Want To Protect Abortion Rights? Reject Republicans On The Ballot

Ten states will be voting on abortion rights on November 5, and it will determine reproductive safety for millions. Some states — like Colorado, Maryland, and New York — will be affirming and expanding protections for bodily autonomy. Others — like Arizona, Nebraska, Missouri, and Florida — will be restoring basic, fundamental rights that were stripped away two years ago when the Trump majority on the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. But regardless of whether abortion rights will be an easy win on your state’s ballot or a knock-down, drag-out fight, it’s worth remembering that we weren’t supposed to be in this situation at all.

For years, we heard that politicians didn’t mean it when they claimed they wanted to end Roe. It was just overblown rhetoric or pandering to the base. Even as they downplayed violence against abortion providers, approved anti-choice judges, and made appalling and ignorant remarks about reproduction and pregnancy, we voters heard that it was all for show.

Right until it wasn’t.

Empty rhetoric isn’t what turned Mylissa Farmer away from emergency rooms in Missouri and Kansas after her water broke 17 weeks into her pregnancy. Meaningless pandering isn’t what led Floridians like Deborah Dorbert to carry a doomed pregnancy so she could watch her son die in her arms, or drove Derick Cook to desperate prayer as his wife, Anya, went into emergency surgery after a miscarriage caused her to lose half of her blood. Symbolic gestures to Evangelicals didn’t force an anonymous 10-year-old assault victim to flee Ohio to receive an abortion; it was a series of laws restricting, impeding, and outright denying abortion as pregnancy care that caused all of this misery. And, almost every single lawmaker who passed these laws, enforced them, and defended them is a Republican.

When Arizona courts revived a Civil War-era abortion ban that would have sent women’s rights and pregnancy care back to the 19th century, 90% of Republicans in the statehouse voted to keep it. When Florida instituted its ban on abortions before most people even know they’re pregnant, 94% of the state GOP representatives voted for it. This year, as the U.S. Senate debated a bill that would have protected IVF treatments around the country, the only opposition — 44 Senators — came from Republicans. The bill didn’t survive for a vote.

It doesn’t matter how moderate they seem or how popular they are, Republicans are united in opposition to bodily autonomy and abortion rights. It was so-called “moderate” Republican Glenn Youngkin in Virginia who tried to force a 15 week ban on his state, while much-liked Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia vowed to defend the state’s abortion ban after a court briefly suspended it, even as reporting confirmed that two women had died because of it.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is going even further, actively seeking to punish Floridians who believe in abortion rights by hunting down signatories of the petition that put abortion on the November ballot and threatening stations that show pro-choice advertisements. Republican Senate candidates Tim Sheehy (MT) and Bernie Moreno (OH) have insinuated that women focused on abortion are indoctrinated or emotionally unhinged, while Missouri Senator Josh Hawley silently smiles next to a misogynist while married to a lawyer who attempted to ban medicine abortion pills in her arguments before the Supreme Court. The pattern is unmistakable; leaving people to suffer and die through pregnancies — wanted or not — is the party line for every Republican.

The undeniable truth that the GOP is the party of forced pregnancy is probably why Republican candidates have been unusually quiet about abortion, even as it secures broad support among voters. If they can keep their anti-choice politics under wraps or muddle the message around reproductive rights, they might be able to convince voters to give them a pass and win the power to pass forced birth laws without having to defend the substance. This lie by omission about a fundamental right that comes with potentially fatal consequences when curtailed is part of a strategy to win power without being accountable for how it is used. And it’s working.

Polls show that many voters are supporting abortion rights and the very same representatives who have and will put them in danger. Despite the very clear correlation between Republicans and forced birth policy — even if you’re the victim of a crime against your body, even if your health can’t handle it, even if it sacrifices your existing children, your fertility, your life — millions are poised to vote both for bodily autonomy and for the political party vowing to abolish it. In multiple states, abortion and Republicans are poised to win together — and in every single one, Democrats, the only party defending abortion, are running far behind the issue they champion.

So let’s clear this up: Voting for a Republican — at any level — is voting against privacy, against women, and against safe and healthy pregnancies. As we’ve seen already in just two years, abortion bans have a devastating effect on everyone, make us less safe, and encourage a level of government scrutiny into our most intimate and private sphere. No matter how they equivocate, downplay, or deny their stance on the issue, no Republican can be trusted to stay out of the decision between a pregnant person and their healthcare provider.

If you care about abortion, pregnancy, privacy, and our inherent rights to keep the government out of our personal decisions, then vote against the Republican Party. Not only does their track record speak for itself, but so does their silence. Even if there’s agreement on other issues, we all deserve representatives who are forthright and honest about their beliefs and policies — a basic test that Republicans are failing miserably.

Like all of their promises that overturning Roe was not in their plans, we cannot believe that any Republican office holder has learned their lesson. The only way to end GOP interference in pro-choice politics is to never give them the option.