Tornado Alley (PROG)

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How do we paint our party as a pro-family? Republicans said, 'Hug the fetus.'
A political strategy to grab voters. Little if anything to do with rights.

How abortion became a partisan issue in America

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The story of how we got here is a reminder that a debate whose different sides can seem deeply entrenched has actually changed enormously over a short period of time — and understanding how is crucial to understanding the election landscape in 2020 and beyond.

Party polarization on abortion started in the 1970s

In the 1970s, politicians’ views on abortion didn’t break down along neat party lines. While Republican President Gerald Ford opposed Roe v. Wade, first lady Betty Ford was an abortion-rights supporter and Ford’s vice president Nelson Rockefeller presided over the repeal of abortion restrictions in New York, as Linda Greenhouse and Reva B. Siegel explained in their book Before Roe v. Wade. In Congress, Republicans voted against abortion at about the same rate as Democrats.

That didn’t start to change until the ’70s. During his 1972 presidential campaign, Republican Richard Nixon began staking out anti-abortion positions as part of a strategy to appeal to Catholic voters and other social conservatives. After Nixon won the election and a majority of Catholic votes, Republican strategists began using the same tactics in Congress, as well as forging coalitions with evangelical groups around opposition to abortion.

The shift to opposing abortion rights was part of a larger effort to paint the Republican Party as pro-family in a way that would help mobilize socially conservative voters, according to Greenhouse and Siegel.

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