the whole abortion issue is cancer is just a group of cells too, And you're not outlawing, you know, cancer treatment. At what point does common sense factor into this?
Explain that, Phil, what do you mean by that cancer is a group of cells?
Outline cancer treatment?
Well?
Yeah, I mean when when an egg is fertilized, it is a komp of self. Period. Okay, nobody wants cancer, Well not everybody wants a baby, but it's the same clump of self.
All right, great of you from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. There, let's try uh, Lisa who is in otter Lake, Michigan.
High Lisa, welcome to the middle.
Him so glad to be on so I completely disagree with the former phone call. It's not a compass cells. He needs to be educated on this science. I am a clinical outpatient therapist. I see several women who come in who've had an abortion, and I keep my views out of it. But they come in and they absolutely, you know, feel sad and depressed and anxious, and they never told anybody, and they feel like a part of them is gone. And you know, as far as viability, I am so saddened by the Ohio legislature are just getting passed in Ohio and the legislature is, you know, mostly conservative, but you know, one of the commoners had mentioned that most people in Ohio agree with us, And that's not most people you're about being in the middle. It's fifty six percent and forty four percent of the voters.
How are you, Lisa, How are you gonna, Lisa? How are you going to vote next year? As abortion going to be the key issue for you?
It is the primary issue for me because violence against women and children, and that's what abortion is. How do you know the pain threshold is at fifteen weeks? How do you know it's not at fourteen weeks? Everybody listening to this program should Google or go on YouTube and watch a dismemberment abortion. We are pulling children apart by their limbs. This is the saddest thing. Like we have devoted our life. We've collected ten thousand signatures ourselves, my husband and I in the state of abortion because of the radical abortion agenda by Governor Whitmer. This saddens me greatly. Fifty six percent is not most of the people in Ohio.
Okay, we've got it there at Lisa, Thank you so much for that call.
Mary Ziegler. So much passion on this issue on both sides.
Yeah, absolutely, And I think I mean, if I were to characterize where most Americans are, like I said, I don't think most Americans are probably as far to the left on abortion as the Ohio initiative either, right, I mean, but they're they're being given. One of the kind of interesting things about American politics is the options are issue on or a ban at six weeks, and there are a lot of Americans who feel passionately that one or the other of those as correct, and then they're frankly a lot of people in the middle who probably given a choice, would not land in either of those. And one of the sort of strange features of American politics is that for decades, the parties have reflected the views of the people who are the most passionate, and not a lot of the people in the middle, who feel more conflicted or feel abortion is a complicated issue for them. The people who proverbially in abortion world have been called the mushy middle right. I mean, that's where most people are. But I think in a post Dobbs world, you're seeing more of those mushy middle folks, you know, fifty six percent or whatever, and that's number has been pretty steady in a lot of these ballot initiatives. We've seen something similar in Kansas. We've seen something similar in Michigan, and so very similar kinds of numbers being more comfortable with the liberal kind of permissive you can have the abortion answer than that you can't. But I think seeing that's the complete answer is washing out a lot of the nuance.
Joe Ingles, did you find a lot of people in Ohio that are in that middle?
And what does that mean there?
Yeah?
I did find a lot of people who were in that middle, and a lot of people said they thought that went a little far, the abortion amendment, But they also thought that this six week abortion band that was in place went too far. So they were making decisions based on things that, you know, they were kind of opposite of each other, and we saw the ads that were coming out during that time were kind of planning the idea of oh, well, you know, you could end up with this if you approved this amendment, and things you know, like parental consent laws, for example, most Ohioans, you know, have traditionally when Ben pulled, the majority of Ohioans say that they like percent the parental consent laws. That was something that was talked about a lot. And so you do talk about the majority of voters. Fifty six percent of those who voted said that they preferred the amendment over the basically what they had to compare it to, which was a six week abortion band.
Let's go back to the phones. Liz is joining us from Texas. Hi, Liz, Welcome to the middle.
Hi.
Hi, go ahead.
How is abortion going to plan into your vote next year?
Right?
