Make the Pro-Life Movement Great Again 

Just over two years ago, the pro-life movement was rightly ebullient at the demise of Roe v. Wade. For nearly fifty years we had fought, sometimes wisely, sometimes not so wisely, but almost always with commitment and resolution, to erase this scarlet stain from our newly stitched “living” Constitution. And with Donald Trump’s appointment of justices who rejected Roe’s faulty logic, we had reason to believe we had reached the zenith of success. We had achieved what many thought could never be done.

The great debate that arose after the publication of the 1996 First Things symposium, The End of Democracy? was settled. Democracy had won. With the Dobbs decision, judicial tyranny had been vanquished.

Then came Kansas.

Mere weeks after Dobbs, Kansas voters were presented with a proposed state constitutional amendment, years in the making, called the Value Them Both initiative, a measure seeking to reverse an outrageous decision by an activist Kansas supreme court that wrote a “fundamental right” to abortion into the state constitution. This so-called “right” to abortion was based on an assumption of a right to “personal autonomy” not unlike the one found in the “penumbras” of the Fourteenth Amendment in Roe. 

But the abortion industry framed the Kansas ballot initiative as a Republican attempt to enact a wholesale abortion ban, not just restore neutrality to the issue. This framing was extremely effective, not only because it unfortunately came within weeks of the Dobbs decision, but because it exposed a fundamental but little appreciated fact about how most Americans want abortion to be regulated: most voters do not want abortion to be banned. They want it to be legal well into the first trimester, and beyond that, they want exceptions for women who are victims of rape or incest or whose lives or health are at risk. 

We suffered our first debilitating loss post-Dobbs: red Kansas voters rejected the pro-life Value Them Both amendment by a whopping 59.16 percent.

Other states soon followed suit. In November 2022 came Michigan, California, Vermont, Kentucky, and Montana. In three cases (in California, Michigan, and Vermont), abortion advocates were able to enact proposals that enshrined expansive abortion rights in state constitutions. Kentucky voters rejected a measure declaring that the state constitution did not provide a right to abortion and in Montana, voters rejected a measure to protect “born alive” infants, including those who survived an abortion attempt.

Then in November 2023 came Ohio. As in California, Michigan, and Vermont, the abortion industry brought forth a constitutional amendment that expansively protected the alleged right to abortion. As in those other states, abortion was claimed to be guaranteed only up to fetal viability, which sounds reasonable to many voters, but loopholes and exceptions effectively authorized abortion up until birth in some cases. Furthermore, existing pro-life protections would become vulnerable to challenge.

Ohio was once considered a red, pro-life state, and so the pro-life community focused intently on defeating the amendment (known as Issue 1). It was a well-organized, well-funded campaign that brought together pro-life groups, churches, and elected officials, but participants made a number of fatal mistakes. 

First, Republican members of the Ohio legislature made the disastrous decision to push through a proposal on the August 2022 primary ballot that would have increased the vote threshold needed to pass constitutional amendments in November and in future elections. Instead of a mere majority, amendment referenda would take a sixty percent threshold. The timing and even the arguments of legislators and some pro-lifers made clear that they did not trust the people. They were changing the rules in the middle of the game because they did not trust how the people would vote. 

This was a significant strategic departure for social conservatives. Whereas pro-traditional-marriage ballot initiatives across the nation had shown conservatives’ best hope was not in an increasingly tyrannical judiciary or even lobbyist-driven legislatures, but directly with the people, some in the pro-life movement in Ohio opted for one of the worst possible solutions at the worst possible time. 

This move was seen as obstructionist and political. Worse, the outcome of the August vote became a proxy for the coming abortion battle in November by making it clear the immediate goal was to make it harder to enact the abortion amendment in November. This, in turn, played into the abortion industry’s claims that their pro-abortion measure was needed to prevent Republicans from banning abortion in the future.

The second strategic miscalculation in the Issue 1 campaign was a failure to address the reality of where voters are at the moment on abortion: they want abortion to be legal in the initial weeks of pregnancy, and they want exceptions to any prohibition on abortion in later weeks. Ohio lawmakers had enacted a “heartbeat” bill that largely banned abortion after six weeks with limited exceptions (like cases of ectopic pregnancy). As they had done elsewhere, abortion advocates portrayed their measure as necessary to prevent Republicans from banning all abortions. The pro-life campaign never challenged this positioning; instead, they focused entirely on the extreme nature of the Issue 1 abortion measure in undercutting existing pro-life protections, allowing late-term abortions and even undermining parental rights.

It wasn’t nearly enough. Issue 1 passed with 57 percent of the vote–the same margin by which voters had rejected the ill-considered August measure increasing the vote threshold. For those keeping score, in the wake of Dobbs, citizens in seven states had voted on the issue. The abortion industry won every single battle, including in deep red states. The pro-life community has yet to win a single election.

