Make your candidate say it out loud: A woman, not the church or state, has ultimate authority over her body.
As voters head to the polls in the ongoing election, women’s reproductive rights are on the ballot in 10 states. Despite the effort by some Republican governors—such as Ron DeSantis, who is throwing the weight of his administration behind defeating abortion rights in Florida—the current slate of protections have a high likelihood of passing, as they have in red and blue states across the nation that have already voted to safeguard abortion access.
After all, a supermajority of Americans (64 percent) believe “the decision about whether or not to have an abortion should lie solely with a pregnant woman.” This decisive question posed to voters in 10 states requires a yes or no answer on a voting ballot. We need to demand that same direct, unequivocal answer about a woman’s abortion rights from political candidates. They must say it out loud.
Antiabortion politicians like JD Vance, Mike Johnson and Donald Trump do not believe this right belongs to women. Instead, they argue that abortion access should be decided by the state. This is the part antiabortion politicians don’t want to say out loud, because it flies in the face of the basic tenets of democracy and what the majority of people believe: A woman, not the church or state, has ultimate authority over her body.
You can ask Vance whether women have the right to govern their own reproductive functions until you’re blue in the face. But—like asking him if he believes the 2020 election was stolen—he will not answer the question directly. As Tim Walz pointed out in the VP debate, refusing to answer a question can be a damning non-answer in itself.
Antiabortion politicians obscure or dismiss the question of a woman’s authority over her reproductive choices and pivot instead to predictable talking points, most often centering on the rights of the unborn. In this narrative, women’s reproductive rights are secondary to those of the fetus, sometimes even in cases of rape, incest or to protect the life of the woman.
In anguishing over the 2022 midterm defeat of antiabortion legislation in conservative Ohio by 57 percent of voters, Vance said, “Giving up on the unborn is not an option. It’s politically dumb and morally repugnant. Instead, we need to understand why we lost this battle so we can win the war.” And what precisely is that unnamed war? It’s the GOP’s war on women’s reproductive rights. They’ve been waging it for nearly 50 years. We need to name it for him.
Ending abortion became an official part of the GOP party platform in 1976, the same year Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) cobbled together enough votes to pass his amendment, ending federal abortion funds for women on welfare, many of whom were women of color. Poor women, the first mass casualties of the GOP’s endless war on women’s reproductive rights, continue to bear the harshest brunt of their antiabortion policies today.
After decades of installing antiabortion judicial appointees at all levels and implementing various barriers to abortion access such as waiting periods, required counseling, changing medical standards and implementing abortion restrictions in many state legislatures, the GOP had finally set the staging ground to overturn a woman’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy.
The majority of Americans know the GOP is wrong. Antiabortion policies cripple a woman’s fundamental rights and undermine democracy, something, it’s important to note, with which most white non-evangelical Protestants (64 percent), Black Protestants (71 percent) and Catholics (59 percent) along with 25 percent of white evangelical Protestants agree.
Steven Miller, former Trump adviser and the mastermind behind much of the administration’s immigration policy, lamented in 2022 on midterm election night that the GOP had failed to find the right way to talk with voters about abortion. How might that “right” way sound? What new kind of message could the GOP craft that would convince women to carry an unwanted pregnancy? Rep. Jim Jordan assured us that same night that even if the GOP didn’t discover their winning message before the 2024 election, it would not figure significantly into the outcome. The perception that women’s reproductive rights are somehow inconsequential seems to be engrained in GOP thinking.
Trump echoed this same prediction during his Bedminster press conference on Aug. 15, 2024, claiming abortion wasn’t going to be a big issue in the presidential election. Vance made a similarly baffling claim in the VP debate that much more needed to happen on a public policy level to give women more options to promote life and remove the need for abortion. What possible option could be more desirable to women than controlling their own bodies?
Abortion is the top motivating issue for women in the election. This is what we must drive home in the crucial final days of this campaign. It’s the question we need to keep front and center. Politicians must articulate their answer out loud and on the record: Does a woman have the authority to abort an unwanted pregnancy? Yes or no.
At Ms. magazine, our mission is to deliver facts about the feminist movement (and those who stand in its way) and foster informed discussions—not to tell you who to vote for or what to think. We believe in empowering our readers to form their own opinions based on reliable reporting. To continue providing you with independent feminist journalism, we rely on the generous support of our readers. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today if you value the work we do and want to see it continue. Thank you for supporting women’s voices and rights.
