A few months ago, I asked an anti-abortion activist why the pro-life movement has been caught so flat-footed in the post-Dobbs era. His answer? Pro-choice activists have learned how to use traditionally Republican messaging to their advantage: “In political campaigning, you always want to be able to tie your message back to a fundamental American value, and the one that they tie theirs back to is freedom,” he said. “As Republicans, we’ve trained our voters that the side who says ‘freedom’ is the winning side, right? So we’ve put ourselves in a bind.”
It’s no wonder then that many pro-life candidates and groups are now ditching the word “ban” in favor of words like “limit” and “standard,” and are trying to use what they call “compassionate” language that they hope will resonate with independent-leaning voters, many of whom would prefer not to think about the issue at all. I’ve been told over and over again by GOP campaign operatives that Republicans need to get in front of the abortion issue so that Democrats can’t paint them as extremists in ads and on the trail. That won’t be easy.
The Wall Street Journal’s Molly Ball reports:
Kansas’ ballot campaign in 2022 was backed by a group called Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, while a group working to put the issue on the ballot in Arkansas is called Arkansans for Limited Government. Ads for the Ohio referendum emphasized that it was about “ensuring families—not government—have the freedom to make their own personal decisions.”
Successful Democratic candidates in the 2022 midterms drew on the same themes, as when Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly used abortion as a springboard to blast his Republican opponent, Blake Masters, as “someone who thinks he knows better than everyone about everything” in a debate. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, won a surprisingly wide five-point victory in his red state with help from a viral ad featuring a young woman talking about becoming pregnant at age 12 after being raped by her stepfather.
Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t suburban women who reacted most strongly to the ad, said Beshear’s campaign manager, Eric Hyers. “The voters that moved the most were older, rural, conservative men who were registered Republicans,” Hyers said. “Those are the voters who have never been forced to think about ‘What if a 12-year-old gets raped by her stepfather? What then?’ It’s not about labels, pro-this, pro-that. It’s about what you think should happen to the little girl in that situation.”