AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate made the political divide over abortion abundantly clear.
For Republican JD Vance, it’s an issue on which compromise is possible; for Democrat Tim Walz — like his running mate Kamala Harris — accepting any state and regional differences will violate women’s rights.
Walz’s view is in keeping with Harris’ pledge to jettison the Senate filibuster in order to enact a national right to abortion — even as Americans themselves have at long last been moving toward compromise, based on the safety valve provided by federalism.
As Democrats like to say about Donald Trump and border control, it’s Harris and Walz who “want the issue,” not a compromise.
If they were truly committed to reducing the divisiveness of which they accuse Trump, they’d look instead to an example set by Democratic icon Franklin Roosevelt on the issue that was, in its day, as emotional and wrenching as abortion: Prohibition.
It was Roosevelt who resolved it — by returning the question to the states.
National alcohol policy may seem to have little in common with abortion, but in the late 19th and early 20th century Prohibition was the overriding domestic political issue.
Like abortion, it pitted the religious versus the secular, Catholics versus Protestants, and urban “wet states” like New York versus rural “dry” ones such as Indiana.
Banning alcohol divided the country in ways comparable to abortion — even to the point of inspiring violence.
Carrie Nation, the most famous temperance crusader, boasted about her methods: “I ran behind the bar, smashed the mirror and all the bottles under it . . . opened the door and cut the rubber tubes . . . the beer flew in every direction.”
The “Anti-Saloon League” asserted that “a new nation will be born” the moment Prohibition took effect. At the same time, the anti-Prohibition New York World lamented that with its enactment, “the Government of the United States as established by the Constitution . . . will cease to exist.”
Before Prohibition, alcohol regulation was a state matter — much like abortion was pre-Roe, when states like New York and California allowed it and others did not.
But just as Roe v. Wade set a single policy of legalized abortion for the entire nation, the 18th Amendment did the same as it banned alcohol sales across the country.
The result of that Roe-like one-size-fits-all policy was not to settle the issue, but to enflame it.
Roosevelt put an end to that culture war when he pledged in his 1932 campaign to repeal Prohibition.
But here’s what he didn’t do: Propose a federal law to make the entire country “wet,” ignoring regional and cultural differences.
Instead, he let the states decide — and, like ice melting in bourbon, temperance soon faded as a force in national politics.
In 1904, the Prohibition Party candidate for president received nearly 260,000 votes, 2% of the total; after repeal, it received a grand total of 52,000. The issue disappeared.
Democrats, their “unity” rhetoric aside, don’t want to see that happen with abortion.
Referendum votes at the state level are finding middle ground — as voters in such red states as Ohio and Kansas have voted against outright bans. At the same time, states like Alabama continue severe restrictions. In November, voters in Arizona and Florida will have their own say on it.
The reliable YouGov survey from July showed only 8% percent of voters ranked abortion as their most important issue, trailing inflation, immigration, health care and jobs and the economy.
Harris has made clear that she aims to fan the flames — both by endorsing one expansive abortion policy for the whole country, and by perpetuating the canard that Trump will seek a national ban.
Indeed, abortion is the only issue being raised by former Rep. Mondaire Jones in his Hudson Valley race against moderate Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, despite Lawler’s opposition to an abortion ban.
New Jersey Democrat Sue Altman is making a similar play against incumbent Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.
Just as Democrats accuse Trump of scuttling border legislation to keep the immigration issue alive during the campaign, so Harris is doing with abortion: resisting the kind of state-by-state compromises that settled Prohibition.
Even today, about 10% of Americans live in a dry county. But there’s zero debate about that local choice.
In a post-Roe America, we may well be seeing a similar trajectory of federalist compromise on abortion.
Democrats are hoping otherwise. November will tell us if they’re right to do so.
Howard Husock is an American Enterprise Institute senior fellow and the author of “The Poor Side of Town — And Why We Need It.”