IN-DEPTH: Pro-Life GOP a Winning 2024 Strategy? Survey Data Challenge Democrat, Media Assumptions

A pro-life activist holds a sign outside the U.S. Supreme Court during the 48th annual March for Life in Washington on Jan. 29, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Abortion advocates were ecstatic on April 4 when Judge Janet Protasiewicz decisively defeated conservative Daniel Kelly in Wisconsin in an off-year election that for the first time in 15 years ensured that the state’s highest court will oppose any limits on the procedure that has killed more than 63 million unborn babies since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe decision was overturned on June 24, 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson, which restored to state legislatures the authority to decide within their respective jurisdictions how many restrictions, if any, to place on the procedure.

Protasiewicz’s massive 11-point victory sparked a Politico headline proclaiming that “Abortion was a 50/50 Issue. Now It’s Republican Quicksand.” Even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board described the Wisconsin result as a “five-alarm warning for the GOP about 2024.”

In addition, an April 15 story by The Associated Press reported that “allies for leading presidential candidates concede that their hardline anti-abortion policies may be popular with the conservatives who decide primary elections, but they could ultimately alienate the broader set of voters they need to win the presidency.”

Even before the Wisconsin votes were counted, however, mainstream media outlets were sounding such warnings, as in a Feb. 1 AP news report that although GOP voters strongly back pro-life candidates, the stance “could create problems for the party’s eventual nominee in the general election.”

During the 2022 campaign, mainstream media regularly framed the issue as moderate Democrats protecting abortion access versus radical Republicans who seek to ban all abortions regardless of the circumstances in any particular pregnancy, as seen in a Sept. 13, 2022, New York Times news story on a proposed national law limiting abortion access to the first 15 weeks.

The proposal introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) illustrates that voters must choose between “supporting a Democratic majority that wants to preserve abortion access and handing control of Congress to Republicans who are seeking to ban the procedure,” according to The New York Times.

Judge Janet Protasiewicz onstage during the live taping of "Pod Save America," hosted by WisDems at the Barrymore Theater in Madison, Wis., on March 18, 2023. (Jeff Schear/Getty Images for WisDems)

Not long after the votes were counted in 2022, Democratic campaign strategist and former EMILY'S List President Stephanie Schriock observed to Politico that “abortion access is a core value that hits you in your gut“ and that it’s ”going to be a huge part of every election going forward until we get this right back.”

There were other indicators before the Wisconsin contest that abortion advocates claimed put pro-life Republicans in jeopardy, because of the Dobbs decision. Since Dobbs, 18 states have enacted a range of restrictions, including Florida’s heartbeat law that bans abortion after the sixth week and the similar Texas abortion “trigger law” adopted in 2021.

Interviews by The Epoch Times with campaign strategists, advocates, and analysts, however, suggest that the conventional political wisdom expressed in the mainstream media—that Republican candidates must avoid taking strong pro-life stances in order to win the 2024 elections—misses the mark.

Robert Cahaly, Trafalgar Group senior strategist, said Republicans should emphasize the contrast between their favoring a few reasonable exceptions on abortion, such as the health of the mother and rape or incest, and Democrats’ wanting no limits at all right up to the moment of birth.

“If Republicans talk about the contrast, that they are for some limitations, whether it’s a heartbeat bill, a 15 weeks bill, whatever it is, they are for some restrictions, whereas the official position of the Democrats is they seek abortion-on-demand, all nine months, up to and including partial-birth abortion—when that contrast is made, it is not going to hurt Republicans,” the Atlanta-based Cahaly said.

“If Republicans stay in that range, heartbeat to 15 weeks, with those exceptions, then they will have 70 percent of the American public with them,” he said. “It is absolutely amazing—it depends on where you draw the line. You have a working majority of the American public if you just say legal in the first trimester or until a heartbeat is detected, with those exceptions.”

Republicans are at a big disadvantage, Cahaly said, “when they let the other side paint them as being more extreme.”

“The problem is they get looped into this thing about wanting to make all abortion illegal and letting the other side define the terms when the other side is saying, ‘Hey, they want to make it all illegal.’”

Democrats Outspent GOP on Abortion

Democrats spent far more money defining Republicans as abortion extremists during the 2022 midterm elections than GOP aspirants did in projecting a more accurate image, Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins told The Epoch Times.

