Following a truly historic election in which Republicans won the electoral college, the national popular vote, flipped four Senate seats, and are closing in on a House majority with a handful of races still uncalled, SBA Pro-Life America Marjorie Dannenfelser gives her assessment at National Review:
The first presidential election after the Dobbs decision has proven at least two things: First, women are not automatons and our ability to discern important issues shouldn’t be underestimated. Second, aborting our nation’s future — our children — is not the galvanizing issue Democrats and the legacy media insisted.
A headline at The Guardian on Election Day proclaimed, “If Harris wins, it’s because of abortion.” The verdict: spectacular failure.
Democrats went all in on abortion, spending $570 million on abortion-focused TV advertising alone for federal races during the general election, according to data from AdImpact, versus Republicans’ $37 million on abortion-focused TV ads. Abortion was Democrats’ single biggest issue.
At Townhall.com, Vice President of Communications Emily E. Davis writes about why “Roe-vember the 5th” was canceled:
The Harris campaign told us that women would die from lack of abortions unless we voted for her.
So how can it be, given the threat of democracy and death, that most Americans, including more suburban women and a record number of minority voters, didn’t buy Kamala’s existential abortion claim?
It’s because Americans hate being lied to.
One piece of media soul-searching that’s causing buzz on social media bears out Davis’ point.
The New York Times spent the last few months of the cycle conducting its own focus group, repeatedly checking in with 13 young, undecided voters as they evaluated the candidates. Pollster Frank Luntz asked them, “In the end, who did you vote for? What was the key moment that helped you make that decision?”
To another young voter in Virginia, the Democrats’ overall messaging toward women – including one infamous ad narrated by actress Julia Roberts – came across as condescending:
When asked who thought the press covered the campaign “efficiently, effectively and accurately,” 10 of them didn’t raise their hands.
On X, Marco Rubio’s former chief of staff Alberto Martinez offered an excellent observation: “Voters today are more informed, rely on diverse sources, and can see through the manipulative tactics that media and campaigns once relied on.”
Remember back in August when the NYT’s David Leonhardt was skeptical Democrats’ pro-abortion pitch would move swing voters? With the election results to confirm, he has reached the same topline conclusion as Dannenfelser, calling the Democrats’ strategy “wishful thinking”:
Abortion was “by far the most prevalent topic in 2024 Democratic messaging,” Politico reported, “beating out health care, the economy and immigration.” The Harris campaign’s final round of advertisements mentioned abortion more than any other subject, according to the Wesleyan Media Project.
The strategy failed.
One particularly striking case he cites (along with Stacey Abrams and Beto O’Rourke):
“It [abortion] is the only thing we’re really talking about,” Nan Whaley, the Democratic nominee for governor in Ohio, said in her 2022 campaign. “We think it is the issue.” Three weeks later, Whaley lost to Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican who had signed abortion restrictions into law, by 25 percentage points.
When pro-abortion forces blitzed seven states with extreme constitutional amendments in the year and a half after Dobbs, legacy media outlets were quick to declare abortion the big winner. After Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota became the first states since Dobbs to defeat similar measures, many headlines looked… darn near identical:
The reality, per SBA’s Kelsey Pritchard: “Tuesday’s ballot measure results dealt the abortion industry a devastating blow.” GOP leaders like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts and Gov. Jim Pillen, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Sen. John Thune and Rep. Dusty Johnson played active roles in these victories. Read more at The Washington Times about why this is a big deal and we won’t let the media ignore it.
Democrats in Virginia launched headlong into their latest desperate attempt to get an all-trimester abortion amendment on a future ballot. Abortion is already legal in Virginia for any reason in the first and second trimesters, for reasons of physical or mental health in the third, and at any time to save the life of a pregnant woman. In 2020, then-Governor Ralph Northam signed changes into law allowing non-doctors to carry out some abortions for the first time. The law currently prohibits partial birth infanticide and requires life support measures for the child “if there is any clearly visible evidence of viability.” It also protects informed consent and conscientious objection.
Virginia Democrats made their radical position clear last year when they blocked legislation to explicitly protect babies born alive after failed abortions. There can be no doubt what to expect from their amendment push: more extremism, more deception and more spending. Elections for the House, Senate, governor and other statewide offices will be held in 2025. It will be critical to hold the line.
In her National Review piece and in a recent memo to SBA allies and friends of the movement, Dannenfelser outlines some of the next steps to expect under the new Trump administration:
President Trump is proud of his part in reversing the great injustice that was Roe v. Wade and in keeping pro-life commitments. The accomplishments of his first term now become the baseline for his second. It is time to begin dismantling the egregious policies of Biden and Harris, such as funding abortions around the globe with taxpayer dollars, turning veterans’ health clinics into abortion centers, wielding lawfare to force doctors to perform abortions, and imprisoning peaceful pro-life activists.
That’s not all. The abortion industry has become more and more aggressive in promoting abortion even after the reversal of Roe loosened their grip on America’s laws and America’s people. To defeat them in the long term, we must strengthen the pro-life, pro-woman, pro-family resolve of the Republican Party, centered on the unalienable right to life for the unborn child that exists under the 14th Amendment. Most Americans support early, reasonable limits on abortion, not laws that look more like those of Communist China than our land of liberty.
“The winning formula is well established,” she says. “Now is not the time to sit back, but to go on offense and start regaining ground for life.”
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, our movement was given a historic opportunity. But the battle for life became much more difficult.
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