Republican strategists are exploring a shift away from “pro-life” messaging on abortion after consistent Election Day losses for the GOP when reproductive rights were on the ballot.
At a closed-door meeting of Senate Republicans this week, the head of a super PAC closely aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., presented poll results that suggested voters are reacting differently to commonly used terms like “pro-life” and “pro-choice” in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, said several senators who were in the room.
The polling, which NBC News has not independently reviewed, was made available to senators Wednesday by former McConnell aide Steven Law and showed that “pro-life” no longer resonated with voters.
“What intrigued me the most about the results was that ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’ means something different now, that people see being pro-life as being against all abortions … at all levels,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said in an interview Thursday.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said the polling made it clear to him that more specificity is needed in talking about abortion.
“Many voters think [‘pro-life’] means you’re for no exceptions in favor of abortion ever, ever, and ‘pro-choice’ now can mean any number of things. So the conversation was mostly oriented around how voters think of those labels, that they’ve shifted. So if you’re going to talk about the issue, you need to be specific,” Hawley said Thursday.
“Pro-Life” is the best branding in the history of branding. If you’ve screwed that up there’s no where else to go.
Especially since in reality they are pro-birth only, they don’t care about providing adequate pre-natal care to all pregnant women, they don’t believe that safe birth conditions are a basic right, and they lose all the interest in the kids’ well being as soon as they are out.
It’s almost like they are only doing it to control women or something. /s
“Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren’t they? They’re all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you’re born, you’re on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don’t want to know about you. They don’t want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you’re preborn, you’re fine; if you’re preschool, you’re fucked.”
― George CarlinThank you. I’ve been saying that about pre-natal care for years. Really, they are not even pro-birth because if you want to give birth under safe hospital conditions, that’s on you and your insurance company, if you have one.
They’re not pro-anything except punishing women.
Hey now that’s not true, they are also pro punishing the non-whites, LGBTQ+ folks, non-Christians, and the poors(everyone who isn’t worth over a few million)
I was talking about when it comes to abortion, but you’re not wrong at all.
This is the first time I’m confused by the sarcasm tag….
Is the tag itself the sarcastic bit?
The sarcasm is that they’re pretending to not know/just be coming to the realization that conservatives are misogynistic hypocrites.
Ironically, they don’t care about the life after it’s birthed. Do they support free breakfast and lunch at public schools? Hell no they don’t.
I’ve just been calling it anti-choice.
It reminds me of subways five dollar footlong. They made a slogan so piecing and effective that they can’t escape it. Every time I go to subway I notice how much more a sub costs than the five dollars it used to be and every time I hear “pro-life” I think of a very “particular” kind of person.
“Am I out of touch? No. It’s the voters who are wrong.”
The first rule of pursuing abhorrent policies for performative reasons is, they need to stay performative. The GOP used to understand this, and carefully pursue anti-abortion policies while carefully not achieving them. But now there’s too high a proportion of people who are such nutcases that they genuinely don’t understand or don’t care that this will lose them elections, and the strategic Republicans are struggling more and more to keep control of their party.
It used to be the same with “anti-immigration” policies that were surgically careful to preserve the vulnerable workforce while making the right type of performative gestures, until DeSantis came in being enough of a true believer that he’s willing to damage Florida’s economy pretty significantly as long as it lets him be cruel to spanish people.
The safeties are getting disabled, basically.
“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.” -Barry Goldwater
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It’s also an older American colloquialism to describe people from the Spanish-speaking world. They’re not wrong, just a little behind on linguistic changes. Just imagine “Hispanophone” when they say “Spanish”; that’s what is meant in most cases.
(To be clear, I’m not telling you not to be offended if you’re from the Spanish-speaking world. I’m simply explaining that it’s a colloquialism, not a mistake or an attempt at offense.)
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Is this like the “female” thing?
So this is honestly the first time I’ve heard that using “spanish” for Hispanic people (as opposed to “Spanish” i.e. people from Spain) is in any way offensive. I can’t remember hearing Hispanic people use it themselves, so maybe you’re right on this and I am the wrong one.
By way of comparison, what’s your stance on the offensiveness level of “Latinx”?
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Well, but you do know that there’s a slang term “spanish” with the little s, which means Hispanic, right? It’s the same as “black” people aren’t colored #000000, “you up?” doesn’t mean anything about your verticality, etc. The decision that certain slang terms are incorrect because you’ve frozen what the language means at a certain point and no one’s permitted to apply something in a way that’s different than that to accomplish the purpose of communication, is not to me a sensible endeavor.
Urban Dictionary seems to take issue with using “spanish” in this way, and like I say in my experience people of this ethnicity tend to identify with their particular country of origin, so maybe I am the wrong one. It honestly just never crossed my mind. I don’t agree in general with “you’re not allowed to use word X because we’ve decided that it’s not allowed,” and I definitely don’t agree with avoiding slang simply because it’s slang and slang’s not allowed.
