Anti-Abortion Activists Have Republicans in a Vise

A not-so-gentle reminder to Republican pols. Photo: ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images

To fully understand the current angst of Republicans dealing with the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision to treat IVF treatments as acts of homicide, you have to go back a few decades to the iron bond the GOP formed with the anti-abortion movement during the long period of national legalized abortion after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. As early as 1980, as conservatives under Ronald Reagan rose to power, the Republican Party’s national platform began embracing extremist positions on abortion, including a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion from the moment of conception. For many years, anti-abortion activists were the most reliable foot soldiers of the GOP, the people who stuffed envelopes and staffed phone banks and harangued their friends and neighbors to turn out to vote the right way.

In those days the so-called “Right to Life” lobby was willing to cut Republican politicians some slack on tactical maneuvering on abortion politics, since it was all academic anyway so long as the Supreme Court protected the right to choose. Depending on the circumstances that could mean backing rape or incest exceptions to hypothetical abortion bans, or pretending that the only objectionable abortions were rare late-term procedures that didn’t poll well.

This freewheeling era of Republican/anti-abortion cooperation ended the very moment the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, and it suddenly mattered a great deal exactly what policies GOP lawmakers were willing to impose in states where they were in charge. The massive political debt Republicans owed to their forced-birth allies came due, and now they are paying the price for the large and suddenly meaningful gulf between what anti-abortion activists and the voting public believe and want. This is most evident in the wake of the Alabama decision, as Republicans stampede to proclaim their desire to protect incredibly popular IVF treatments even as hard-core RTL groups shout “Stop!” As Politico reports:

The anti-abortion movement is turning on Republican lawmakers who support bills to protect in vitro fertilization, accusing them of sanctioning murder.

As many politicians raced in recent weeks to get to the right side of public opinion on IVF, some of the country’s biggest and most influential anti-abortion groups are pushing back. …

In Alabama, the anti-abortion movement resoundingly condemned a bill shielding IVF providers from criminal and civil charges, and pressured GOP Gov. Kay Ivey to veto it. When she signed it anyway, one anti-abortion organization said the new law “disrespects human life and strips human beings of their dignity,” and another ran digital ads against Ivey and Republican lawmakers using graphic imagery and accusing them of “[betraying] life.”

“Politicians cannot call themselves pro-life, affirm the truth that human life begins at the moment of fertilization and then enact laws that allow the callous killing of these preborn children simply becauseili they were created through IVF,” Live Action president Lila Rose said after Alabama Republicans approved the legislation.

A complication for the anti-abortion movement is that the maximum leader of the GOP, Donald Trump, has been among those vowing to protect IVF. Worse yet, he’s been going rogue on abortion for a while, blaming the disappointing Republican showing in 2022 on the prominence of the issue, opposing total abortion bans in the states, and getting dodgy on possible national abortion restrictions. He more or less has a lifetime pass to stray from conservative orthodoxy on the entire subject, however, since in contrast to every other Republican president including Reagan, Trump kept his promises to stack the Supreme Court with enough justices to overturn Roe. The rest of the GOP, though, doesn’t have this sort of freedom; even Trump can’t keep anti-abortion leaders from tormenting his troops with demands that they “protect the babies” defined as fertilized ova, or place restrictions on IVF even if it’s not outlawed altogether.

As anti-abortion activists and Republicans circle each other warily and try to reach accommodations, the electoral timing could not be much worse. Democrats are counting on making reproductive rights a preeminent issue in November. And as new polling from the KFF illustrates, it’s now pro-choice voters who are most likely to make abortion the number one issue affecting their decisions at the ballot box:

Voters who say abortion is the most important issue to their vote are disproportionately younger, Democratic-leaning, and want abortion to be legal in all cases. In the two years post Dobbs, there seems to be a new generation of abortion voters largely made up of those who want abortion to be legal in all cases. Voters who say abortion is the “most important issue” in their 2024 vote (12% of all voters) are disproportionately made up of Black voters, Democratic voters, women voters, and the youngest voting bloc — voters ages 18 to 29.

Right now the IVF controversy is keeping the abortion issue in the news in a manner that casts Republicans in a poor light. But another upsurge in concerns about reproductive rights could arrive very soon. The U.S. Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments on March 26 for an appeal to overturn lower-court decisions (on hold pending Supreme Court review) restricting the availability of abortion pills. A decision is likely before the end of the Court’s current term in late June. If the outcome is anything other than a ratification of the status quo, the ongoing backlash against abortion restrictions could intensify just in time to affect the 2024 general election.

During the Roe era it was anti-abortion voters who were typically the most motivated, to the benefit of their GOP allies. That worm has turned with a vengeance, and now Republicans are in a vise, caught between the unpopular demands of their political creditors in the anti-abortion movement and a voting public that’s having none of it.