For a while there, a lot of Republicans were hoping that Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin had come up with a strategy to lead them out of the wilderness on abortion policy. After the fall of Roe v. Wade, many Republican politicians pushed strict abortion bans, but it soon became clear that these policies are deeply unpopular nearly everywhere. Youngkin talked some rich donors into heavily investing in a field trial of his plan to push a 15-week ban, as described by the New York Times late last month:
Legislative races across the state will offer a decisive test of a strategy led by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has united Republicans behind a high-profile campaign in support of a ban on abortion after 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. The party calls it a “common sense” position, in contrast to Democrats, who it says “support no limits.”
The strategy is meant to defuse Republicans’ image as abortion extremists, which led to losses in last year’s midterms and threatens further defeats next month in an Ohio referendum and the Kentucky governor’s race.
Voters weren’t fooled, and Youngkin had his ass handed to him in his own state’s legislative contests. Meanwhile, anti-abortion bravo Daniel Cameron did indeed lose the Kentucky governor’s race, and in the most direct test of sentiment on abortion policy, a state constitutional amendment to restore Roe-era abortion protections easily won in red Ohio despite Republican leaders replicating Youngkin’s “Democrats are the extremists!” line of attack.
So what’s the next Republican fallback plan on the abortion issue, which could potentially continue canceling any GOP electoral advantages on the economy or other subjects?
As it happens, five Republican presidential candidates were asked about this at their third debate in Miami the night after the elections, and the answers illustrated GOP confusion on what’s going wrong with its abortion messaging.
Two candidates who are in a grim battle for conservative Evangelical votes in Iowa, Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott, seized the occasion to reiterate their anti-abortion bona fides. (It would have been more interesting had DeSantis been asked about the Ohio-like ballot initiative probably headed his way in Florida next year, but he didn’t have to address it.) Nikki Haley offered her patented crowd-pleasing (if disingenuous) formula of expressing willingness to sign any federal abortion ban that got to her desk as president — then doubted its political feasibility — while asking her forced-birth allies not to talk about jailing women (or treating pro-choice Americans as baby-killing monsters) and gesturing vaguely toward some future “consensus” on the issue. Vivek Ramaswamy, an actual Ohioan, absurdly blamed the loss there on the Republican Party’s “culture of losing,” apparently by way of punctuating his attacks on RNC chair Ronna McDaniel.
Chris Christie stuck with his hard-core states’ rights position on abortion policy. This works for candidates for federal office (in the wake of the 2023 results, Republican operatives are already telling congressional candidates to oppose federal abortion bans) but doesn’t offer much guidance to those who are losing battles regularly in the states.
Another reaction in the air blames the Ohio loss on the severity of the six-week ban Republicans have sought to impose there. Ohio senator J.D. Vance, for example, tweeted out a long comment that seemed to suggest that a Youngkin-style “compromise” position might have led to defeat of the abortion-rights ballot initiative. But he’s not having any of that Haley-style empathy for pro-choicers:
There is something sociopathic about a political movement that tells young women (and men) that it is liberating to murder their own children. So let’s keep fighting for our country’s children, and let’s find a way to win.
Interestingly enough, the prominent Republican we haven’t heard from on the implications of the 2023 elections for abortion messaging is Donald Trump (though he did take credit for Mississippi governor Tate Reeves’s reelection while blaming Cameron’s loss on “the stench of Mitch McConnell”). He may have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, his warnings that the abortion issue is an electoral loser for Republicans were certainly borne out by the bad voter reaction to Youngkin’s aggressive efforts to “go on the offensive” on the topic. On the other, Republicans (including Youngkin) have mostly accepted his advice to embrace rape and incest exceptions for any abortion-ban proposal, so any “Told ya so” dance he might perform could embarrass his own troops.
GOP candidates and strategists will need to get their act together soon, and not just because they are under renewed pressure from their partners in a bad marriage with the anti-abortion movement to keep up a losing fight. Democrats from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on down will try to exploit their abortion advantage in 2024 contests all over the country; even in safe blue states, abortion-rights ballot measures could appear in order to goose turnout for downballot races. They will have to make their own strategic-messaging decisions, including whether to focus on restoring Roe’s standards aimed mostly at protecting pre-viability abortions (which is popular and familiar) or making more of a systemic defense of abortion rights at the risk of encouraging Republicans’ demagoguery about late-term procedures.
Whatever happens next, the issue isn’t going away. Having insisted on returning abortion policy to the realm of politics rather than judicially enforced individual rights, Republicans cannot close Pandora’s box.
