Conservatives Are Building a New Generation of Anti-Abortion Voters

4.4.25

Click to skip ahead: Criminalizing Care with more on the Georgia miscarriage case. Legislation Watch looks at the rise of Baby Olivia bills. Attacks on Contraception flags the latest from an abortion ‘abolitionist’ state senator. Listen Up has an interview with one of my favorite abortion rights activists. And Arming the Choir shares a suggestion for where to throw your support this weekend.

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Criminalizing Care

If you missed my email this afternoon, check it out below—all charges against Selena Chandler-Scott have been dropped:

BREAKING: Georgia Drops Miscarriage Charges

It was so nice to be able to bring you all some good news on a Friday! It really did bring me a lot of hope—and remind me about the incredible power of this community.

But as I wrote earlier, it’s vital we’re contextualizing this win. It’s nuts that it ever came to this. And as long as fetal personhood laws exist, we know arrests like this will keep happening.

Fighting back against abortion bans and personhood laws will take time—but there’s something we can do right now to prevent more cases like this: refuse to normalize them.

I mean really: In the two weeks since Chandler-Scott was arrested for her miscarriage, there’s been no major national coverage of her case! Save for stories published yesterday in HuffPost and Newsweek, it’s been crickets from the big outlets. No Washington Post story, no New York Times—as if the story didn’t matter at all.

That’s the shit that keeps me up nights—not just the arrests and prosecutions, but the normalization. The idea that this could become business as usual is nauseating. And it’s exactly what conservatives are counting on: that we’ll become so exhausted and jaded that we stop reacting. That these horror stories will just wash over us—and outrage will turn into numbness.

That’s why I’m grateful that Democratic state Sen. Sally Harrell spoke about Selena’s story on Wednesday—calling on the legislature to reverse Georgia’s fetal personhood law, which she called “insanity.” Watch her comments below:

We need more of this kind of clear-eyed fury. Because I’ll be honest, the comments from Tift County District Attorney Patrick Warren and Republican legislators had me ready to throw hands.

I told you earlier how Warren made clear he didn’t “condone” how Chandler-Scott handled her miscarriage. He also seemed almost apologetic over dropping the charges, saying, “some may feel my decision excuses Ms. Chandler-Scott’s conduct.”

Her conduct? What—not holding on to her miscarriage?

And state Sen. Carden Summers, a Republican who represents Tift County, called the case “sad”: “Sad for the woman, sad for the fetus and sad for everybody involved.”

Sad for the fetus. That about sums up conservative policy, doesn’t it?

I’ll have more on miscarriage and criminalization in the coming days. In the meantime, learn more at Pregnancy Justice.

Legislation Watch

Regular readers know I’ve been tracking a few key legislative trends since the start of the year—from ‘Med Ed’ bills to Republican legislation claiming to ‘clarify’ their state’s ban. But the legislation I can’t stop thinking about is ‘Baby Olivia’ bills.

This legislation requires public schools to show students an anti-abortion video under the guise of teaching them fetal development. But the video isn’t scientific or fact-based—and ‘Baby Olivia’ isn’t real. It’s a computer-generated animation, propaganda designed to look like real in-utero images. Even worse, it’s produced by Live Action, one of the most notorious anti-abortion disinformation groups in the country.

And thanks to a major push by anti-abortion organizations, legislation forcing this video into schools is everywhere.

North Dakota, Tennessee and—as of just a few days ago, Idaho—have already adopted these laws. Similar bills are being considered right now in Florida, Kentucky, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and West Virginia. To be honest, I might be missing a few states because Republicans are proposing and passing these bills so quickly.

You can read background on the nitty gritty of the legislation here and here, but what’s most important to know is that this is part of a broader strategy to indoctrinate young people.

This isn’t about one video. It’s about rewriting national education standards to push an anti-abortion framework into K-12 classrooms—shaping how students learn about reproduction and development from the ground up.

There’s a reason, for example, that Republicans call ‘Baby Olivia’ a science or health lesson: Parents may be able to opt their kids out of sex education, but they can’t pull them from science class. There’s also an entire anti-abortion fetal development lobby pushing to tell kids that life begins at conception. Spend a few minutes bopping around the website of Contend Projects, and you’ll see what I mean.

In keeping with the anti-abortion movement’s attempt to sound scientifically credible, the nonprofit group touts itself as “spreading the basic, accurate scientific facts about when a human life starts and the biological science of human embryology.”

Sounds innocuous enough, right? Contend CEO Brooke Stanton even writes on the site that “this is not about opinions, politics, or religion,” but “modern, objective, relevant science.” But Stanton isn’t a scientist or expert—she’s an anti-abortion activist trying to change how kids are taught to turn out more voters for Republicans. Literally.

