McConnell finally finds an issue he's ready to bring to the floor

Senator Mitch McConnell is about to plunge the Senate into the nation’s culture wars with votes on bills to sharply restrict access to late-term abortions and threaten some doctors who perform them with criminal penalties, signaling that Republicans plan to make curbing a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy a central theme of their re-election campaigns this year.

  NYT

And I'm not so sure that's even a wise choice politically.

The first bill, the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” bans nearly all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, with limited exceptions; for instance, rape victims would be required to undergo counseling first. Proponents, citing their own review of scientific literature, say fetuses can feel pain at 20 weeks, but medical experts who favor abortion rights say there is no evidence of that.

The second, the “Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act,” requires doctors to use all means available to save the life of a child born after an abortion, an event that is exceedingly rare and typically occurs when a baby is not viable outside the womb and doctors induce labor as a means of terminating a pregnancy. The bill would subject physicians to fines and prison time if they failed to comply.

[...]

After months of shunning legislative activity in favor of confirming President Trump’s judicial nominees — and a brief detour for the president’s impeachment trial — Mr. McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, is expected to bring the bills up for votes on Tuesday. Both lack the necessary 60-vote supermajority to advance, and the Senate has voted previously to reject them.

But by putting them on the floor again, Mr. McConnell hopes to energize the social conservatives who helped elect Mr. Trump and whose enthusiasm will be needed to help Republicans hold on to the Senate this year, while forcing vulnerable Democrats to take uncomfortable votes on bills that frame abortion as infanticide.

[...]

A senior aide said Republican senators were eager for the chance to remind voters of their anti-abortion credentials. Republican strategists say doing so is smart politics.

I think it's riskier than they might imagine. But if that's all you've got.

[B]ringing up the bills exposes Mr. McConnell, who is also running for re-election this year, to accusations that he is playing politics with the Senate’s time. The leader has long insisted he is not interested in “show votes” on measures that stand no chance of passing, and he has drawn derision from Democrats for presiding over what they call a “legislative graveyard,” refusing to take up hundreds of bills they have passed in the House.

Maybe Mitch will find his own race for reelection this year harder than he thinks.

“The first thing we do is go after women?” [Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate health committee] asked in an interview. “I find it really offensive. If Senator McConnell really wants to get things done in the Senate and show people he wants to get things done, we have a long list for him.”

[...]

When he ran in 2016, Mr. Trump promised to sign the 20-week abortion bill into law and to appoint Supreme Court justices who would oppose Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that established a woman’s right to an abortion.

And if he could have, he would have.

States have since passed a wave of bills restricting access to abortions. A federal judge last week blocked a Mississippi bill banning abortion after six weeks. And last month, more than 200 Republican members of Congress — including 39 senators — asked the Supreme Court Court to consider overturning Roe, in a brief urging the justices to uphold a Louisiana law that severely restricts access to the abortion.

Mr. Trump has taken to calling himself “the most pro-life president in American history,” and Mr. McConnell has endeared himself to abortion opponents.

They're loud and they're proud, but they're in the minority.

Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans, about six in 10, want abortion to remain legal in all or most cases, and there is broad opposition to completely overturning Roe, according to studies conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

[...]

The abortion votes could be the beginning of a small burst of legislative debate in a Senate that has so far avoided action on some of the biggest issues facing the United States: the high cost of health care, immigration and repairing the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.

[...]

“There was a time where we would explore the bans in places like Michigan and California and people would say, ‘That’s not going to happen here,’” Ms. Lake said. “Now people think that under this administration, under this president, it could come to their state.”

Which could make people push back on the idea. I guess we'll see.

BTW, Ditch Mitch.