Image by Claudio Schwarz.
An open letter to Ezra Klein in response to his Sept. 18 interview with his New York Times colleague Ross Douthat in which he said Democrats must support anti-choice candidates for public office. Klein doubled down on those comments a week later in the New Yorker.
Hi, Ezra,
You don’t know me, so let me introduce myself. I’m a person with a uterus, like more than half of the 345 million people in the U.S. Thank you for explaining to me and my 173 million fellow uterus-carriers why we should set aside our rights in order to get Democrats elected to office, and if we don’t support this “discomfiting” reality we’re not “serious.”
Many of us with uteruses are kind of wound up right now about fascism, excuse me, are “embracing alarm…in terms of the structure of the system,” as you soothingly described it. Thank you for talking us down from our hysteria and pointing out what “obviously follows from that alarm,” which is that we must support anti-choice Democrats for office in places like Kansas, Ohio, and Missouri.
I’m still confused, though. Didn’t Kansas voters overwhelmingly shoot down an anti-abortion ballot initiative in 2022? Didn’t Ohio voters just as decisively in 2023 inscribe abortion rights in the state constitution? And didn’t Missouri do the same in November 2024? Along with Arizona? The Arizona initiative passed by a crushing 61.6 percent. Can you explain to me why it doesn’t “obviously follow” that supporting abortion rights would help candidates get elected, even in places like Arizona, Kansas, Ohio, and Missouri? And also that a party that clearly stands for abortion rights would be more successful?
My uterus is old, so I remember back in 2008 when Hilary Clinton said that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare”—she made it clear that abortion was icky and she supported “choice” only reluctantly and with lots of limits. I even remember 1996, when Rep. Pat Schroeder sounded the alarm about the Comstock Act’s still being on the books. When she asked legislators to finally repeal this archaic law that criminalizes so much as communicating about abortion, even her fellow Democrats ignored her. I also remember 2022, when Democrats held majorities in both houses of Congress yet couldn’t be bothered to repeal the Comstock Act or enact a law protecting abortion rights—even after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. I also remember 2007 to 2011 when Democrats also controlled both houses and yet failed to codify Roe or repeal the Comstock Act. Instead, the Democratic party supported several anti-choice incumbents over pro-abortion rights challengers. For example, in 2022 the Democratic Party establishment backed Rep. Henry Cuellar over his progressive and pro-abortion rights opponent in Texas. Cuellar kept his seat, but Democrats lost control of the House. Not two years later, Cuellar was indicted on money laundering, bribery, and conspiracy charges.
The Democrats have been following your prescription for a long time, and it doesn’t seem to have worked so well. In the same 2024 election in which 2 million Arizona voters resoundingly voted for abortion rights, Trump beat Harris in the state, 1,770,242 to 1,582,860 votes. As Teen Talk Barbie said, “Math class is tough,” but I’m pretty sure those figures mean that, out of the 3.2 million Arizonans who voted, more than 400,000 people pulled the lever for abortion rights but not for Harris. That differential would have been enough to swing the presidential ballot in Arizona, twice over. Those 400,000 voters figured that, despite Harris’s talk of support for abortion rights, they couldn’t depend on Democrats to stand up to protect those rights. Based on past performance, they weren’t wrong.
Having a uterus gets tiring. In Missouri, even though voters in 2024 clearly expressed their support of abortion rights, it has been nearly impossible to actually get an abortion there (thanks to restrictions legislators keep passing), and Republicans–perhaps sensing disarray from their opponents–have now introduced an initiative to repeal those rights. In Arizona, after voters passed the abortion rights initiative, activists still had to go to court to get a judge to rule that voters really meant to repeal an 1864 ban on abortion. Almost seems like the “structure of the system” is stacked against those of us with uteruses, and against democracy.
It also seems to me, though, that candidates who stand up against that system and for the bodily autonomy of the majority of us might just win. Heck, I think they’d get a lot of votes even from people without uteruses.
The post Ezra Klein Explains Things to Women–But We’re Still Confused appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Carolyn McConnell.
Carolyn McConnell | Radio Free (2025-09-30T05:55:13+00:00) Ezra Klein Explains Things to Women–But We’re Still Confused. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2025/09/30/ezra-klein-explains-things-to-women-but-were-still-confused/
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