Here’s Stanton in a 2023 op-ed telling Republicans that the only way they’re going to win elections is if they combat “widespread scientific ignorance” about fetal development:

“Science education in schools is the most effective way to shape future generations. If pro-life leaders want to win the battle against abortion, they need to recognize and release the untapped potential of K-12 science education standards, by ensuring human embryology is in America's science classrooms. If they fail to do so, the abortion industry will continue its winning streak at the ballot box for many generations to come.”

Let’s be clear: Anti-abortion activists are doing work twenty years ahead of us. While we’re on the defensive, reacting to the news and legislation of the day, and taking young people’s support for granted—they’re creating a future electorate.

Conservatives know that young people are the most pro-choice demographic in the country, so they’re methodically pushing policies designed to shape how the next generation thinks about abortion.

Anyway, happy Friday!

Attacks on Contraception

You can always count on an abortion ‘abolitionist’ to say the dumbest shit possible. Over in Oklahoma, state Sen. Dusty Deevers—who wants to make having an abortion punishable as a homicide—spoke out against a birth control bill recently, claiming that contraception shrinks women’s brains. (There’s definitely someone dealing with a small, inadequate head here—and it’s not the one with the NuvaRing.)

Deevers’ comments came in response to Oklahoma Senate Bill 176, which would require insurance companies to let women get a six-month supply of contraceptives. The idea is to cut down on the number of pharmacy visits women have to make over the course of a year—which is especially important for those who live in rural areas or far from pharmacies.

But Deevers immediately jumped into action, arguing something we’ve heard from anti-abortion extremists before: that contraception isn’t contraception at all, but abortion. He claimed that birth control “induces the abortion or murder of a human embryo since a new human being has been created at fertilization, which is conception.”

But that’s not all! Deevers—ever concerned with women’s health—insisted “these drugs are very dangerous.” From the Oklahoma Voice:

“Deevers said that women’s brains shrink while on birth control, leading to more depression and anger and increased rates of suicide. He also said women experience a decreased sexual drive, leading to less intercourse while on hormonal birth control. He did not cite a source for that information.”

Now, call me old-fashioned, but I’m not really interested in taking health advice from a guy who wants to give women like me the death penalty. But what do I know—my brain is probably shrunken like a raisin at this point.

Another Republican legislator, Oklahoma Sen. Warren Hamilton, also urged his colleagues not to advance the bill. “I’m begging you to not do this, not only for the children whose lives will be saved, but also for the women who will not be harmed by taking these so-called medications,” he said.

It’s easy to make fun of these men (really easy). But it should still chill us all to the bone that these kinds of conversations are happening openly on the floors of state legislatures. I don’t know how much clearer they can be that they want to outlaw birth control—while telling us it’s all for our own good.

Listen Up

If you don’t know Lizz Winstead, what are you even doing with your life? Founder of the Abortion Access Front and the Feminist Buzzkills podcast, Winstead has been out there kicking ass for abortion rights for a long time. Check out this interview with her from ‘More to the Story’:

Arming the Choir

We had some amazing news from Alabama this week: After almost three years, abortion funds, organizations and activists can tell patients where they can get care without fear of being prosecuted. A federal judge ruled that maniac Attorney General Steve Marshall can’t prosecute people who help patients get out-of-state abortions.

I’ve been in awe watching groups like the West Alabama Women’s Center continue to bring their community amazing care in spite of this weight hanging above their heads. (And the fact that they were fighting in court, to boot!)

Robin Marty, Executive Director of the West Alabama Women’s Center, told me they’re thrilled to start offering out-of-state abortion referrals—and they’re expecting dozens more patients each month as a result.

The problem? Because they’re doing the logistical and referral work without providing the actual abortion, they’re losing about $200 per patient. That’s a tough hit—especially when their average per-patient fee is just $20 an appointment. From Robin:

“We want to be able to help. This is the closest thing to abortion care we can do, and by talking to each patient we can also be sure they know that they can come back to us for help down the road—for follow up care, for contraception needs, and for birth support if they get pregnant down the road and the time is right. But we won’t be there for them later if we can’t figure out now how to cover this new patient base. And that’s the part that scares me the most.”

Robin and the West Alabama Women’s Center have been serving their community in one of the toughest times for reproductive health imaginable. Now it’s our turn to help them: Donate to the group here.

And remember, if you want to share an organization, event, or action item with the Abortion, Every Day community—our Arming the Choir thread is open to both paid and unpaid subscribers:

Arming the Choir

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