Lessons from triumph of the anti-abortion movement
In the grief-choked days since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, I’ve been haunted by a moment from the new documentary “Battleground.” Much of the film, which recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, follows female leaders of the anti-abortion movement, including Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, and Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America. These aren’t the people regularly standing outside of abortion clinics. They are, rather, savvy lobbyists and organizers, and the documentary is in part a window into how they won.
The scene I keep revisiting features a Students for Life training session about “how you can change minds about abortion online,” in which members learned how to draw young pro-choice people into debate in comment threads. Cynthia Lowen, director of “Battleground,” was struck by activists’ “strategy to get into environments and places, online and offline, where young, typically prochoice people are,” and to instill “doubts about their position.”
This is quite different from what I’ve seen in the pro-choice movement, where activists frequently act as if those who don’t agree with them on everything aren’t worth engaging with. In the aftermath of anti-abortion’s catastrophic victory, it’s worth asking what we can learn from their tactics.
Obviously, the anti-abortion movement hasn’t convinced anywhere near a majority of Americans. Roe’s death comes courtesy of three Supreme Court justices appointed by a president who lost the popular vote. According to a CBS/News YouGov poll taken after the ruling, 59% of Americans — and 67% of women — disapprove of it.
The anti-abortion movement has organized for almost 50 years to bring us to this moment. Those state-level gerrymanders didn’t just happen. As The New York Times reported, they were made possible by the 2010 Republican wave, which reduced the number of state legislatures controlled by Democrats from 27 to 16.
The legal and political wings of the anti-abortion movement were methodical, often biding their time until they had a friendly Supreme Court in place.
Meanwhile, grassroots abortion opponents have remained relentless. In “The Making of Pro-Life Activists,” sociologist Ziad W. Munson found that many activists had been ambivalent about abortion before being invited to a rally or meeting. One of Lowen’s interviewees said she wasn’t opposed to abortion until she tagged along to the March for Life with some college friends.
She later went to work for Students for Life.
I fear that some abortion-rights activists are learning the wrong lessons from their enemies’ triumph, taking inspiration from the most confrontational anti-abortion forces. A string of apparent arsons at anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers mimics years of pro-life assaults on abortion clinics.
Besides being immoral, these tactics suggest a misunderstanding of how the anti-abortion movement got to this point. The campaign prevailed in spite of the terrorism, because decades were spent mastering the nuts and bolts of American politics.
Beating them doesn’t just mean “vote harder.” It means contesting every level of power, local elections and administrative rule-making. It means drawing people into a community that will make continuous struggle seem rewarding not depleting.
Abortion opponents have shoved us into a nightmare world of surveillance, coercion and medical desperation. They’ve also shown us the arduous path out of it.