On abortion, Harris fans the flames for electoral gain, fights calming compromise

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 ...