Nothing I’m about to say hinges on your personal views on abortion or mine. This issue is about watching what the Democrats are up to.
Re-evaluating the position in both houses of Congress and the loss of another Presidential run has them mulling over which of their values to dump.
No matter whether you call it “Eye[ing a] Softer Image” or “Rethinking” abortion, the outcome is the same: Democrats, widely considered (among those who only think of two American political parties) as the pro-choice party, are now considering dumping their pro-choice stance in order to open the door for their former abortion opponents.
Go all the way, Democrats: run some high office candidates who are not pro-choice. This should help your would-be supporters get to know themselves better by making them choose which they value more: pro-Democrat or pro-choice.
If this comes to pass, ask your pro-choice friends who vote Democrat what they’ll do. Then ask them again in 3 years. Then compare their answers. When they change (and they almost certainly will change their tune because it’s easy to stand up for values you don’t have to defend, it’s another thing to decide which values to defend when some are in conflict), ask them why they changed.
My bet is that the person you ask will pick “voting pro-choice” now, and “voting for the Democrat to oust the Republican” later on.
Issues like abortion get a lot of coverage in elections. The Democrats courting non-pro-choice voters is one of those things that effectively reframes a national election in a way a bunch of outsiders (third-party/independent supporters, and the majority of non-voters) are denied the power to do.
In three years, even if both the Republican and Democrat are not pro-choice, a third-party or independent will run, support the pro-choice line, and still be precluded from participating in the national debates.
The only way this could get more interesting is if the Republican were pro-choice and the Democrat not.