Kellyanne Conway is selling the GOP a dream that’s destined to backfire

The 2024 campaign season is officially kicking off this month, and despite polls showing low enthusiasm for President Joe Biden, Republicans know full well they are facing major headwinds this election year. It’s not just that their likely presidential nominee, Donald Trump, is probably the most loathed person in the country. There’s also the abortion issue. Ever since the Dobbs decision of 2022, when the Supreme Court ended the federal right to abortion, there’s been a sustained backlash from the strong majority of Americans who do not want religious prudes in their bedrooms, dictating their most personal decisions. 

There can be no doubt that the impetus behind the abortion bans that were swiftly passed in many red states is unvarnished misogyny. That much has been evident in the drip-drip of stories of women denied abortions, even when the fetus has no chance of survival outside of the womb. It exposes the “pro-life” label for the lie it always was. The only purpose of an abortion ban is and always will be to punish women. For being sexual. For having ambitions. Even, in some cases, for simply refusing to die. After all, a corpse is the right’s ideal woman: silent and without a will of her own. 

Of course, most people are grossed out by Republican misogyny so the result is that it’s hurting the GOP at the polls. Enter Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway, who is desperately trying to regain some relevance after her stint as one of the more cringe-worthy talking heads of the Trump White House. Her brilliant plan to nullify the abortion issue in 2024? To “talk” about contraception. Conway has been meeting with Republican candidates, Politico reports, to argue they should “promote contraception or risk defeat in 2024.” 

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What would it mean for Republicans to “promote” contraception, however? One thing it certainly can’t mean is taking any action to make it easier for women to access birth control. On the contrary, the favorite way of Republicans to “promote” birth control is to do everything they can to make it harder to get.

Last year, for example, congressional Democrats brought up a bill to enshrine the right to contraception into law. This was necessary, because the Dobbs decision rejected a woman’s right to privacy, which is the same right that the Supreme Court invoked when establishing the right to access birth control. In fact, in his concurring opinion on Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas openly invited red states to ban birth control so that the court could end that right as well. But in a party-line vote in the House of Representatives, Republicans rejected this bill to protect the right to birth control. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, blocked the bill in the Senate.

For decades, Republicans have worked to undermine access to birth control. During Barack Obama’s presidency, Republicans waged an all-out war on a provision in the Affordable Care Act that required insurance plans to cover birth control, running ads and messaging campaigns about how women who use contraception are “hoeing themselves out.” Republicans also repeatedly threatened to shut down the government to defund Planned Parenthood, the largest birth control clinic in the country. They are still at it, in fact: The provisional GOP spending bill in the House would terminate the federal program that funds birth control. 

This is the same GOP, after all, that elected Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., to be speaker of the House. Much of Johnson’s career has been geared towards taking away contraception access. Johnson has routinely used the word “abortifacient” to describe contraception methods that work by preventing ovulation. As Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day has detailed, this is part of a long-term plan: First, redefine female-controlled birth control as “abortion.” Then, use existing abortion bans to outlaw the pill, IUDs and other popular forms of pregnancy prevention. 

Johnson glibly defends his view as “pro-life,” but in the context of his larger career, it’s obvious he’s just anti-sex. He hyped how he made his daughter swear her virginity to him in a creepy ceremony modeled on a wedding. He’s bragged about how he roped his son into installing “Covenant Eyes” on their phones, so they can police each other to see if they’re looking at porn. He’s complained that it’s “sexual anarchy” if LGBTQ people are allowed to marry. There is nothing “pro-life” about any of this. It’s just the same twisted sexual obsession that drives the entire anti-abortion movement. 

But of course, Conway has no real interest in turning Republicans away from their war on contraception. She just wants them to pretend to reporters and voters that they are fine with birth control, and hope no one follows up by checking the record. That this is all about talk is evident in a well-reported article by Riley Rogerson at the Daily Beast, which illustrates how much Republicans are hoping they can B.S. their way through this issue. 

“Republicans should not make stupid political decisions and suggest that people’s contraception rights should be taken away,” Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, told Rogerson. “But maybe Kellyanne has a point that if you’re more vocal about it, you get some more people on board.”

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Note that Vance’s entire focus is on talk, not action. Being quiet about the goal of banning birth control does not mean abandoning those plans. On the contrary, the goal was always to go through the back door, by redefining birth control as “abortion.” The hope is Republicans can ban birth control without passing a separate bill. Being “vocal” about contraception is also vague. Trolling pro-choicers on Twitter by telling them to “use a condom” no doubt sounds fun to Republicans, but of course, that’s a very different thing than writing policy so that using a condom is possible. 

True, some Republicans have loudly backed bills to make the birth control pill over-the-counter (which the FDA is already doing). But that just underscores their larger refusal to accept that birth control is a right or that it’s real health care. Making the pill over-the-counter while shutting down birth control clinics and stopping insurance coverage of birth control would only make the pill a luxury for well-off people who can pay the full cost out of pocket. Nor would it do much to prevent red states from reclassifying birth control as “abortion.” This plan only underscores how much rich Republicans want to preserve access for themselves while taking it away from everyone else. 

Even on the talking front, though, Conway is kidding herself if she thinks Republican politicians can keep their misogynist views from leaking out when confronted with this issue. She is a good example herself. On Fox News recently, Conway said that abortion is an “every morning” occurrence for Democrats. 

Yes, it’s hyperbole. She is no doubt aware this is physically impossible. But this comment burbled up out of Conway’s kneejerk urge to paint her political opponents as perverts. If she can’t help herself, there’s no hope for the rest of Republican politicians. Republican hostility to reproductive rights is rooted in a bone-deep rejection of female independence. That urge to start yelling about how girls these days are a bunch of sluts is hard for most of them to tamp down on a good day. If they’re trying to pretend they support contraception, there’s no doubt many candidates will phrase it in such a way that the “shut your legs” impulse comes roaring out.