A political cartoon that’s been widely shared on Facebook shows a horse labeled “Christian Voters” pulling a buggy with an elephant — the GOP — holding the reins, while the horse tramples over three individuals who represent “the Widow,” “the Ophan” and “the Stranger.”
The Republican elephant dangles a giant carrot — labeled “Overturn Roe v. Wade” — in front of the horse, while driving a cart labeled “corporate interests” that carries bags of money that bear the words, “Tax Cuts for 1%.”
It’s a critique of conservative evangelicals that is picking up steam — including among evangelicals. There is a more robust argument being made, not only by prominent public figures but also among everyday Americans, that the white evangelical movement has made a Faustian bargain by supporting the GOP, and President Trump, in exchange for promises to eliminate abortion.
“One of the things that I think has been different and has surprised me are the number of Christians, particularly Christian women, who are talking about abortion in a different way,” said Amy Sullivan, a journalist who has covered the intersection of politics and faith for the past 20 years.
Sullivan said she has noticed an “awakening” among Christian women who feel they have been “manipulated” by male leaders in their community.
“They knew we were sincerely concerned about life issues, and they used that to strong-arm us into voting because it would further their agendas that we don’t actually agree with,” said Sullivan, who worked for Yahoo News from 2015 to 2017 and is now working in advocacy through a group she founded called This Is My Story. The group is focused on giving Christian women a platform to express independence from conservative politics.
Too often, Sullivan said, the abortion issue has been “a trap that makes them feel like they have to vote Republican.”
Some anti-abortion conservatives are deciding they don’t want to be trapped. They cite data that suggests the abortion rate has declined under Democratic presidents just as much as it has under Republicans, and is now lower than it was before the 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, that made abortion legal.
And they argue that the broader set of Democratic policies — greater access to health care, and to birth control, comprehensive sex education, funding for foster care systems and a strong social safety net — reduce unwanted pregnancies more effectively than the GOP’s efforts do.
Opposition to legal abortion remains one of the GOP’s central tenets and remains a unifying issue for the party. In May, the New York Times profiled a number of young Republicans who, despite having major qualms about supporting Trump, said they were still likely to vote for him because of his anti-abortion stance. At the same time, polling indicates that Americans ages 18 to 29 are less likely to support abortion restrictions than older groups.
Charles Camosy, a professor of theology and social ethics at Fordham University, has mixed feelings about this debate. He has written several books on the issue of abortion. He was on the board of Democrats for Life until this past February, when he resigned and left the Democratic Party, citing “extremism” by the Democrats on abortion.
Camosy said his “broader values” prevent him from voting Republican, and he has joined the American Solidarity Party, a tiny Christian democratic party that advocates for a mix of social conservatism with a more robust welfare state. He told Yahoo News that the conversation about abortion among religious conservatives might be changing, but thinks there might only be a limited number of anti-abortion voters who move to the Democratic Party.
Trump, Camosy said, is “awful, horrific — an embarrassment in every way possible.” And conservatives have been disappointed with a recent Supreme Court ruling that struck down abortion restrictions in Louisiana. Camosy said he thinks the ruling in that case sent a clear signal that even with a 6-3 conservative majority once Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed to the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas is the only current justice who openly favors overturning Roe.
“However, if Barrett is confirmed, there will be a strong argument from people with a different point of view that says, ‘While you whiners were over there complaining, we got three pro-life justices on the Supreme Court,’” he said.
Camosy was unequivocal on one point, however: An alliance with Trump has done deep damage to the anti-abortion movement’s credibility, he said. “It’s going to take generations for us to come back from the damage that has done to the pro-life movement,” he said. “We have decades of work ahead of us trying to undo this.”
It may be hard to pinpoint how many anti-abortion voters might switch from Republican to Democrat, or to a third party, but it’s clear there has been a surge of arguments from anti-abortion conservatives saying that they’re no longer going to vote Republican simply because of abortion. And the way these conservatives talk about abortion and the Democrats is shifting.
“While I would prefer to vote for someone who upholds the right to life, I’ve never believed that electing presidents who agree with me will lead to dramatic changes in abortion law, nor is the law itself the only way to discourage abortion,” wrote Mona Charen, a conservative columnist, in August.
“The number of abortions has been declining steadily since 1981,” she said. “It dropped during Republican presidencies and during Democratic presidencies, and now stands below the rate in 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided and when abortion was illegal in 44 states.”
Charen noted that “being pro-life is part of an overall approach to ethical questions” and that those who vote solely based on abortion avoid “the work of analyzing how one good thing weighs in the balance against other considerations.” Single-issue voting, Charen wrote, “permits the brain to snap shut, the conscience to put its feet up.”
Stephanie Ranade Krider, a former vice president and executive director of Ohio Right to Life, wrote an op-ed earlier this month saying that “the chance to overturn Roe is something I’ve hoped for and worked toward for more than a decade. Yet I feel deep unease at how we arrived at this moment.”
Krider started at Ohio Right to Life in 2009, but quit last June after she reached a breaking point over the movement’s support of Trump.
“As the cause became increasingly tied to Trump, it transformed into something with which I could no longer identify,” Ranade Krider wrote. “Protecting innocent life is a cause that’s deeply steeped in morality, but with this political choice, the movement has shown itself to be too willing to trade moral character for power.”
What the Bible says about Abortion - The annotated Bible
What the Bible says about Abortion Abortion is not murder. A fetus is not considered a human life. If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will …
The Bible Supports Abortion! | Southern Skeptic
Firstly, the verse in Numbers 21-28 never says the woman is pregnant, just that she slept with another man. Secondly, the Bible says do not murder. I think that’s pretty clear. The problem Christians have with abortion is not that we believe people should never die, but that it is up to God to make the decision between life and death.
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