Everything you’ve heard is true. The Republicans are losing on abortion. They are not motivated to turn out the same way the Democrats are unless Trump is on the ballot, and even then, the GOP is losing at a time when they should be blowing the Democrats out of power for a generation.
The war is over, and the GOP lost, at least for now. Just as they are on the right side of history with “gender-affirming care,” there is a chance that their desire to preserve life now might be well-regarded in 50 years or so, as fertility, sperm count, and population decline. Suddenly, future generations might think about how casually mothers aborted the pregnancies that are in such short supply.
Maybe getting pregnant will be difficult, or carrying a baby to term, or male sperm will be ineffective, and everyone will have to turn to labs. Who knows where all of this is going, but convincing young women not to have babies when they are in their prime, fertility-wise, might backfire someday.
Abortions rally the base.
I left the Democratic Party in 2020. I unsubscribed to every database, every mailer, and every text message. I still get their messages, emails, and phone calls three years later. I will never stop hearing from them for the rest of my life. That is how relentless they are.
“Incredible news,” says a text message that sailed into my phone from Sherrod Brown:
The base of the Democratic Party, older, unmarried Hillary Democrats like I used to be, have one issue left that speaks directly to them, a haunting cry from their past when they still mattered, when women’s rights still mattered, when feminism still mattered.
For his part, Ohio Senator JD Vance responded to the night’s loss this way, hoping to find some middle ground so Republicans can actually start winning:
Republicans must understand what they’re up against and how powerful the Democrats have become in the past 20 years. This isn’t your mother’s Democratic Party anymore. This unprecedented alignment of power spreads across culture, corporations, universities, and government — all in complete ideological alignment.
And they have an army of zealots who will throw a fit in large numbers when things don’t go their way.
How can Republicans possibly compete with that? By not allowing them to go on offense, casting the Right as the oppressors which feeds their pathological need to feel like victims and their need to be defined by oppression. Change the conversation away from having the state regulate abortions and put the focus on them and how dramatically they’ve changed since 1972.
What is a Woman?
Democrats have become completely disconnected from biological reality to the point where they no longer even recognize what a woman is, nor can they define it. They are fine with allowing biological men to compete in sports and steal accolades from women, like being the first “female” Chess or Jeopardy champion.
Abortion is now all that remains, the only living proof that there ever was a woman’s movement, and trust me, they’re not giving it up. It reminds them of who they used to be before “pregnant people” and “uterus havers.” The only way to defeat this massive coalition of abortion activists is to call them out on their denial of basic biological reality, which now includes the embryo they helped make.
The language around abortion has changed. “Pro-choice” became “safe, legal and rare,” which eventually became “pro-abortion.” That works best for a generation raised to believe that pregnancies are another form of oppression. Think: The Handmaid’s Tale. This brilliant exchange from Ben Shapiro is a good example of that:
The Republicans, by contrast, have not changed their language at all. They’ve stuck with “pro-life,” thinking the word “life” would have some meaning to the public at large. It doesn’t. It’s been branded as “Conservative Christian” and “Right to Life.” That says to most people that abortions will be banned, and we’re back to The Handmaid’s Tale.
Can the Left and the Right find common ground on abortion? Maybe. But if they can’t, the Democrats will keep winning because they have tied “pro-life” to oppression. What if, instead, the messaging was:
“Pro-pregnancy” - It sounds like supporting mothers.
”Pro-baby” - Everyone loves babies.
”Pro-motherhood” - Motherhood that applauds and celebrates how women have been empowered since the dawn of civilization.
”Pro-feminist” - The Democrats have dumped the word “feminist.” Why not pick it back up on the Right and give women who want to fight for women’s rights a new home?
In other words, if the abortion debate begins to shift to celebrating mothers and women in general for this miraculous thing they and they alone can do, it might become something more than just a debate about whether or not women can abort their babies. It can be about the one thing the Democrats have abandoned: the celebration of women specifically.
The Empowered Woman?
I was raised on abortion and gun control as the life-or-death issues I was supposed to care about. I was expected to lie to myself and to others about abortions, that they don’t matter, that you won’t regret them, that it’s just a clump of cells, that the planet is better off without another mouth to feed in an over-populated world.
I lived the feminist lie, thinking it was the right path. Serve yourself, please yourself, find your bliss, fix what’s wrong, chase your career, have endless sexual experiences, change the world, and never let anyone gaslight you, abuse you or take you for granted. Our list of demands just kept growing. How to satisfy the empowered woman who can never be satisfied?
I tumbled around life aimlessly, going to college, then dropping out. Trying to be an actress and failing. Chasing relationships that seemed like love but were just sex. I had no religion. I had no sense of purpose. All I knew was that I had to make something of myself because that is what the Roe v. Wade bargain was: have an abortion and do something with your life.
Well, I did something with my life. I built a business, I chased my dreams. Yet, the crazy thing about it is that the only thing I’ve done that has any meaning for me whatsoever was giving birth to and raising my precious child. And it’s not even close.
That was my purpose in life. Motherhood. I just realized it too late. I realized it after chasing everything else I thought would matter but that now, with the wisdom of age, I know never did.
Eventually, my demographic would not be the most desired for corporations to chase as Generation-Z rose to prominence over the past decade or so. Then what were we? Dissatisfied angry women asking to speak to the manager? Purposeless women with all of this empowerment, we didn’t know what to do with, now that the Left had abandoned our cause and moved on to intersectionality.
For me, I had abortions despite my desire to have those babies, a desire that is an evolved trait for most women or should be. Even if I convinced myself it didn’t matter, or I tried to find a way to justify it in my mind, or I just tried not to think about it, eventually, in the quiet of the night, my thoughts always take me back to the choices I made that I now have to live with.
I’m not blaming anyone. I take responsibility for all of it. But I feel compelled to help other women understand what they’re doing when they choose to eliminate the hope of a child and how that might haunt them in later years, as it has me. I don’t go a day without thinking about what might have been, and the heartache is unbearable.
To say I regretted having abortions is mostly verboten on the Left because it betrays the feminist promise of ambition and freedom over motherhood. You can have it all, we all were told back in the 90s when annual abortions topped one million.
Of course, the GOP could help change the entire debate if they also weren’t rigid when it came to marriage and social services to help young mothers raise their children. There’s not always a man who wants to be involved. There’s not always a traditional or stable home life. There’s not always money.
Changing the abortion debate is going to require a hard look at things like teen pregnancy, single motherhood, supporting mothers to stay home with their babies, communities of older women to help care for the babies, better maternity leave, and mental health support. All of that has to be part of the conversation if you’re going to convince women to keep their unwanted pregnancies.
Yet, I can’t help but think we will all regret our casual disregard for life someday in the near future when life becomes precious because it is so rare. How can we be so sure we’re doing the right thing when it’s only been my lifetime that we all had millions of abortions without even thinking about it?
It will take half a century, probably, before civilization catches up to the disaster of population decline. Only the future generations will see, as with “gender-affirming care,” who was on the right side of history and who was not.
As for me, I will spend the rest of my life mourning what might have been, the faces I might have known, the grandchildren that might have been born, and find a way to forgive myself for foolishly following a movement I did not fully understand.
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The Democrats Win on Abortion But Future Generations Might Look Back in Horror