Sunday, Sept. 3, 2023 | 2 a.m.
After the Trump-less, but cantankerous GOP presidential debate, there shouldn’t be a single voting-age woman sticking her head in the sand when it comes to the fate of abortion rights in this country.
They’re on the line in 2024 — just as they were in 2022 Florida.
All eight Republican candidates on stage last month were unabashedly anti-choice — as is indicted front-runner Donald Trump — and they left no doubt that if the party takes back the White House and Congress, the new president will pursue some type of a national abortion ban.
We weren’t supposed to hear that message.
Why else would former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, the only woman on stage, so desperately try to coax her fellow presidential hopefuls to stop talking about abortion bans?
She knows that to win a general election Republicans need to water down their position on abortion to appeal to independents.
Sly Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis knew this, too, when he ran for reelection two years ago, but he tried to mislead voters during his lackluster — and at times just plain weird — debate performance.
It’s true that in Florida, facing embarrassingly weak Democratic opposition, DeSantis sailed to a second term.
But in no way did his victory stem from campaigning to impose a six-week abortion ban on Florida women, as he said at the debate.
In fact, DeSantis avoided the abortion topic throughout the campaign.
The Supreme Court had just ended decades of federal abortion rights, giving states the authority to create their own laws. Yet no journalist who questioned DeSantis could pin him down on what he intended to ask the Legislature to do.
Asked after a Cabinet meeting what abortion legislation he might pursue, he left the room. Famously so captured on video for posterity.
Then, after he won by 19.4 percentage points, a controversial “heartbeat bill” similar to those passed in other red states was pushed through by Florida’s largely male, supermajority Republican Legislature — at DeSantis’ behest.
Now, nationally, his authoritarian act and his “Make America Florida” platform are floundering.
During the debate, he spared Republican voters the tired anti-woke speech — the culture wars aren’t polling well — but he had more sinister talking points to deliver.
Perhaps, it was the influence of having former Vice President Mike Pence nearby, who wasn’t shy about embracing a total national ban, based on his religious belief, he said, that when he signed up to love Jesus being anti-abortion was a requirement.
Whatever the case, DeSantis told the bizarre story of “a lady in Florida named Penny” who he said “survived multiple abortion attempts” and was “left discarded in a pan” — to be saved only after her grandmother took her “to a different hospital.”
The story sounded like a cautionary tale about the perils of not having access to safe abortions — a throwback to pre-Roe v. Wade back-alley abortions and basement clinics.
But it was meant to peddle the constant GOP lies about end-term abortion, which is rare and only happens when a mother’s life is on the line or the fetus has died.
“We’re better than what the Democrats are selling,” DeSantis said. “We are not going to allow abortion all the way up (until) birth, and we will hold them accountable for their extremism.”
It was vintage DeSantis deceptive nonsense.
Politicians don’t come more extreme than the far-right governor.
As a result, DeSantis attracted the kind of attention Haley was trying to avoid by bringing to the table the fuzzy concept of reaching “consensus” with the Democrats about how far to go with a national ban.
Fifteen weeks, anyone?
With compromise absent from GOP politics these days, why would anyone believe her?
Although maybe, just maybe, there’s a part of Haley that knows the extent of the damage a national abortion ban would do, privileged women like her who support restrictions have no clue what they’re heaping on others.
Recently, I had an unexpected, revelatory experience on the issue.
I chose to sit on a flight next to an amazing mother traveling with a nonverbal, nonmobile young son. I had bumped into her at the jam-packed security point while she struggled with carry-ons for his care.
We talked during the flight, and she allowed me to help soothe her son. When silent seizures came on, he became agitated, his only means of expressing the fear that grips him. This happens constantly until medication is administered with yogurt, as he can’t chew.
At one point, as our conversation turned to the state of the country, as so often happens these days, she brought up abortion. She told me that she loved her son dearly, but she would never deny a woman like her the right to make a different choice when she learned of her fetus’ affliction.
“The Democrats must defend abortion rights,” she said. “It’s the most important issue of the election.”
She didn’t speak like a Democrat. From the range of conversation points, I would say she’s a Never Trump Republican, or a right-leaning independent. As an educated, well-to-do suburban Pennsylvania voter, if she watched the debate, I doubt DeSantis or anyone else won her over.
This isn’t to say that the governor, a distant 40 points from Trump in polls but still the runner-up, is out of the game because he didn’t have a debate breakthrough moment.
When — and if — Trump negotiates no jail time for his multitude of crimes in exchange for never again running for office, the GOP will hang on to DeSantis like butterflies on milkweed.
He will deliver more of his awkward deceptiveness and the prospect of devastation for the less fortunate.
And yet, he will pose a threat to Joe Biden.
But we, American women, can stop him — and the others who fail to respect our reproductive rights — with the only weapon we have. Our vote.
Fabiola Santiago is a columnist for the Miami Herald.
