How the Republican Party Became the Anti-Abortion Party… And Why It Could Lose the 2024 Presidential Election

Last updated on May 22, 2023

It wasn’t always this way.

Consider this nuanced statement from the GOP platform of 1976:

“The question of abortion is one of the most difficult and controversial of our time. It is undoubtedly a moral and personal issue, but it also involves complex questions relating to medical science and criminal justice.”

By the time Ronald Reagan became President in 1981, the slow but steady slide into an anti-abortion stance had begun in earnest.

Evangelicals, the Religious Right, and anti-abortion zealots gained a firm partnership with the Republican Party. Their #1 anti-abortion target was overturning Roe v. Wade.

The anti-abortion movement is primarily a religious movement. It’s a classic example of the danger of mixing religion with politics.

The Pew Research Center analyzed the data and concluded that “Highly religious Americans account for a majority of those who say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, without exception.”

Then, on June 24^th, 2022, anti-abortion advocates finally achieved their goal when Roe v. Wade was overturned.

As we’ve seen since then, that decision opened the floodgates for renewed agitation and state legislation to make any abortion illegal everywhere.

Fortunately, voters in many Republican States have been able to blockade attempts to make abortion illegal in their State.

We’ve written about the anti-abortion issue in earlier editions of the Matrix Gazette: “Abortion Wars,” “The Right to Abortion is an Application of Individual Rights,” “How the Republican Party Is Losing Its Way,” and “13 New Slave States of America… If You’re Pregnant.”

Former President Donald Trump is one of the few high-profile Republicans who know that further anti-abortion zealotry will kill Republican chances in the general election in 2024.

So, “anti-abortion leaders worry they may have to oppose Trump if he doesn’t back a national ban.”

Let’s hope that other Republicans begin to break the stranglehold that the anti-abortion movement has on the Party of Lincoln.

Republicans have given Democrats an issue that can save them despite President Biden’s ineptness and mismanagement of the economy.

Democrats’ pro-choice stance makes them look reasonable and non-threatening when compared to Republican anti-abortion zealotry.

Enough is enough.