Well, I appreciate the perspectives everyone has shared. I actually used to be pro choice until this year when I look into some of the specular arguments, and there are many that are against abortion. And I I think that has really shifted my perspective on some of the language that's often used to discuss abortion. A lot of pro choice people, including myself, sometimes would look at it as or say that someone's being forced to have a baby, like pro life is forced first, et cetera. And I think that and there were many philosophical arguments that I read that helped to flowly change my mind on this issue to being pro life. But one thing I do have to point out. I know we've talked a lot about I've heard people talk about medical situations, very tragic situations related to that, and also sexual assault. But I think one of the things that convinced me and will mean that it will affect my vote that I'll be thinking about this is that the vast majority is something like well over ninety five percent of abortions or elective And while I think that as a woman, I can sympathize with anyone that's dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, there is a choice that's being made to have sex, whether with birth control or not. And I think that the vast majority of people understand that there's a consequence. And once I came to the conclusion that there is a life, it's being created, and that just like I care about human rights worldwide, just like I care about a homeless person's life, I care about that life. I started to realize that to me now, I see it as making a choice, have sect and not being ready to accept the consequences, and then asking, well, can I end this life? Because I wasn't prepared for the consequences, and I did just want to throw that perspective out there because they are not really like myself, right, yeah.
Thank you, thank you, Liz. Now we've got we've got it. And and very Ziegel, let me go to you on that. How often do people make that shift from pro choice to pro life or pro abortion rights to anti abortion rights?
It happens, I mean, I think again, we're we're we're pretty tribalized in the United States right now, so that means that we often don't interact with people outside of our bubble. I think I myself, in studying this issue, had my eyes opened, you see, you know, and doing oral histories and interviewing people on different sides at this issue and getting more perspective on how people arrived at the positions they did. So it certainly happens, but I think and there are groups like campus groups like Students for Life that are there to do that, right, are there to change people's minds from pro choice to pro life. There's obviously work being done by student groups on the other side of the issue, and I think often there's it's probably a little less common that it's a sort of intellectual conversion. It's often I think people's experiences of real life and pregnancy that can kind of cut either way. Honestly, so I think you do see conversion experiences or people switching sides, But because we are in such a polarized world in the United States, it's less common than you might otherwise think.
All right, well, you know what, we're getting close to the end of the hour here, so why don't we check on social media?
Tolliver, Yeah, absolutely, Judy rights. I am pro life, but some of the extreme laws have put women's lives in danger when there are medical reasons for an abortion. Perhaps a fifteen week ban would be a compromise. The Ohio election results really horrify me.
Joe Ingles, did you get a sense of where ohioans fall on exactly how many weeks they're interested in right now.
No, I didn't specifically get that, but I do think that, you know, if you listen to the comments from Ohioans who were voting on this, they felt like both proposals were maybe not they weren't comfortable with either one, and they were kind of picking I don't know what you want to say, the lesser of two evils. Maybe, and had there been another choice, they might have chosen that. I don't know, though we don't. You can't really tell that.
So, Mary Ziegler, we did say earlier that it looks like activists are trying to get ballot measures on in at least a dozen states next year. Is that where you expected it'll end up a dozen more states trying to put abortion rights on the ballot.
Yeah, I mean, not every state has a voter initiated ballot initiative process. We've already seen pro life groups calling for conservative states to try to stop ballid initiatives full stop, not just on abortion, across the board. I don't think that's going to happen, but I do think we're going to see a push for it. And then I think one of the interesting questions is going to be if ballid initiatives can win in places like Florida where there's a sixty percent threshold. We're going to see interesting questions about whether state courts intervene, and we're going to see interesting questions about whether federal courts try to take the issue from the states. One more time.
All right, Well, as we close out this hour, we do have one little piece of fun that doesn't involve the phones.
Tolliver quiz, absolutely little bit of trivia.
That's right.
I'm going to ask you a question about abortion. It's multiple choice. You all jump in with the right answer. When you have it, the winner gets a mug from the middle. All right, you ready?
All right?
Which country developed the abortion pill? Germany, the US, China, France or Brazil.
Of course. See, this is the thing. If you're asking a.
Question like somone from this I thought to get fair. It's like asking you know, Oliver about funk.
Music or something like that.
I'm going to opt out of the next one.
Yeah, No, that's it.
That's it.
It was the one question.
Sorry, Joe, I want to thank my guest, Joe Ingles, reporter at Ohio Public Radio and Television State House News Bureau.
Joe Thank you so much.
Great to have you on the show, thanks for having me.
And Mary Ziegler, professor of lot UC Davis and author of Roe, The History of a National Obsession, among many other books. Mary, thank you so much, thanks for having me and join us next week, same time, same place, Tolliver, what is our topic for next week's show.
Is by Partisanships still possible, and.
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