The New Mommy Wars
Republicans want to pit women against each other over abortion
History is about to repeat itself.
In the 1970s, women entered the workforce in record numbers—by the end of the 90s, their labor participation rate had gone from 40% to over 60%. But women’s progress never goes unpunished in America, so we were treated to a massive cultural backlash in return: Articles declaring that working women of a certain age were more likely to be killed by a terrorist than find a husband, myths that feminism made women miserable, and a full-blown moral panic over daycare. (They weren’t just called dangerous, but perhaps even fronts for Satanic child abuse dens. I wish I was kidding.)
At the heart of it all, though, was the ‘mommy wars’—a cultural wedge driven in between women who worked in the public sphere and those who stayed home. The idea was to diminish the very real policy issues women faced—like the lack of parental leave and affordable child care—and frame them instead as personal issues. Catfighting, even.
Now, on the precipice of another Donald Trump presidency and halfway through the country’s third year without Roe, new ‘mommy wars’ are about to drop. But they won’t be about whether mothers work outside the home, breastfeed or formula feed, or whether or not moms vaccinate their kids. Instead, we’re about to see women pitted against each other over abortion—specifically, those who end nonviable or medically fraught pregnancies, and those who choose to carry to term.
I’m dreading the passive aggressive Instagram comments and TikTok battles, but can see them clearly already: Conservative women sharing stories of refusing abortions in spite of fatal or devastating fetal diagnoses, all of them steeped in the language of mommy martyrdom. We’ll see social media captions insisting motherhood is about sacrifice, and columns explaining that risking their mental and physical health—or even their lives—is simply what good mothers do.
The not-so-veiled implication, of course, is that those who decide to end their doomed pregnancies are selfish—unwilling to put in the requisite suffering that ‘good’ mothers take on happily.
Like the ‘mommy wars’ before it, this deliberately-stoked discord serves a purpose: distracting from conservatives’ dangerous and unpopular abortion bans. What better way to deflect than by once again turning a serious public policy and health issue into a competition over who’s a good mother?
Valorizing women who carry doomed pregnancies also lets Republicans reframe their cruel laws as a good thing. They’re not forcing women into suffering—they’re giving them the chance to be the ultimate mothers!
Women who keep doomed pregnancies get something in return, too: permission to judge those who don’t make the same choice.
Republicans know their laws mean more women—whether by choice, force, or circumstance—will carry nonviable pregnancies and give birth to seriously- or fatally-ill newborns. These women will need somewhere to put their understandable anger and disappointment; better for Republicans that it’s at the feet of other women.
That illusion of moral superiority gives their pain much-needed meaning: They’re the good mothers who did the right thing—not like those ‘bad’ women who refuse to righteously suffer.
We caught a glimpse of what this ‘mommy war’ judgement looks like when Kate Cox’s story went viral. Twenty weeks into her pregnancy, the Texas mother found out that her fetus had a fatal abnormality and that her pregnancy was endangering her fertility, health and life. Still, the state denied her care. While the primary response from Americans was outrage on Cox’s behalf, many conservatives had a different reaction: They accused Cox—a woman desperate to protect her life and spare her fetus unnecessary pain—of trying to “kill” her “disabled child.”
One such denunciation came from writer Rachel Roth Aldhizer. Adhizer, who also received a devastating diagnosis and now cares for a “profoundly disabled” child, slammed Cox as “choos[ing] her own comfort over that of a disabled child.”
“Ms. Cox needs to understand that motherhood is not signing up for just the good stuff—kids that get straight A’s, play sports, paint pictures for the fridge, and make us proud because of their accomplishments. Motherhood goes much deeper. Are you willing to give your time, resources, and comfort for the sake of another? If not, don’t seek motherhood.”
Adhizer’s most telling assertion, however, was one that Republicans desperately need women to believe in post-Roe America—that our “profound purpose…is only found in the face of great suffering.”