“If you look at the data, in the 2022 election, for instance, Democrats spent $358 million promoting their abortion positions versus Republicans, who spent $37 million,“ Perkins said. ”Even if you go to Wisconsin in the recent Supreme Court election, the liberal, about a third of her ads were focused on abortion, compared to for the ‘conservative,’ where it was 1 percent of his ads covered abortion.”

The bottom line, Perkins said, is “you don’t win a debate with your mouth shut.”

Perkins agreed that “how you talk about this” is key for Republicans in 2024 and thereafter.

“They’ve gotten off-track by allowing the Democrats to talk about banning abortion. Who’s talking about banning abortion? We’re talking about protecting human life.”

Perkins said FRC’s polling points to “about a 12-point swing” in the GOP’s favor when Republicans talk about protecting human life versus being defined as being for banning all abortions.

“It’s always been about protecting the unborn children and their mothers. It’s not about chemical abortions, or banning abortions, it’s about protecting unborn children. That’s always been our mission,” he said.

Perkins pointed out that 11 governors in competitive races in 2022 who had taken strongly pro-life positions, such as promoting the heartbeat bills, were victorious. “If you talk about it from a point of conviction, you win,” he said.

E.V. Osment, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America vice president, agreed: “There was a thorough line and lesson to be learned with the 2022 midterms and the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. When candidates don’t define their stance on abortion, they lose. Plain and simple.

“In the 2022 midterms, governors who signed ambitious pro-life legislation into law and never flinched politically, despite running in competitive states, came out on top. Even up against Democrat darlings who were very vocal on abortion.”

(Left) Republican gubernatorial candidate Gov. Brian Kemp speaks during his primary night election party at the Chick-fil-A College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta on May 24, 2022. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images); (Right) Stacey Abrams speaks onstage during the Beautiful Noise Live Equality on the Ballot panel at Buckhead Theatre in Atlanta on Sept. 19, 2022. (Marcus Ingram/Getty Images)

In Georgia, for example, Osment noted, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp won his rematch with staunch abortion advocate Democrat Stacey Abrams by 7.5 percent. Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who had signed a heartbeat law, won by 25.6 percent, and in Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who had signed both a heartbeat law and the 2021 trigger law, won by 11 percent.

“While we have examples of pro-life GOP candidates who were prepared and went on offense, there are also examples of candidates who were not prepared and took the ostrich strategy, burying their heads in the sand and running from the issue, allowing their opponents to define them,” Osment added, noting that Pennsylvania’s losing Republican Senate candidate, Dr. Mehmet Oz, sought to minimize the abortion issue in his race against Democrat John Fetterman.

“The losing ostrich strategy has been pushed by the inside-the-Beltway consultant/strategist class who urge candidates to totally ignore abortion and hope it goes away. It’s not going away. That’s why it is imperative that Republicans stand up and speak out on this and not let their opponents define them,” she said.

Osment also noted that multiple recent surveys have found strong majority support for a 15-week limit with exceptions, including the Harvard-Harris national poll, which found that 72 percent of voters would limit abortions to no later than 15 weeks, including 75 percent of women, 70 percent of independents and 60 percent of rank-and-file Democrats. 

In addition, she said, the Harvard-Harris national poll found that only 10 percent of voters back having no limits on abortion, as favored by leading Democrats, and the Marist survey showed that 63 percent of Americans, including 42 percent of the Democrats, oppose allowing abortion pills to be mailed without a prior medical examination of the expectant mother.

Citing France’s recent decision to change its 12-week limit on abortions to 14 weeks, Ned Ryun, American Majority founder and president, said that where Republicans fail is “actually showing how radical the left is on the abortion issue.”

“They don’t say, ‘All we’re asking for is a reasonable approach to the issue in which there are certain restrictions,’ like most of the civilized world, by the way. We’re well out of step with the rest of the world.

“We are much more in line with the mainstream and the majority of Americans when we get down to, ‘Should we have abortion on demand until the moment of birth?’ And most Americans are going to go, ‘Absolutely not.’ Do they think it should be for the life of the mother and some other exceptions? Yes, that’s where most Americans are.”

Ryun said that he doesn’t support instituting a new national abortion law, such as the 15-week limit proposal by South Carolina’s Graham after the Dobbs decision.

“I’m a big believer in federalism,” Ryun said. “If we’re going to do this, let’s have the conversation at the state level. If they get it pushed back to the national level, hopefully, we'll have a consensus on we’re not going past this point, the first trimester.”