For probably the first time in decades, many Republican politicians are having to ask themselves: “Do I want to stick with the party line against abortion, or do I want to win elections?”
In practice, Americans have never agreed with the Republican Party on abortion — especially not when it comes to the personal, real-life decisions they make for themselves and their own families. This is the tension at the heart of the growing conflict since the fall of Roe v. Wade among voters, Republican politicians and the many factions of the anti-abortion movement (who fund candidates and who have as a result historically driven anti-abortion policy and messaging).
Republican women have always had abortions. Republican politicians have funded abortions and some have even coerced and pressured their partners into ending pregnancies. Catholics are just as likely to have abortions as anyone else. Anti-abortion protesters, lobbyists and organizers have abortions, too.
The problem is that there are not many true anti-abortion believers among those Republicans who are facing the real and growing voter hostility to abortion bans.
With abortion now banned completely in 14 states and severely restricted to the point of near-total inaccessibility in five more, the grim consequences of these bans are sinking in for everyone — especially for those of us living in those 19 states, and especially for people of color. Voters and red-staters who’ve supported abortion bans in the past are discovering they are not immune to the horrors of compulsory pregnancy; nationwide, abortion restrictions seem to grow less and less popular with the general electorate with every new poll, even among religious folks. In state after state — including “red” ones — voters have turned out to support abortion protections.
Just as they have a prescription for everyone else’s pregnancy — keep it, or else — anti-abortion lobbyists, pollsters and politicos have a prescription for the Republican Party’s abortion policy quandary, too. Predictably, it’s the same Rx: keep it, or else. In a recent Washington Post opinion piece, for example, Trump strategist Kellyanne Conway and anti-abortion lobbyist Marjorie Dannenfelser advise 2024 GOP presidential candidates to “go on offense” on abortion, including supporting a national ban, “if they want to win.”
The problem is that there are not many true anti-abortion believers among those Republicans who are facing the real and growing voter hostility to abortion bans. There probably never were — again, Republicans have abortions all the time, at least when they have access to them — but Republicans (and anti-abortion Democrats) have long been able to coast into office on superficial opposition to abortion. The problem is that now, voters — including GOP voters — are starting to recognize that the awful reality of abortion bans cannot be reconciled with the misogynist political fantasy of forcing lazy, promiscuous baby-killers to stay pregnant at the government’s behest.
Conway and Dannenfelser ignore this contradiction entirely, and advise instead that Republicans must assert a “positive pro-life vision for the future” to “protect both mother and child.” This is, of course, a nonstarter, as doing so would require wealth redistribution, significantly expanded social safety nets, and free (or at least affordable) medical care for hundreds of millions of Americans. And that would just be the start. Those policies all run in direct opposition to the GOP’s core priorities: cutting taxes on the rich, pushing tax burdens on to middle- and lower-income Americans, and decimating entitlements for those most in need.
Conway and Dannenfelser know this, which is why the meat of their plan for a strong anti-abortion “offense” involves urging GOP politicians to divert many millions of taxpayer dollars to Christian-backed anti-abortion pregnancy centers. It’s not an electoral strategy — but it does fatten the bottom lines of their own anti-abortion organizations, religious groups and lobbying firms.
Increased funding since the fall of Roe for these dangerously unregulated anti-abortion pregnancy centers is hardly evidence that anti-abortion states are “putting their money where their mouths are” to protect American families. We’ve already seen this pregnancy center scam run once to disastrous results here in Texas, where in 2016 state officials chose the anti-abortion Heidi Group to replace Planned Parenthood as a provider of family planning services. Within three years, state investigators determined the group had to repay taxpayers at least $1.6 million after it failed to deliver promised health care to tens of thousands of Texans. In reality, anti-abortion states are simply putting your money — taxpayer dollars — into the pockets of anti-abortion groups by laundering it through state-funded anti-abortion programs. The GOP must decide who it wants to be accountable to: the anti-abortion groups or the American people. But that’s pretty much all Republicans have got at this point — because they really, really don’t want to talk about their biggest problem: the growing number of Americans who understand that abortion bans are cruel and deadly. This is true even at 15 weeks, the supposedly “moderate” gestational compromise on abortion (there is no such thing). Neither do they want to acknowledge the fact that Americans also understand that banning abortion means prosecuting, investigating, and criminalizing people who provide, support, and have abortions. The GOP must decide who it wants to be accountable to: the anti-abortion groups — which aim to ban abortion nationwide and prosecute abortion as homicide — or the American people. Republican voters have to make a similar decision: will they support anti-abortion politicians who will, in time, come for themselves and their families if they do not submit to government control of their reproductive decisions? Or will they, too, stand with their fellow Americans? Going forward, every vote concerning abortion access — whether at the local, state or federal level — will be a referendum on democracy itself. Republicans cannot continue to pursue abortion bans and criminalize abortion without crossing a line with the American electorate. We have to ensure that if and when they get to that line, they will not have managed to so disenfranchise voters, gerrymander districts and stack the courts with anti-abortion jurists that we cannot someday claw our way back to some semblance of bodily autonomy.
Andrea Grimes
Andrea Grimes is a journalist and activist living in Austin, Texas. 
