With abortion cast as a “losing issue” for Republicans, former Trump counselor and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway thinks she’s found the silver bullet: contraception.
Conway visited Capitol Hill this week to propose that Republican candidates shift their talking points to avoid criticisms from Democrats that the “GOP is anti-woman.” She cited studies and opined about bipartisan appeal, but Conway neglected the massive shortcomings in her proposal — pushing contraception isn’t really politically plausible, isn’t pro-life, and certainly isn’t pro-woman.
Conway Jumps on the Contraception Bandwagon
In a poll commissioned by Independent Women’s Voice, Conway found vast public support for, as Politico reports, “policies that make contraception cheaper and more available.”
Nearly 90 percent of respondents agree that “it is more important than ever that women have access to the most modern and effective contraception method of their choice regardless of where they live, how much it costs, and where they receive health care services.” Polling found that over 80 percent of self-described pro-lifers agreed.
Quite a few people also believe that Congress should play an active role in decreasing the number of unplanned pregnancies by increasing the availability of contraception: 78 percent of respondents and 66 percent of pro-life respondents agreed.
Voters get scared off by abortion bans, but voters really like contraception. So if Republicans simply switch from the less popular position to the more popular one, they can win votes, win elections, and … ban abortions once they’re in office? Either Conway thinks that Republican candidates can dodge the abortion question on the campaign trail — to be clear, they can’t — or she wants the GOP to drop the abortion issue altogether and pivot to pushing pills. Neither scenario seems likely to earn Republicans extra seats come November. (RELATED: Nikki Haley Misses the Mark)
Contraception Isn’t Pro-Life
“Contraception” is a blanket term for various methods of fertility suppression, which Conway and Higgins failed to tease out in their polling. The broad category is made up of both abortifacient and non-abortifacient contraception. Abortifacient contraception, like some oral contraceptives and intra-uterine devices (IUDs), doesn’t actually prevent the creation of a new human life. Instead, abortifacients prevent the implantation of the new life by turning the womb into an inhospitable environment.
Planned Parenthood clearly advertises the Plan-B “morning-after pill” as emergency contraception. To promote contraception as a “winning issue” for the pro-life movement is to ignore the reality of what abortifacient contraceptives actually do.
Even non-abortifacient contraception isn’t pro-life. Reliance on contraception causes a “contraceptive mentality.” Women who become pregnant while using contraception are likely to seek an abortion, in no small part because they have already closed themselves off to life. Unsurprisingly, the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute found that half of American abortion patients became pregnant while actively contracepting. (RELATED: The Satanic Temple Attempts to Bring Abortion to Pro-Life States)
“Statistics actually suggest that increased access to birth control *increases* the abortion rate because it leads to more unplanned pregnancies,” explained Alexandra DeSanctis Marr, author of Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing. Contraception separates sex from procreation, and it does the pro-life movement little good to pretend that the sexual revolution can be dealt with in half measures.
Trying to Win Over Women
Conway couches her recommendation as a way to combat claims by Democrats that Republicans don’t care about women. Heather Higgins, CEO of Independent Women’s Voice, joined Conway on her trip to the Capitol and attempted to spin contraception as a pro-woman solution to criticism from the left.
“In order to advance their political interests, the left has hijacked the definition of ‘women’s health’ and advanced a fearmongering fantasy narrative that conservatives are anti-woman and anti-women’s health,” Higgins said.
She’s right in her diagnosis. The Left has conflated abortion with health care for decades (while objecting to attempts to make abortion clinics comply with basic standards for health care facilities), even as it relentlessly attacks the GOP as the party of misogyny. But crying, “Democrats are the real misogynists,” isn’t particularly convincing if Higgins’ recommendation is that Republicans start pushing contraception.
Among contraceptive users aged 15–29, 28 percent relied on “female permanent contraception,” which refers to the irreversible destruction of the fallopian tubes. This is the most commonly used form of contraception, but it’s unclear whether Conway and Higgins have reckoned with it. Are they suggesting that Republicans should campaign on taxpayer funding for the irreversible mutilation of the female reproductive system? After all, most Americans want Congress to play a role in making contraception even more widely available than it already is.
Or would Conway and Higgins rather hedge their bets with the pill, the second-most-common form of contraception? Used by one in five contracepting women, hormonal birth control treats natural female fertility as a disease. It prevents ovulation, eliminating a woman’s period. Instead, a woman on the pill experiences occasional random bleeding that seems like a light period but is instead withdrawal bleeding prompted by a dip in pill-provided hormones.
OB-GYNs have seen growing numbers of Gen Z and millennial women opting out of birth control in recent years as they become increasingly aware of its harmful effects. This isn’t just a fringe movement; even the New York Times has taken note. Jessica Grose, a liberal journalist who often writes about women’s issues, recently noted:
Over the years, I have heard anecdotally about — and experienced — various side effects to different types of contraception: heavy breakthrough bleeding and abdominal pain with IUDs, mood disturbances with different types of pills, and sexual side effects with everything.
Despite the medical side effects, Conway and Higgins seem to have no problem pushing contraception as a cure-all for both unplanned pregnancies and unappealing election results. It’s a familiar move, one used by Democrats time and time again, except with abortion. But something tells me that Republicans won’t be able to beat the Left at its own game — especially not while abortion remains top of mind for many voters, with contraception access a near non-issue in coming elections.
Mary Frances Myler is a writer from Northern Michigan now living in Washington, D.C. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022.
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