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The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade was for many Republicans a classic case of the dog catching a car he doesn’t actually want to catch. It was the right decision and the GOP should have been ready. But much of the GOP establishment was insincere about opposition to abortion (also see a whole raft of other issues from border security to moving the embassy to Jerusalem) and pro-life groups proved to be almost as unready.
The death of Roe v. Wade was a legal victory, not a political, let alone a cultural victory. Yet it opened the door to both. Republicans and conservatives could have united on a 15-week ban with all the politically correct exceptions and dared the abortion lobby to fight them on that turf. And as inadequate as that may be, it would have been a good start.
And slowly that happened, but all too slowly and unevenly.
Some pro-life groups were understandably overjoyed, and some overreached. There was damaging talk of prosecuting mothers. Worse still, some in the pro-life movement proposed going after birth control and IVF. While they’re a minority, they’re not hard to find and the media made a point of playing them up. Even after a number of setbacks, the pro-life argument was not being well made. The pro-abortion argument played with extreme scenarios like rape and incest, but it was effective. The counterargument, that what the other side wanted was abortion until the moment of birth, was true, but lacked some of the effective personal stories that the pro-abortion lobby brought to the table.
But the larger issue is cultural.
The pro-abortion side is not as wide as the media makes it seem, but it is deep. These days there are fewer single issue pro-life voters than single issue pro-abortion voters. And that is a factor of the decline of religion. There are more passionate pro-abortion people in many states than there are passionate pro-life people. A whole lot of young women have been groomed by shows like Handmaid’s Tale and media propaganda that they’re one vote away from being doomed by a worst case scenario pregnancy. The pro-life movement has made efforts to reach them, but it’s hard.
There’s also a trend line.
Conservatives have lost decisively on most sexual morality issues except abortion until now. (The transgender issue may prove to be another exception, but the jury is still out on that.) The abortion except was based on the ability of conservatives to make the one argument they had trouble making in other instances: whom does it hurt.
The future of the movement rests on that argument.
Morality has imploded. Reviving it is crucial, but there are no easy answers.
Pro-life activists get a lot of credit for keeping the flame burning on abortion at a time when most Republicans didn’t want to touch the issue. And the efforts to shut it down now are wrong. But the setbacks after the fall of Roe v. Wade are an urgent warning that better arguments need to be made and that the abortion issue can’t be detached from the culture war. After a series of defeats, there also needs to be message discipline. That means an end to purity spirals, virtue signaling and proposals to ban things that even the vast majority of Republicans, never mind Americans, support.
The first rule of activism is to dream of tomorrow but to work with what you have today. Work with the people as they are, not as you imagine them to be, fight to set up beachheads from which future victories can be won.
I was reading about a possibly mythical tribe of females in Africa. They captured males from other tribes and used them for procreation, but otherwise allowed no males. When they gave birth to male babies they killed them.
Philip Jose Farmer wrote a novel like that. “Flesh.”The protagonist had antlers, if you can believe that. And he rutted like a stag.
Phil was a pervert but a good writer.
Daniel is exactly right, as usual. Trump had a similar take. Winning a battle is poor recompense if you lose the war. The left conducts no-holds-barred, scorched earth, anything goes political warfare 24/7 while Ronna McDaniel and the RNC play bridge and sip cocktails every third Tuesday while discussing corporate tax rates with the donor class. They spend more time strategizing how they can thwart the conservative activist base rather than working to defeat democrats,
IMHO, the abortion issue separates Republicans from RINOs and has allowed true, morality-based conservatives to glimpse the death of their party via the influx of the Democrat-lite. The ‘UniParty’ moniker came into our collective consciousness when representatives chose to put aside any semblance of a moral center (which should guide all decision making) and constituencies voted for them anyway. Without a moral center, you get Kevin McCarthy.
It was the dividing line between the parties. It’s been said recently that Republicans don’t really have a platform on which they stand. How can they when the only thing that separates most of them from Democrats is an aisle and the color of their tie?
In reality, it says more about us than it does about them…because we put them there.
Look no further than what happened in Ohio yesterday. America is obsessed with the idea of abortion. The GOP needs to get a grip on that and come up with a viable plan. Will they?
The SC ruling on Dobbs and the Republicans’ reaction killed them in the 2020 elections. American women want abortions and trying to ban them will destroy the Republican Party to the point of non-existence. It may be the morally correct thing to do, but it’s not what the voting public wants and the current elections prove it. Want to lose it all in 2024, keep pushing for a ban on abortions, and then live with a Democratic government from now on? 1984 is here and it’s brought here by the Democrats.
If the majority supports abortion then America deserves its death. The only solution now is secession.
Applying a short term remedy to a long term problem ends in a zero result. “It may be the morally correct thing to do, but it’s not what the voting public wants” is how you kill a Republic. The majority isn’t always right. In fact, they’re often wrong. We can choose to go along to get along, or we can espouse why it’s morally imperative to do the right thing. We aren’t telling people why because most of us don’t care. We need to care…and we need to make the voting public understand WHY we care.
It’s probably more important to understand why we need to in the first place and go from there, because a country that doesn’t get that is doomed from the outset.
I have always felt that legalising abortion was a safety issue, not a moral one, because, without a law, a desperate woman would still go to someone, anyone, for an abortion; so why put that woman’s life in danger, too, should she make that decision?
I didn’t think of it as a form of birth control. Abortion wasn’t an easy decision. It was something a woman didn’t want to have to do but circumstances might compel her to do.
I didn’t think of it as a woman’s right. It was a choice, a very difficult choice. Married or not, a woman wouldn’t make this decision lightly.
But today, there is this culture of abortion which has been politically calculated and advanced by the left. Why else leak the Supreme Court reversal of Roe vs. Wade? The reaction was divisively, rigidly, extreme from both sides of the issue; but that’s why this is such a manipulative, political, predictable success for the Democrats.
There is common ground on this issue. But Republicans didn’t calm down and take the time to really think, not moralize, about it.
Since the Gaza war massacre, I notice children more wherever I am. I feel more acutely their innocence. In the context of this feeling, and my being revolted by the massacre supporters ranting throughout the US, the American left’s battle cry of abortion is particularly disturbing and leaves me wondering if the fanaticism of abortion is meant to desensitize a woman to a massacre of other women’s fetuses and babies.
I know. That’s a horrible thought in a very scary world.
Some women DO take abortion lightly. Just look at the fanatics out in the streets. marching and chanting for it.
I don’t buy it. I still see vote fraud issues as a major contributor to election losses
I am not focused on abortion although I personally lean away from late term and the easy abortion on demand lifestyle.
Just in case, I would suggest campaigns drop this issue or state a compromise position, as Trump has done to get it out of the way for now.
Is there a one issue reason to lose on that issue and everything else and live under the tyranny of a never ending Obama administration – or worse? Not this issue. Not now.
Yes, abortion is a loser issue for Republicans and conservatives.
Abortion should not be settled state by state. County by county settles the diversity existing within each state.. Cities are blue and will be blue, rural is red. Let the red areas have their abortion and the blue not. Everybody’s happy and Republicans will be elected.
I dont like abortion and wish there wasn’t any at all. American women–including Republican women–use abortion as a proxy for independence and self-control. Ban abortion, or at least put enough restrictions on it–and women wont vote R. However, Trump has a big mouth. He’s aggressive and bullying. While I voted for him twice and will vote for him again, I know that he frightens women. You cannot bellow at women–it scares them. You cant be a blow hard and then apologize, either: it looks weak and vacillating.
Between Trumps none stop aggressiveness and what Republican women consider to be to many restrictions on abortion, Trump will lose next year. Just watch.