Reasonable minds may differ, but personally I wouldn’t want to run on a message this fall of “you may have to kill your children because my party screwed up the economy.”

There’s no problem caused by Democratic policies that can’t be solved by more Democratic policies, I guess.

Between this and Janet Yellen’s comments a few days ago, I have to ask: Do these people not hear themselves?

Democrat Rep. Katie Porter claims #Bidenflation "reinforce[s]" the "need" for abortion.

"The fact that we're seeing this jump in expenses … pay more at the grocery store, pay more at the pump, pay more for housing is a reason" for abortion. pic.twitter.com/jVjuzXRhPz

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 12, 2022

As with Yellen complaining about how abortion restrictions might slow the economy, we’re left to wonder what further steps dogmatic pro-choicers might be willing to take in the name of financial security. Should families that are struggling with rising prices start putting their kids up for adoption in order to manage?

How about if they’re caring for an aging parent at home? Time for a phone call to Dignitas?

Porter should look on the bright side. The baby-formula shortage might end up with some children starving to death in infancy, easing the expense of child care on their mothers.

Isn’t she a progressive, by the way? Nothing defines progressivism more than trying to solve social problems by spending money. If she’s worried about inflation making family expansion too burdensome, you’d expect her to be pounding the table about free birth control for all. The fact that she’s floating abortion as a solution instead only confirms what righties have always insisted, that the left views abortion as little more than contraception after the fact.

Ruy Teixeira has a new post out today riffing on his favorite theme, the extent to which his party has become beholden to tone-deaf leftist pronouncements on cultural flashpoints. He’s been banging on for awhile about immigration and “defund the police” but today he adds abortion to the list:

With the likely impending demise of Roe v. Wade at the hands of the Supreme Court, the Democratic Left is on high alert. Unfortunately, that high alert doesn’t seem to be too centered on what most American voters would actually support. With the enthusiastic support of the Democratic Left, Chuck Schumer had the Senate vote on a bill that would effectively have legalized abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy (perhaps a third of Americans support legal third trimester abortions). Of course, it failed.

As the previously-cited Dimitri Melhorn noted:

“The fight about abortion is all about framing. Most Americans are in the middle. Republicans ranged from moderately pro-choice to hardline pro-life but no one really cared because Roe was the law of the land. The hardline pro-life position in other words did nothing to bother most voters. Democrats’ historic track record in attacking people with even soft pro-life sympathies and purging them from the caucus created this current moment of threat to women by helping associate Democrats with an extremely unpopular position rather than the Safe Legal and Rare positioning that could actually win elections….Democrats are intensely skilled at allowing the GOP to get away with unpopular extremism by running to their own extreme.”

All of their messaging seems geared towards ramping up lefty turnout higher and higher to offset Republican gains with working-class voters — and it never works, Teixeira notes. Porter’s comments are of a piece with that. You may nod along with her if you’re an ardent progressive. But if, say, you’re Latino, Catholic, blue-collar, and rightly blame the Democrats’ COVID spending for why everything is now 10 percent more expensive, how are you feeling about a Democratic congresswoman nudging you to manage your costs by considering abortion if you or your wife ends up pregnant?

I’ll leave you with this clip, which went viral yesterday. An absolute prerequisite for Porter’s message not backfiring on the party is Americans believing that inflation just sort of … happened, like an earthquake, not that it was the foreseeable result of the governing party’s insistence on fantastically extravagant spending in the midst of a supply-chain crisis. I don’t believe that prerequisite will be met: Last week’s CNN poll found 55 percent saying that Biden’s policies have made the economy worse, up from 45 percent in December. This Univision anchor is obviously among those 55 percent. Man, is he ever.

Here's @lcvelez, closing out tonight's #LineaDeFuego (Firing Line), on Univision 24/7. 👀 pic.twitter.com/RMm0NZ6vmm

— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) May 11, 2022