The GOP’s Plan to Erode Abortion Rights? Pretend Women Don’t Exist
Is it possible to talk about abortion without talking about the people who have abortions? Increasingly, abortion rights opponents, including several Republican presidential candidates, are trying to find out.
As the New York Times reported Monday, many in the GOP—in an effort to shake the “war on women” label that gained renewed traction after Todd Akin claimed that the female body has magic, sperm-destroying properties—are retooling how they talk about abortion with the help of “a well-funded, well-researched and invigorated anti-abortion movement.”
And a whole lot of consultants. Kellyanne Conway, a strategist who has worked with the Republican National Committee to develop messaging around abortion, has advised candidates (particularly men) to focus on ultrasounds, fetuses, and graphic details of the procedures when framing their opposition to abortion rights. “The out-of-sight, out-of-mind mantra that propelled the pro-choice movement for decades is forever gone,” Conway told the Times.…
By focusing on the fetus instead of women who want and need the procedure, anti-abortion politicians and activists are attempting to sidestep the personal and moral dimensions of the decision. But the realities of abortion—the one in three women who will have the procedure in their lifetime and the millions of reasons why—are always looming just outside the frame. You can try to take women out of the picture, but they’re never actually gone.
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