Last thoughts on the offensiveness front; I think “Latinx” is a perfect example of people coming up with weird rules and trying to get other people to follow them even though there’s no productive purpose to it and all it does is irritate people (including the ethnic grouping that’s supposedly being protected). I do think this happens, hence why I also bring up “female.” I honestly don’t know whether “spanish” falls into that category, or is not at all offensive and I’m just creating this whole issue from nothing, or is genuinely mildly offensive.
Spanish-speaking is better. Just “Spanish” is weird. Many folks from Mexico and South America don’t have any Spanish ancestry, and some people or entire countries don’t even speak Spanish as their main language. To reduce everyone who lives on one giant continent to the name of a conquering nation that tried to take them over is, yeah, a little offensive.
To reduce everyone who lives on one giant continent to the name of a conquering nation that tried to take them over is, yeah, a little offensive.
Yeah, I get that. Point taken.
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So you’re a Republican who refuses to vote Republican?
Are you one of them fancy “centrists”?
He’s just an idiot. He voted for this and now he doesn’t like it. Probably just wanted lower taxes without all the “policies”.
Even though under Republicans, anyone that isn’t super rich or a mega Corp has a higher tax burden overall.
And they get less for it. Democracy!
Voting for Democrats is like being forced to eat poorly cooked vegetables, because they’re healthy.
Voting for Republicans is like being paid to eat expired food from the back of the refrigerator. And only rich people get paid.
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And you’ve never voted for anyone else in your life before or since right? …
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So you’re a Republican like Jews for Hitler were Nazis?
I hate to break this to you but if you believe those things you’re playing for the wrong team. You’re like a player that’s perpetually benched, cheering on the opposing team. They’re never going to let you play or give you the ball.
How about “anti choice?”…? “Anti -women.” ?
Or maybe “theist zealots”?
“Asshole” seems too generic.
“Yes, yes, we know you’re assholes. But what kind of assholes?”
It reminds me of the whole “find out what % victim your are” from south park lol
“Anti” sounds so negative though. How about “pro forced birth”?
“Forced Birthers”
Many voters think [‘pro-life’] means you’re for no exceptions in favor of abortion ever
Remember that scene from The Boys where Stormfront said:
People love what I have to say, they just hate the word Nazi. That’s all.
Now why would a party that bans abortion with no exceptions in many states, even to the point of banning abortions after a raped 10-year-old got one in a state because she couldn’t get one in hers, not be thought of as “pro-life”?
There’s a lot to unpack in this article, I encourage you all to actually read it. It sounds like a fundamental disconnect between Republican Congresspeople (who enact laws at the Federal level) and the State-level Republicans. These Senators supported overturning Roe specifically did it to “send the matter back to the States”, and did not propose any law at the Federal level to replace it, only to find that those Republican states enacted extremely strict laws that are now affecting the Republican brand elsewhere. (Because of a simple reason: Republicans in those states really are that extreme!)
But, they’re stuck with it now. Their messaging is tied to what actually happened in those states. And these Senators can say all they want that they wanted exceptions all along, but you know they will never make a Federal law that weakens the strict bans in those states. They would never win a primary after that. But the strict bans are not popular outside the statehouses where they were enacted.
As long as there are states like Texas, who aim to criminalize abortion to the point that they will be monitoring the roads going out-of-state for pregnant women to harass, there will be no chance to define the pro-life movement as anything else.
It’s really not a lot to unpack. It’s disingenuous bullshit from Republicans who are trying to back track after decades of campaigning on banning abortion. It’s happened and now it’s wildly unpopular and they are about to pay that bill that’s come due. So now they are trying to spin it like “that’s not what we meant”.
They don’t have principles. It’s about retaining power and control.
For what it’s worth, they could pass a law right now that would give access to abortions (aka give women the right to control their own body). So this is all bullshit.
There’s no disconnect. The cruelty is the point.
Were there truly a disconnect, Republicans in Congress would work on a bipartisan bill that would get enough Republicans on board to pass the House. From there, it will almost certainly pass the Senate and Biden will almost certainly sign it.
The Republicans want to say they’re being hamstrung by Texas while doing absolutely nothing about Texas, because in reality they want everywhere to be like Texas.
The disconnect is that Republicans with a National profile totally misunderstood how much simply overturning Roe would backfire on them. They wanted to give more power back to states, so that each state would define its own policy but in reality it is the most restrictive states’ legislation that ends up getting stuck in voters’ minds as the default Republican position now. This is extremely unpopular nationwide, but has broad support in the party, to the point that if any of these Republicans with a National profile tries to fix it, they’ll be run out of the party. So that bipartisan bill simply can’t happen.
This is a big reason why so many Republicans are pushing the lie that Democrats support abortion “right up to birth”. Since they know they can’t fix it, all they can do is try and convince people that Democrats are just as extreme in the other direction, which of course isn’t true.
I grew up a Catholic Republican and I can assure you it was never about giving power back to the states. It was always about banning abortion, period.
The “power back to the states” line is what the Supreme Court said with its ruling, but that was never the end game of the Republican party. Search “republicans national abortion ban” in the engine of your choice: you’ll see that there are already talks of pushing national abortion ban legislation.