The notion that pain is good for women—necessary even—is a common refrain among abortion opponents, in part because their laws demand so much of it. As another conservative woman wrote in response to Cox’s story, “Suffering is part of life… It’s most assuredly part of motherhood.” The Star-Telegram’s Cynthia Allen added that if faced with a similar diagnosis, “I would have gladly carried that child, if that was the suffering I was intended to endure.”
She, you see, is a ‘good’ mother. It’s a scary state of affairs when Republicans have women vying for who suffered the most.
This disparagement of women who have abortions, even under tragic circumstances, is key to conservatives’ ‘mommy war’ strategy. It doesn’t just shift focus off their draconian laws, but undermines one of Republicans’ most serious political threats: Women who’ve come forward about being denied health- and life-saving abortions.
After all, anti-abortion lawmakers and activists have been at their weakest when women like Cox—or Kaitlyn Joshua and Amanda Zurawski—have shared their stories and driven public outrage. These are women who draw attention to the horrific real-life consequences of abortion bans, while also upending conservatives’ long-standing lie that women seek abortions out of ‘convenience.’ (Remembering, of course, that what they mean by ‘convenience’ are women who have the nerve to want to go to college, pay their bills, take care of existing children or leave a bad relationship.)
Republicans can’t publicly call out women like Cox, Joshua or Zurwaski without seeming cruel. But with a new mommy war in their back pocket, anti-abortion women can do their dirty work for them—dismissing powerful post-Roe horror stories as nothing more than the gripes of bad mothers.
Unfortunately, there’s never been a better time for conservatives to make all of this happen. In fact, they’ve already laid the cultural groundwork. If you have any sort of social media account, chances are you’ve seen a video explaining the supposed dangers of hormonal birth control, or come across the account of some wildly popular ‘tradwife’ who makes cereal and bubblegum from scratch.
None of that is by accident. I warned in a 2022 column about the rise of social media romanticizing 1950s housewives—or, more accurately, the sanitized depictions of them:
“It’s not a coincidence that this resurgence of housewife iconography comes at the same time abortion rights have been stripped from American women. What better way to quiet the next generation of girls, growing up in a country without reproductive rights, than to tell them it’s actually progress? They’re making sexism aspirational.”
In fact, just in November, Hannah Neeleman—one of the country’s most popular ‘tradwives,’ with tens of millions of followers—graced the cover of Evie, an anti-contraception propaganda machine masquerading as a magazine. This comes at the same time that anti-abortion organizations are adopting feminist-sounding rhetoric to soften their misogyny, and as what it means to be a ‘natural’ mother gets more and more alarming. The rise of vaccine skeptics, raw milk enthusiasts, ‘natural’ birth control proponents, and other right-wing pipeline issues have fully prepped the country to accept the idea that a good mother is one who accepts a pregnancy regardless of how dangerous, painful or viable it is.
American culture has always needed women to believe that motherhood is about sacrifice and overwhelm. Now, with abortion bans, that bit of propaganda has gotten even more dangerous—deadly, even. After all, conservatives know that their laws won’t just force women to suffer, but to die.
That’s why it’s so vital that we’re pushing back—refusing to valorize one woman’s choices over another’s, supporting laws that allow families to make decisions that are best for them, and pointing out this kind of conservative trickery whenever we see it.
After all, you can’t have a ‘mommy war’ if there are no mommies left to fight it.
Jessica, although your columns are always perceptive and interesting, this one is especially so. I’m glad you spend the time and effort to think deeply about these things, so many women—and men—don’t. It’s not a coincidence that infant mortality is skyrocketing in states with abortion bans. And who is going to pay the life-long medical expenses of these “severely disabled” children? Republicans are certainly not willing to fund it.
Thank you, as always, for an insightful and well-researched piece.
As an older mostly-non-user of social media, I find this really helpful to remind me of the current moment, too.
I would like to ask so many women if other forms of suffering, from oppression to economic repression to full-blown domestic violence, also fulfills their destiny for suffering and being closer to god, and whether it is selfish to ask for human rights. That feels like the moment we are in, too.