15 reasons why pro-choicers think pro-lifers are crushing them

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade in January 2013, Time magazine published a surprising and iconic cover story about how the pro-choice side has been losing ever since it thought it won in 1973. The reasons Time listed were spot on:

1. Pro-life laws
2. Public sentiment
3. Pro-abortion generational in-fighting
4. Playing defense (defending the status quo)
5. Science
6. Stigma
7. Aging abortionists

Indeed, abortion advocates have been in an admitted state of panic for quite some time over building pro-life momentum.

But within the past several days two abortion advocates have separately admitted their side is losing…

• “It’s not just Hobby Lobby: the pro-life movement is winning” ~Sarah Kliff, formerly of the Washington Post, now senior editor at Vox.com
• “Ten reasons women are losing while gays keep winning” ~Dr. Jay Michaelson at The Daily Beast.

Other recent abortion articles have hit on the same theme…

• “How bad medicine is sweeping the country, one state at a time” ~Tara Culp-Ressler at Think Progress
• “Pro-life movement winning the battle over abortion, birth control accessibility” ~Jessica VanEgeren atThe Cap Times

Here are 15 reasons why abortion proponents think pro-lifers are crushing them, as lifted from the aforementioned abortion articles. A couple were included in Time’s list, but most are in addition:

1. Obama’s election and reelection prompted pro-life groups to focus on state avenues to pass legislation rather than federal.
2. Due to the Republican wave of 2010, in part in response to Obama’s election in 2008, there has indeed been a huge spike in pro-life laws passed on the state level - 226 since 2011, more than the entire previous three decades combined.
3. The convoluted passage of Obamacare in 2010 was “rocket fuel” to the pro-life movement, writes Kliff, quoting Americans United for Life’s Charmaine Yoest, which led to the introduction of some of those bills.
4. A profusion of abortion clinic closures, 81 in 2013 alone, according to Operation Rescue. The number of abortion clinics has decreased by 73% to 759 from a high of 2,176 in 1991.
5. Moves to defund Planned Parenthood.
6. The Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision.
7. The Supreme Court’s buffer zone decision.
8. The abortion lobby’s inability to reframe the debate into one about discrimination. “Unfortunately, even the name ‘pro-choice’ reinforces that the movement is about acts and not identity,” writes Michaelson.
9. The abortion lobby’s inability to reframe the issue into one all can relate to.
10. The abortion lobby’s shortage of poster children.Sandra Fluke, for instance, was a dud.
11. Their opponents (us!) are “sophisticated… smart and methodical,” according to Michaelson.
12. Even liberals as a political body aren’t united in support of abortion, because as Michaelson admits, “Abortion is a kind of murder.” Ew.
13. No Fortune 500 corporations are lining up to support abortion, as they are with the homosexual lobby, which would bring “movement dollars and public awareness,” writes Michaelson.
14. “Feminism has an image problem,” writes Michaelson.
15. Religion: “Secular arguments about the separation of church and state may play well to the base,” writes Michaelson. “But they don’t move the middle.”

In a nutshell, quoting VanEgeren:

Whether it’s through hundreds of laws passed at the state level or the recent Hobby Lobby decision that allows companies to deny birth control coverage to employees on religious grounds, the pro-life movement is on a winning streak over access to abortions and birth control.

“It’s kind of like waiting for the other shoe to drop,” said Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager with the Guttmacher Institute, a think-tank focused on sexual and reproductive health policy. “I’m not entirely sure what will happen next.”

Well, here’s another shoe, impossible for abortion proponents to fill. Quoting Sarah Weddington(pictured right), the lawyer who successfully persuaded the Supreme Court in Roe v Wade, speaking at an event on July 12, via KnoxNews.com:

“Today, the young people are so much further (along) than I was at their age,” she said. “They speak more languages. They go on more trips. They have to show me how to use my iPhone … but one of the things we haven’t quite managed to do is to give them the same burning motivation to change things that we believe are wrong in the way that we did.”

In other words, the pro-choice crowd has no rear guard. They killed them.

[Top photo via The Cap Times; non-feminist photo via BuzzFeed (warning: vulgarity); bottom photo viaVox]

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