IN-DEPTH: Pro-Life GOP a Winning 2024 Strategy? Survey Data Challenges Democrat and Media Assumptions

Abortion advocates were ecstatic April 4 when far-left Judge Janet Protasiewicz decisively defeated conservative Daniel Kelly in an off-year election that for the first time in 15 years assured that Wisconsin’s highest court will oppose any limits on the procedure that has killed more than 63 million babies since the 1973 Roe v Wade decision.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe decision was overturned June 24, 2022, in Dobbs v Jackson, which federalized the abortion issue by restoring to state legislatures the authority to decide within their respective jurisdictions how many restrictions, if any, to place on the procedure.

Protasiewicz’s massive 11-point win sparked a Politico headline proclaiming that “Abortion was a 50/50 Issue. Now It’s Republican Quicksand.” Even the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board described the Wisconsin result as a “five-alarm warning for the GOP about 2024.”

And an April 15, 2023, Associated Press story reported that “allies for leading presidential candidates concede that their hardline anti-abortion policies may be popular with the conservatives who decide primary elections, but they could ultimately alienate the broader set of voters they need to win the presidency.”

Even before the Wisconsin votes were counted, however, mainstream media outlets were sounding such warnings, as in a Feb. 1, 2023, AP news report that while GOP voters strongly back pro-life candidates, the stance “could create problems for the party’s eventual nominee in the general election.”

And during the 2022 campaign, mainstream media regularly framed the issue as moderate Democrats protecting abortion access versus radical Republicans who seek to ban all abortions regardless of the circumstances in any particular pregnancy, as seen in a Sept. 13, 2022, New York Times news story on a proposed national law limiting abortion access to the first 15 weeks.

The proposal introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), according to The New York Times, illustrates that voters must choose between “supporting a Democratic majority that wants to preserve abortion access and handing control of Congress to Republicans who are seeking to ban the procedure.”

Not long after the votes were counted in 2022, Democratic campaign strategist and former EMILY’S List President Stephanie Schriock observed to Politico that “abortion access is a core value that hits you in your gut. It is going to be a huge part of every election going forward until we get this right back.”

There were other indicators before the Wisconsin contest that abortion advocates claimed put pro-life Republicans in jeopardy, thanks to the Dobbs decision. Since Dobbs, 18 states have enacted a range of restrictions, including Florida’s heartbeat law that bans abortion after the sixth week and the similar Texas abortion “trigger law” adopted in 2021.

Interviews by The Epoch Times with campaign strategists, advocates and analysts, however, suggest the conventional political wisdom expressed in the Mainstream Media—Republican candidates must avoid taking strong pro-life stances in order to win 2024 elections—misses the mark.

Robert Cahaly, Trafalgar Group senior strategist, said Republicans should emphasize the contrast between themselves favoring a few reasonable exceptions on abortion such as the health of the mother and rape or incest, versus Democrats who want no limits at all right up to the moment of birth.

“If Republicans talk about the contrast, that they are for some limitations, whether it’s a heartbeat bill, a 15 weeks bill, whatever it is, they are for some restrictions, whereas the official position of the Democrats is they seek abortion-on-demand, all nine months, up to and including partial-birth abortion. When that contrast is made, it is not going to hurt Republicans,” the Atlanta-based Cahaly said.

“If Republicans stay in that range, heartbeat to 15 weeks, with those exceptions, then they will have 70 percent of the American public with them,” Cahaly said.  “It is absolutely amazing, it depends on where you draw the line. You have a working majority of the American public if you just say legal in the first trimester or until a heartbeat is detected, with those exceptions.”

Republicans are at a big disadvantage, Cahaly continued, “when they let the other side paint them as being more extreme. The problem is they get looped into this thing about wanting to make all abortion illegal and letting the other side define the terms when the other side is saying ‘hey, they want to make it all illegal.’”

Democrats Outspent GOP on Abortion

Democrats spent far more money defining Republicans as abortion extremists during the 2022 midterm elections than GOP aspirants did in projecting the more accurate image, Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins told The Epoch Times.

“If you look at the data, in the 2022 election, for instance, Democrats spent $358 million promoting their abortion positions versus Republicans who spent $37 million,” Perkins said. “Even if you go to Wisconsin in the recent Supreme Court election, the liberal, about a third of her ads were focused on abortion, compared to for the ‘conservative,’ where it was 1 percent of his ads covered abortion.”

The bottom line, Perkins said, is “you don’t win a debate with your mouth shut.”

Perkins agreed that “how you talk about this” is key for Republicans in 2024 and thereafter. “They’ve gotten off-track by allowing the Democrats to talk about banning abortion. Who’s talking about banning abortion? We’re talking about protecting human life,” he said.

Perkins said Family Research Council’s polling points to “about a 12-point swing” in the GOP’s favor when Republicans talk about protecting human life versus being defined as being for banning all abortions.

“It’s always been about protecting the unborn children and their mothers. It’s not about chemical abortions, or banning abortions, it’s about protecting unborn children. That’s always been our mission,” he said.

Perkins pointed out that 11 governors in competitive races in 2022 who had taken strongly pro-life positions, like the heartbeat bills, were victorious. “If you talk about it from a point of conviction, you win,” he said.

E.V. Osment, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America vice president, agreed, saying “there was a thorough line and lesson to be learned with the 2022 midterms and the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. When candidates don’t define their stance on abortion, they lose. Plain and simple.

“In the 2022 midterms, governors who signed ambitious pro-life legislation into law and never flinched politically, despite running in competitive states, came out on top. Even up against Democrat darlings who were very vocal on abortion.”