The end game is and always has been to make the entire US’ laws like Texas.
Right, but the distinction I’m making is that the “power back to the States” bit is the legal fig leaf they thought they could take advantage of, to say the most restrictive laws are only in some states, at first, and based on the will of the people in those states. But the rest of the country is (justifiably) seeing through that.
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“Pro forced birth” is much more accurate. If they were truly pro-life they would champion universal healthcare that included at the minimum abortions when the woman’s life is in danger and when the fetus couldn’t possibly survive.
They don’t care about women at all, only controlling them.
what will actually happen is they’ll rebrand 6 week abortions to “near birth abortions” and 0-6 week abortions as “medically unnecessary abortions” and then say “we only want to ban near-birth and medically unnecessary abortions”
“How can we trick the voters into thinking we’re less shitty than we know we really are?”
You’re not pro-baby unless you’re for universal post-natal care.
Which they are not.
I’d allow the term pro-fetus but that’s about it.
To be pro-baby they should also be for parental leave at birth, and investment in making early childhood care easier and affordable for everyone.
Is anyone really interested in whether people are pro-baby, given they oppose human rights for women and others who can give birth?
Yes. Language is important. They have co-opted the concept that they are in favor of ‘the life of the fetus’ by calling themselves pro-life. That needs to be countered.
I’m not suggesting we not replace “pro-life.” Language shapes cognition. I’m saying whether they’re “pro-baby” is largely irrelevant, as their voters are doing this to punish women (and other people who can become pregnant) for having sex, not because they care about babies.
“Many voters think [‘pro-life’] means you’re for no exceptions in favor of abortion ever, ever”
But, that’s true… Every GOP state legislature has passed bills without exceptions.
So their argument is what exactly?
They argument is “We are evil, but we don’t want to sound evil - it limits recruitments”
Forced Birth is more accurate
Pro Gestational Slavery. Let’s not pretend it’s less grotesque than it is.
I just was reading some environmental messaging research, and one thing that I realized is that about half of folks don’t have a large vocabulary. I guarantee that “gestational” is too uncommon a word for mass appeal.
I’m sure. I mostly use that term for accuracy, because I don’t believe language will change minds on this issue.
The idea is not to grab the imagination of the enemy, it’s to grab the imagination of the “give me a reason to think or care about something but I still vote” folks. Whoever they are.
I don’t believe those people still exist.
Yeah, they never were really into pro life, were they? It’s more about neo-slavery:
- Ensure less fortunate people end up so overburdened with financial trouble that they desperately take a pittance from “job creators” with a smile.
- Cult-of-personality the shit out of idiot billionaires so that people overlook their evils for moment-to-moment trivialities and hot takes.
- Make up culture war bullshit to ensure the fighters end up just expending their angst on the other less fortunate people rather of those who actually manufacture their hardships.
Very few people seem to recognize all the divide and conquer tactics that are constantly used on us.
I’ve seen “Anti-Choice” thrown around, I think it fits them pretty good
Anti-freedom will go down well with hillbillys
I also like “Pro-Birth”.
Pro forced birth
Reminds me of a Family Guy bit:
“I’m here to protect the unborn. Once they get out of the vagina they can go fuck themselves”
Yes the specific marketing term for it is what people aren’t resonating with. That must be what is wrong.
Yes. In Republican eyes what you said is literally correct.
The long-term goal of Republican leadership is to ban all abortion from the moment of conception, ban all hormonal birth control (because it can prevent implantation of a fertilized embryo and therefore cause abortion), and return the question of whether to ban condoms and other barrier methods to the states.
Republican leadership realizes the American people don’t support a complete abortion ban.
Republican leadership believes the American people are wrong and it’s their responsibility, as Christian leaders, to protect the innocent children of America and impose a complete abortion ban anyway.
And Republican leaders know if they go hood off and call for a complete abortion ban they’ll lose power in the backlash and abortion will become even more normalized.
So they’re gradually restricting abortion rights while heavily pushing right-wing propaganda to children and teenagers - fucking PragerU is partnering with the Florida and Oklahoma Departments of Education to produce videos for school children, did you know that? - in order to shift the cultural consensus away from abortion is a right and towards abortion is a sin so that future generations of Republican leaders can complete their work and impose a total abortion ban.
So, yes, the Republican leadership is very much aware that what they need is marketing. They know abortion bans are unpopular. They’re walking a fine line, trying to work towards a highly unpopular policy goal while still protecting their legislative control of Congress and the states, knowing their control of government would be at risk if the American people realized their actual policy goal.
And so you have Republicans talking about “pro-baby policies” now. Because who doesn’t love babies? That sounds like WIC and infant nutrition programs and daycare and better neonatal care and all those good things that Democrats support. Hard to tell that the Republican is actually talking about forcing women to give birth to babies dead in the womb and babies with fetal defects incompatible with life, but that’s the state of the national dialogue in the year of our Lord 2023.
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Right?!?! Couldn’t be the policies.
