The Supreme Court’s abortion rollback last year was a long-awaited, much-celebrated victory for the Republican Party. But that win in the courts has not translated to wins at the polls, and Republicans are starting to recognize that abortion isn’t an issue that voters are just going to get over.
Cue former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. The GOP pollster and strategist-turned-Trump adviser has a plan for Republicans to address the problem: embracing contraception.
Conway is reportedly telling GOP lawmakers to outwardly support birth control and work on expanding contraception access. That way, when Republicans get questions about their opposition to abortion, they can point to their efforts to prevent the need for abortion in the first place—and signal that they’re not part of the overly restrictive and religious faction of the GOP.
ADVERTISEMENT
It’s a clever messaging tactic that Republicans think might help inoculate vulnerable lawmakers from what’s proven to be effective Democratic attacks on abortion. (Abortion was a top issue in the 2022 midterms, and Democrats notched critical state-level victories in 2023 in Kentucky, Virginia and Ohio with a blitz of attacks characterizing Republicans as anti-women’s health.)
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)—a rare Republican senator who supports abortion and contraception access—said “it’s about darn time” that Republicans talk about and promote birth control. But she also questioned whether a half-measure like supporting contraception would be enough.
“Does this help? Does a focus on contraception make Republicans well with women on the issue of abortion?” Murkowski asked.
“I think that remains to be seen,” she said.
Politico reported that polling data commissioned by conservative nonprofit Independent Women’s Voice and conducted by Conway’s firm, KA Consulting, shows that more than 8 in 10 voters claimed to be “more likely to vote for a pro-contraception candidate.” Over 7 in 10 of the 1,000 likely voters surveyed indicated they would be less likely to vote for candidates who “wish to restrict availability of contraception.”
Conservative Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH)—who watched first-hand as his home state voted to codify abortion access earlier this year—acknowledged that “the great majority of Americans support contraception.” He said he doesn’t know of any Republicans keen on stripping those rights.
But Vance was also realistic that Republicans supporting contraception wasn’t going to change the political dynamic of the GOP struggling over abortion. “I am somewhat skeptical there's, like, some great political victory to be taken out of that issue,” Vance said, referring to contraception.
“Mostly, Republicans should not make stupid political decisions and suggest that people's contraception rights should be taken away,” he told The Daily Beast. “But maybe Kellyanne has a point that if you’re more vocal about it, you get some more people on board.”
After tough state-level losses in November, the GOP is taking stock of its on abortion messaging. Initially, after the 2022 Dobbs ruling, Republicans clamored to restrict abortion access further with a nationwide ban. That approach proved politically toxic, and vulnerable Republicans have since tried to tamp down their party’s efforts to kill abortion.
The GOP’s awkward dance on abortion comes as they struggle to court young female voters. The 2022 midterms exit polls showed a whopping 72 percent of women between 18 and 29 voted for Democrats in House races across the country.
But not all Republicans are ready to address that problem; some Republicans aren’t even ready to admit there’s a problem at all.
Asked if Republicans encouraging contraception access could help improve their standing with women voters in 2024, Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) told The Daily Beast that “you’re going from the premise that we have an issue with women voters. I disagree with that.”
While some Republicans are pivoting on their abortion message, they certainly haven’t positioned themselves as the pro-reproductive freedom or pro-women’s health party.
Conway herself took a swipe at abortion recently during a Fox News appearance when she said Democrats “wake up every morning and they look at the calendar, the iPhone says Jan. 6, 2021, the date never changes, and then they get in an electric vehicle and go get an abortion.”
(Illustrating how unpopular that message is, Kellyanne Conway’s 19-year-old daughter, Claudia Conway, ridiculed her mom’s comments over the weekend.)
While Kellyanne is suggesting a smoke-and-mirrors approach for the GOP on abortion, many Republicans freely acknowledge they have to come up with better messaging.
“We have to figure out how to talk about it better as a party,” Vance said of abortion, “because I do think there's a lot of evidence that it is politically hazardous, especially when you have candidates who stick their foot in it.”
If contraception is going to be the GOP’s saving grace, Republicans have a lot of explaining to do.
In 2022, they failed to rally behind a bill that would have enshrined contraception access. The then-Democratic House voted on the Right to Contraception Act after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that he viewed a 1965 ruling protecting birth control access—the Griswold v. Connecticut decision—to be on a shaky legal footing.
That bill passed the House 228 to 195. Only eight Republicans—several from battleground districts—voted in favor of the bill. The legislation also did not appear to have the necessary support from 10 Senate Republicans and never got a vote in the upper chamber.
More recently, a pending House spending bill includes a provision to cut all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, which, among other services, provides contraception education and access.
A group of Republican women have pushed back on this anti-contraception narrative by introducing their own bill this summer. The measure would require the Food and Drug Administration to provide guidance to manufacturers addressing how to submit successful over-the-counter applications for oral contraceptives.
But beyond policy, Republican rhetoric on birth control has also supplied Democrats with plenty of fodder. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has a lengthy record trying to limit birth control access, and he has called the morning-after pill “an abortifacient.”
Asked if she thinks her GOP colleagues are open to expanding contraception access, Murkowski told The Daily Beast that it is “going to depend on different members.”
“For some, they put contraception in the same category as abortion,” she said. “And so it might be harder for them.”
Democrats, for their part, are calling any Republican pivot on birth control messaging phony. EMILYS List spokesperson Sara Spain told Politico bluntly that “it won’t work.”
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Nebeyatt Betre also told The Daily Beast that no amount of “fancy marketing will change this fundamental truth: House Republicans have consistently pushed legislation to crack down on both abortion and contraception access in their assault on women’s reproductive freedoms.”
EMILYS List and the DCCC used the same phrase in response to a Republican rebrand: “Actions speak louder than words.”
In some cases, Democrats have launched a birth control offensive. This summer, the Democratic political group Progress Action Fund put out a steamy ad in Ohio featuring a couple getting it on in the bedroom. When they reach for a condom, a generic Republican congressman snatches it first.
“I won the last election. I’m not going anywhere. I’m just gonna watch and make sure you don’t do anything illegal,” the congressman ominously warns the couple.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)—a Senate leader on contraception facing a challenging re-election fight—is more concerned with Republicans trying to restrict birth control than them actually embracing the issue.
According to Baldwin, in his Dobbs concurring opinion striking down nationwide abortion rights, Thomas said “the quiet part out loud.”
“He invited litigators to re-litigate that issue before this activist Supreme Court,” she told The Daily Beast. “They sort of suggested that maybe this court would have a different outcome than they did originally. So I think we absolutely have to be vigilant about this.”
And if any party is positioned to be vigilant on contraception, it’s not the Republicans. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) said she hopes contraception becomes a bigger issue in 2024 because she already has bills pending on the subject.
“Contraception is one of the options, and so it shouldn’t be politicians making those kinds of decisions,” Hirono said. “So this is—wow—one unique time where I agree with Kellyanne Conway.”
