‘There Isn’t This Abortionpalooza!’ S.E. Cupp Criticizes Extremists on Right and Left Overshadowing the ‘Lonely and Unseen’ Majority

S.E. Cupp spoke up for the “lonely and unseen” majority on the latest episode of Van Jones’ podcast, Uncommon Ground with Van Jones, addressing the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and lamenting the divisive partisan rhetoric that failed to represent views she shared with millions of other Americans.

The podcast was recorded after the draft opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked but before the final opinion was published, so Cupp and Jones spoke more about the impact overturning Roe would have, rather than the specific details of the opinion.

Jones introduced the conversation by commenting that he was a pro-choice liberal and Cupp was a pro-life conservative, but they were both shocked by the Supreme Court tossing out such a long-standing precedent.

Cupp noted that abortion rates “have steadily ticked down” and were “way down” from when Roe was decided in 1973. “There isn’t this abortionpalooza!” she quipped.

“I don’t like abortion at all,” she said, “but I’ve long accepted Roe.” Abortion should be an option, she continued. “It should come with restrictions, and it should be legal, safe, and rare,” referring to the “safe, legal, and rare” phrase Bill Clinton used to describe abortion during his 1992 presidential campaign. That’s language that most liberals have since abandoned; the Democratic Party axed “rare” from its platform in 2012.

Democrats, said Cupp, had gone to extremes, by “advocat[ing] more for abortion with no restrictions,” but that did not represent the majority either.

“American voters are in the middle,” argued Cupp, citing polls showing that only 33% of Americans wanted abortion with no restrictions at all, and only 8% wanted it completely banned. ‘The rest of us, 57%, want legal abortion with some restrictions.”

The current political environment left her feeling “like an orphan,” she explained, like she had “no parents on either side of the aisle because I’m insufficiently pro-choice and insufficiently pro-life.”

“No one’s representing me,” said Cupp. “But I’m the majority! It has never felt so lonely and unseen to be in a majority, but that’s where the politics are right now.”

Jones, a longtime adviser to Democrats, including President Barack Obama, before he became a CNN contributor, concurred with Cupp that “safe, legal, and rare” did encompass many Americans’ views on abortion.

That phrase “was the formula” during the Clinton years, said Jones, “and I felt that that was a formula that spoke to most people, and I have watched the goalposts get moved,” noting the progressive criticism that “rare” was not used to describe other medical procedures and was “shaming” women.

But that approach “bypasses the normal feelings that people do have…that there is something sorrowful when the potential for human life is taken away,” he said, and that was something that was “to be honored.”

“That something’s life,” Cupp replied. “It’s life, and I think it dehumanizes all life to detach from that reality.”

“I don’t judge women who get abortions — I’ve known many,” she added, “and I understand the difficulty with which that decision is made.”

Pro-life Christian protesters who stood outside abortion clinics yelling “murderer!” at the staff and patients for years did not change any minds, Cupp pointed out. On the other side, she said, the progressive strategy of “shout your abortion,” treating it “like it’s a milestone, like getting your ears pierced” was also outside the norm of most Americans’ views, and it was unnecessary to “dehumanize” the “very human issue” in order to get people to agree to the right to an abortion.

Neither of these approaches were helpful or going to change hearts and minds, said Cupp, but those “radical fringes” had shaped the debate on both sides of the aisle and led us to the today’s divisive atmosphere.

“Most Americans have not changed in decades — they’ve been right in the middle” on abortion,” Cupp pointed out. “But the language has become incredibly extreme.”

Watch above, via Uncommon Ground with Van Jones. Listen to the entire episode here.