Democrats this election aren’t campaigning on the reality of the permissive, unregulated abortion environments they want. Rather they’re marketing falsehoods about abortion bans and sending pregnant women to jail to manipulate the narrative and scare women into voting for them.

With millions of dollars in outside campaign dollars going toward attacks against Republicans over their positions on nonexistent threats to abortion, Michigan Democrats have taken advantage of the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs decision to force the issue before voters, motivate their base and pick up key independent voters.

Meanwhile, it allows them to ignore their own extreme records on abortion and other issues a majority of voters really care about, such as the cost of energy and groceries and the wide-open southern border.

In Michigan, Democrats running for key state House races are running incessant ads positioning Republicans as anti-abortion extremists. In one 15-minute stretch this weekend, a Detroit television station featured eight ads scaremongering on abortion rights, despite the reality that the Republican lawmakers they're targeting will have little ability to restrict abortion if they're elected. Abortion rights were enshrined in the state constitution by voters in 2022.

No women are going to jail here for having an abortion, even if the GOP wins 100% of the legislative seats in this election.

Beyond Michigan, passing a national ban on abortion through any Congress is nearly impossible, thanks to the Dobbs ruling that returned lawmaking on abortion to the states. Former President Donald Trump says he opposes such a ban, and consistently says states should decide the issue.

Yet Democrats know frightening women about abortion is a winning tactic.

“We’ve been pretty consistent that we’re going to talk about abortion, democracy and freedom, which is a campaign-in-a-box that’s won a lot of elections,” Bradley Beychok, co-founder of Democrat group American Bridge, told P olitico. “We’ve won a lot of elections talking about abortion and talking about taking away freedoms, so we’re not going to be able to say it enough.”

His group, Democratic super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, is investing $15 million in these critical weeks of voting in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan on pro-Harris abortion ads.

The American Civil Liberties Union Voter Education Fund, a nationwide super PAC, has put $2 million into Michigan Supreme Court races with abortion messaging that will favor Democrat candidates.

And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s PAC has bought a $17 million fall ad blitz in Michigan, running ads against GOP senate candidate Mike Rogers that feature a woman who explained to Michigan Advance she had two ectopic pregnancies but says without an “abortion” she would have died.

Typically, the procedure that would treat an ectopic pregnancy is called a dilation and curettage (D&C). It is done to save the mother’s life. Ectopic pregnancies — which means the fertilized egg has implanted outside the uterus on a fallopian tube — are not only non-viable but can be fatal to the mother without quick intervention.

Such medical treatment is standard protocol that all states, even those with abortion bans, allow. Anything less would be malpractice. But it is not the same as an abortion, elective or otherwise. And it is not at risk in this election.

The same woman, not coincidentally, is featured in a just-dropped ad, paid for in part by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, for 7th congressional district Democrat candidate Curtis Hertel.

Left-leaning publication ProPublica last week blamed a Georgia hospital’s fatal and arguably negligent decision to not treat a young mom who had developed a life-threatening infection after taking the mifepristone pill for 20 hours on the state’s abortion ban — without naming a single source who affirmed that diagnosis. Vice President Kamala Harris referenced the story last Friday in a speech.

Democrats’ overarching — and seemingly only — message again this election cycle is to fear monger on abortion and cast access to an abortion anytime, anywhere and for any reason as “freedom” and “democracy.”

In Michigan, Democrats pushed through Prop 3, the abortion rights proposal, by saying they simply wanted to return to the reasonable regulatory environment under Roe v. Wade. They proceeded to eliminate every protection for women undergoing an abortion that was on the books and voters adopted the most extreme abortion access laws in the country. And they're still at it. If they keep control of the Legislature, the next protection to fall will be parental notification for minors seeking an abortion.

A handful of states have banned abortion since Dobbs. Others, like Michigan, have made it both a reprehensible advertising feature and a political commodity.

Don't be fooled. Democrats are trading on abortion distortions that obfuscate their records and positions on all the other critical issues voters are facing.

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Kaitlyn Buss is assistant editorial page editor at The Detroit News.

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