September 8, 2023

Republicans are starting to learn that women care about body autonomy, but instead of listening, they're refusing to change. The choice for women to have an abortion or not is very popular. Last year in deep-red Kansas, voters said no to a constitutional amendment allowing an abortion ban. Again, Republicans aren't listening and decided to find a new term for "pro-life" so they don't endure more election losses.

NBC News reports:

At a closed-door meeting of Senate Republicans this week, the head of a super PAC closely aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., presented poll results that suggested voters are reacting differently to commonly used terms like "pro-life" and "pro-choice" in the wake of last year's Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, said several senators who were in the room.

The polling, which NBC News has not independently reviewed, was made available to senators Wednesday by former McConnell aide Steven Law and showed that "pro-life" no longer resonated with voters.

"What intrigued me the most about the results was that 'pro-choice' and 'pro-life' means something different now, that people see being pro-life as being against all abortions ... at all levels," Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said in an interview Thursday.

You see how they're not getting it, right? It's our choice, not theirs. And it's a deeply private decision.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said the polling made it clear to him that more specificity is needed in talking about abortion.

"Many voters think ['pro-life'] means you're for no exceptions in favor of abortion ever, ever, and 'pro-choice' now can mean any number of things. So the conversation was mostly oriented around how voters think of those labels, that they've shifted. So if you're going to talk about the issue, you need to be specific," Hawley said Thursday.

"You can't assume that everybody knows what it means," he added. "They probably don't."

"Pro-baby." No, seriously.

Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., summarized Wednesday's meeting as being focused on "pro-baby policies."

Asked whether senators were encouraged to use a term other than "pro-life," Young said his "pro-baby" descriptor "was just a term of my creation to demonstrate my concern for babies."

It's a shame he doesn't share the same concern for women. I suggest they change it to pro-rape. Or anti-women. And calling it pro-baby isn't going to make a woman who is impregnated by her rapist change her mind because they put a nice bow on their forced birth package.

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