What went wrong? How could this have happened?

The pro-life movement focused its efforts primarily on overturning Roe, on restoring democracy, on restoring the people’s right to have a say in the most essential questions of self-government. Unfortunately, we did not adequately prepare for what would happen when democracy was, in fact, restored. 

I write this as someone who knows both victory and defeat in what is the most direct form of American democracy—state-level ballot initiatives. I have a unique view of direct democracy, having been part of leading more social conservative ballot initiatives (either as a chairperson, treasurer, or board member) than anyone currently involved in the pro-life movement—save one, Frank Schubert, the political mastermind of Proposition 8 in 2008, the first Maine marriage referendum in 2009, and the resounding marriage victory in North Carolina in May 2012. He also was at the helm during the 2012 general election losses.

Those losses occurred for two main reasons. Contrary to subsequent and widespread claims in the mainstream media, it wasn’t because of a change in public opinion, or that somehow we were “on the wrong side of history.” First, our opponents in the LGBTQ lobby learned from our earlier victories and adapted their strategy and messaging accordingly. Second, they mobilized their donor base to a much more effective degree than the pro-marriage movement did, raising and spending three, four, and five times more than we were able to bring to the table. Thanks to this funding advantage, they inoculated, defined, and dominated the delivery of their messages. As a result, they won four narrow victories.

Throughout the 2012 general election marriage battles, Schubert warned marriage supporters about what was unfolding on the ground. He pleaded for more funds to deal with the emerging situation, but our side failed to deliver.

Our funding was hampered by two factors: first, a campaign of intimidation. Those publicly supporting marriage reality were viciously targeted by the LGBTQ radicals for their support of Proposition 8 in California. The second factor was complacency. Because social conservatives had won every marriage battle on the ballot heading into the 2012 general election contests, some simply assumed we were destined to win again, and focused their giving on other priorities.

There are several parallels between the marriage fight of a decade ago and the current abortion battle. First, just as the LGBT lobby was able to adjust its strategy and messaging in the wake of a string of losses on marriage, so too can the pro-life movement on abortion. At least ten abortion battles are expected to be on state ballots this November. Unless we learn from Kansas, Ohio, and the other losses, there is no reason to expect any other outcome. But if we apply what we can learn from those losses—acknowledging that voters don’t favor comprehensive prohibitions of abortion, challenging the positioning that states are on the verge of enacting comprehensive prohibitions, and reminding them that these abortion industry proposals end the conversation on abortion regulations—we can win.

 

Second, the pro-life community must immediately and very substantially get involved in funding campaigns against the abortion industry. The funding disparity that existed in the marriage losses was not because socially conservative groups didn’t have money to spend. It existed because they (often yielding to intimidation) chose not to spend the money they had. The same is true of the pro-life community. If you want to defeat the abortion industry, you have to invest in their defeat.

Finally, and most importantly, we need political professionals like Frank Schubert in charge of state campaigns. We need people who have the ballot initiative campaign experience and the courage to run winning campaigns, even if, in doing so, they must confront uncomfortable realities about where voters begin the debate on abortion. Amateurs with no experience in running statewide ballot initiative campaigns should not be in charge. Running a ballot campaign is different from running a gubernatorial or even a presidential campaign. I’ve seen it, and I’ve seen what happens when we do not have the best talent leading us. We lose. And life loses.

We’re zero for seven so far in these contests. Unless something is done differently, we could end up zero for seventeen in a few short months. If we can’t even win in Florida, which requires the other side to get 60 percent, the pro-life movement will gain nothing from the next administration. More importantly, we will set out on a path to lose the overwhelming majority of states. For the immediate future, the hopes of the pro-life movement will be swept away.

Many pro-lifers are putting their hopes in Donald Trump winning the presidency this year. But Trump has already declared his opposition to national legislation protecting unborn children—something the Republican Party had for more than forty years pledged itself to support. He’s stripped expansive anti-abortion language from the Republican Party platform. He’s endorsed keeping chemical abortifacients legal. And he’s criticized “heartbeat” laws that effectively prohibit abortion around six weeks’ gestation.

As bad a position as we are in now, it’s not difficult to imagine how Donald Trump might feel about the pro-life community if we can’t win a single abortion battle in the states in the wake of his careful appointments of justices who overturned Roe.

There are fewer than one hundred days remaining in the 2024 election season. We have precious little time to refocus and recommit, and to learn from the losing campaigns to help inform our efforts going forward. I want to save babies. I want to win. But the path we are on is a path to devastating loss. The time has come and gone to keep quiet and accept that people know what they are doing. They do not. It’s time to look at our losses with steely eyes and ruthlessly pick apart what we did wrong so that we can move toward victory.

Time is short. Lives are at stake. Let’s make the pro-life movement great again.

Image by Tamara Sales and licensed via Adobe Stock.