Republicans opposed to abortion won nearly every close Senate race last year, but abortion rights advocates still contend they have the upper hand on the issue going into 2016.
As the anniversary of Roe v. Wade approaches next week and Congress prepares to take up a ban on abortion halfway through pregnancy, leaders on both sides of the abortion debate offered clashing takes on how the midterms played out and where to go from here.
“In 2014, it was made clear that abortion is dead as a weapon against pro-life candidates,” said Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser, pointing to GOP victories in Arkansas, Colorado, North Carolina, Louisiana and the defeat of Wendy Davis in the Texas governor’s race.
“I believe we will see, moving in to the next election, is [that] our opponents will be the losers because of their abortion position, and ours will be the winners,” she said.
“Once again, voters rejected candidates who support the extreme status quo of abortion for any reason,” said Tatiana Bergum, a spokeswoman for National Right to Life.
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said Republican candidates were “on the wrong side of public opinion.” But the only race she pointed to was won by a Republican, former Rep. Cory Gardner, who unseated Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado.
In that race, Gardner backed away from his former support of what’s known as “personhood” legislation giving full legal rights to embryos and instead advocated for making birth control pills available to women over the counter. Udall spent so much time talking about the personhood issue that he earned the nickname “Mark Uterus” from the Denver Post and others.
“What we saw is anti-women’s-health politicians ran from their records and in some cases adopted entirely new positions,” Richards said. “Politicians pushing these kinds of restrictions are on the wrong side of public opinion, and the truth is they know it.”
Polls show that a majority of Americans support some restrictions on abortion — including restrictions that would limit the procedure to the initial weeks or months of a woman’s pregnancy — but want to keep it legal in some cases. Opposition to abortion has inched up slightly over the last few years, but the issue has deeply polarized Americans for decades.
And it’s not just abortion that activists are disputing. While abortion rights advocates have broadly lumped access to abortion and birth control into their “war on women” messaging, their opponents — many of whom don’t oppose most forms of contraception — say it’s not fair to conflate the two issues.
“If I were still pro-choice — which I used to be — I would do exactly what they’re doing right now, which is trying to conflate contraception and abortion at every single step along the way,” Dannenfelser said. “The debate over contraception, whether to or not, is between the people who are going to practice contraception. The debate over whether to abort a child is a debate about human rights.”
Between now and the 2016 presidential election, states which have already passed a slew of abortion regulations are likely to pass more, and the new GOP-led Congress is likely to pass federal abortion restrictions — starting with the ban on abortion past 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Those measures are almost certain to be vetoed by President Obama, but activists hope they’ll lay the groundwork for when a potential Republican president might sign some into law.
All of this has activists on the Left viewing the next few years with trepidation. “The focus of this Congress is wrong,” Richards said. “Instead of chip[ping] away at women’s access to reproductive healthcare, we should do the things we know actually work.”
She does see one plus from the midterms: Several other Republican candidates besides Gardner touted their support for over-the-counter birth control. She believes the moves were little more than politically motivated, but it shows Republicans realized they had to appeal to women, she said.
“I think if there is a silver lining out of the election, I think collectively we have made it really untenable to be against women and run for office,” Richards said.
