It is unsurprising that after two straight years of losing political battles over reproductive rights, the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America organization and their allies are at wits end. They lost every contest. I can imagine a scene from a conference room at the Susan B. Anthony headquarters where staff sits around a conference table brainstorming what to do next in their quest to ban abortion in the United States. “Maybe we should do what the left is doing,” someone says. They came up with $92 million to spend on battleground states doing just that, using personal testimonials by women who chose not to have an abortion. This tit for tat strategy misses the point.

Reproductive freedom means a woman and their doctor have the ability to do what is right about childbearing without intrusion by government. Under Roe vs. Wade there were rules about when a woman could have an abortion and a culture of compliance with them came up in society. Throwing the issue back to the states, as the U.S. Supreme Court did with the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has led to chaos and an environment that will eventually bring the issue back to the high court as it already has in Idaho vs. United States (emergency abortions) and FDA vs. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (mifepristone).

For the latest update, here is an excerpt from Megan Messerly and Alice Miranda Ollstein’s recent Politico article. I recommend following them for their constant reporting on this key issue in the 2024 general election campaign.

Why the anti-abortion movement is adopting the left’s post-Roe playbook

The left has spent two years galvanizing voters against state abortion bans by handing a microphone to the women affected by them. Conservatives are now adopting that playbook in an effort to turn public opinion in their favor.

Anti-abortion groups’ new campaign features women speaking directly to the camera — sharing stories of eschewing abortion after being raped, receiving a diagnosis of a fetal anomaly or finding out they were too far along to legally terminate their pregnancy. They aim to match the first-person ads that Democrats and abortion-rights groups have used in key races, like the successful abortion-rights ballot measure in Ohio and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection in Kentucky.

It’s part of an effort aimed at changing the narrative on abortion after two years of bruising electoral defeats and growing support among voters for access to the procedure heading into November’s contests. A recent CBS News-YouGov poll found that 60 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and the Pew Research Center has documented a rise in support for abortion rights across the political spectrum since Roe fell.

“Democrats do this well,” said Kelsey Pritchard, director of state public affairs for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which plans to spend $92 million this cycle in battleground states. “Republicans need to match them on this and do even better. That’s how they can get ahead in 2024.”

Anti-abortion groups have used testimonials before, including stories of people who survived abortion attempts, to argue that fetuses deserve legal protection. But this new push is meant to help people understand the reasons mothers decided not to have abortions. …

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