HARRISBURG, Pa. (news agencies) — Abortion rights, suddenly a potent political force in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to leave such matters to the states, have found an unlikely champion in swing state Pennsylvania.
Sen. Bob Casey, who will appear on the November ballot beneath President Joe Biden as the Democrats both seek reelection, has begun doing something he’s never done before: attacking an opponent over abortion rights.
The senator, who once called himself a “pro-life Democrat,” accuses Republican challenger David McCormick in a new TV ad of wanting to “make abortion illegal even in cases of rape and incest” — a characterization McCormick says is wrong.
Speaking to an online gathering of the progressive women’s advocacy group Red Wine & Blue earlier this month, Casey warned that electing a Republican president and a new Republican Senate majority could result in bans on the abortion pill and contraception, even in Democratic-controlled states — or purple states like Pennsylvania — where abortion remains legal.
“You could have blue-state impact whether it’s a blue-state ban that affects contraception or whether it’s a blue-state ban when it comes to abortion because of mifepristone,” Casey said.
That’s quite a reframing for Casey, who like his father and Biden comes from an Irish Catholic family in Scranton. His father, who was a two-term governor of Pennsylvania, opposed abortion rights and signed legislation restricting abortion that spawned the landmark 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Sen. Casey, whose race is seen as crucial to Democrats’ effort to defend their razor-thin Senate majority, says the Supreme Court’s decision to strip women’s constitutional protections for abortion changed everything in the abortion debate and prompted a “pro-life Democrat” to support access to abortion.
Casey has suggested that “pro-life” never meant a complete ban on abortion without exception, at least to him. After the court’s forthcoming decision had been leaked, Casey supported Democrats’ legislation to keep abortion legal to the Roe v. Wade standard of barring abortion only after viability, around 24 weeks.
“Everyone in the Senate had a choice to make,” Casey told media. “You had to decide, basically, whether you’d support banning abortion or not. And that was a choice you had to make. And the choice was also a choice about legislation. … And I decided that I would support advancing that bill and thereby not being in the ban-abortion column.”
He had broken with Democrats in the past in supporting bills to ban abortions after 20 weeks and to block federal funding for abortion.
But he also had emphasized reducing abortions through services that prevent unwanted pregnancies and help pregnant women and young mothers, a reason he has given for backing federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
When the court overturned Roe v. Wade, Casey slammed it as ripping away a constitutional right and a dangerous decision that wouldn’t stop abortions but would put women’s lives at risk.
Democrats have been happy to embrace Casey’s recalibrated position.
“I don’t believe he ever wanted those (pro-life) beliefs to ever stand in the way of access to abortion, and now his position matters more than it did just two years ago,” said Brittany Crampsie, a Democratic strategist.
Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who studies the history and politics of the abortion debate, said she thinks Casey had begun drifting from the anti-abortion movement well before the court overturned Roe v. Wade.
He was probably both pulled by a Democratic Party becoming more supportive of abortion rights and pushed by an anti-abortion movement becoming more aligned with Republicans and Christian conservatives, Ziegler said.
“If you take politics out of it, it’s possible that Casey has one of those purple positions on abortion that doesn’t tend to track with what either movement is doing,” Ziegler said.
Many Americans hold middle-of-the-road beliefs on abortion, Ziegler said, and Casey’s stance isn’t out of step with many lay Catholics. According to Pew Research Center surveys, 56% of U.S. Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Politically speaking, abortion rights has been a winner on the ballot since the court decision, even in red states such as Ohio, Kansas and Kentucky, where the outcomes favored keeping abortion access legal.
McCormick attacks Casey from the right. He accuses Casey of wanting to allow abortion “up until the moment of birth,” a refrain Republicans are using to attack Democrats’ legislation, which allows an exception for abortions after fetal viability in extremely rare situations when a doctor determines the life or health of the mother is at risk.
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