Wake the Hell Up
Democrats think abortion is a dead issue. They need a reality check.
I know we’re all feeling overwhelmed and despairing. What’s happening to this country—not just on abortion rights, but with everything—is downright soul-wrenching. But as tempting as it is to stew in that sadness, I’m asking us all to stand up and snap out of it. Because this issue needs us right now.
Over the last 48 hours, Republicans advanced a budget bill to defund Planned Parenthood, RFK Jr. directed the FDA to review regulations for mifepristone, and news broke that a brain dead woman in Georgia is being kept alive against her family’s wishes because she’s pregnant.
In the last week, Louisiana officials have opened a second criminal investigation into a New York abortion provider, demanding her extradition; Missouri Republicans advanced a ballot measure to undo an abortion rights amendment (and the will of voters alongside it); and the Trump administration shared plans to push women out of the workforce and back into the home.
We don’t need to ask what would happen if women started being arrested for miscarriages—because it’s already happening. We don’t need to conjure up dystopian sci-fi futures where women are being used as incubators, because that future is here.
Conservatives had fifty years to write their post-Roe wishlist, and they haven’t taken a beat or breath while barreling their way through it. But here’s what’s keeping me up at night: As we speed towards a future where women aren’t full citizens, a source tells me that some Congressional Democrats are calling abortion a dead issue. It didn’t win them the presidency, so why even bother?
I wish I was kidding.
Let’s be clear about what’s happening: While our elected leaders back off rights and freedom for half the country, the anti-abortion movement is more organized and determined than ever.
In fact, opposition researchers I’ve spoken to over the last few weeks tell me that they’ve never seen this level of coordination among anti-abortion activists. I’ve noticed the same: organizations are coming together with unprecedented momentum.
In part, that’s because ultraconservative billionaire Leonard Leo just poured tens of millions into a new coalition of the country’s most powerful anti-abortion groups, giving them a clear directive: strategically unify and get shit done. Backed by the Trump administration, that’s exactly what they’re doing.
Just look at what’s happened with mifepristone. A few weeks ago, FDA chief Marty Makary said he wouldn’t move against abortion medication—unless new data showed it was unsafe. Days later, the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) dropped a report conveniently ‘proving’ just that. Within 24 hours of the study’s release, Sen. Josh Hawley had a letter on Makary’s desk demanding restrictions on mifepristone.
The coordination wasn’t exactly subtle: Republicans were ready for this study before it even went public. The broader conservative machine was ready to do their jobs, too: Right-wing media outlets ran headline after headline about the ‘danger’ of abortion medication, while conservative influencers amplified the disinformation. In the background, anti-abortion groups rallied around a shared message and launched a website urging readers to flood Makary, Congress, and the HHS with letters.
If you scroll to the very bottom of that site, do you know what you’ll find? These words:
“A coalition effort led by the Ethics and Public Policy Center”
That’s right—the supposedly objective EPPC researchers behind the mifepristone study are heading the activist effort to ban the medication. In fact, the study’s two authors—Jamie Bryan Hall and Ryan T. Anderson—were long-time employees of the Heritage Foundation, the group responsible for Project 2025. (I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the EPPC’s recommendations for mifepristone are pretty much exactly what Project 2025 calls for.)
Anderson, who is also EPPC’s president, even wrote an anti-abortion book, “Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing.” In it, he bemoans that women get to “consent” to parenthood, noting that “pro-abortion feminists” want the ”freedom to walk away from unwanted pregnancy—by killing the child.”
Does that sound like a serious researcher to you?1 Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter that the research is garbage or that the authors are basically three incels in a trench coat. The anti-abortion machine has the influence to make bad science stick—especially when mainstream media is too afraid of being labeled biased to call it out.
And remember, this is just the organizing and coordinating effort behind one issue area of the anti-abortion movement. As much of a priority as abortion medication is, they have a long list to get to: defunding Planned Parenthood, rerouting more taxpayer dollars to religious anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, ‘encouraging’ women to forgo jobs and birth control, and—as much as they’d like to deny it—laying the groundwork to prosecute abortion patients.
For the anti-abortion movement, ending Roe wasn’t the finish line—it was the starting pistol. And while the crowd watching may be cheering for those of us who protect reproductive rights, our rivals are still running laps around us. Just as bad, they have their eye on that crowd, too.
The anti-abortion movement knows they can’t win in the long run without public support—that’s why so much of their strategy is dedicated to sparking a culture shift. They’re not flooding social media with disinformation, tradwives, and manosphere podcasts for the fun of it! They’re doing it for the same reason they’re pushing anti-abortion propaganda videos into public school classrooms: to reach, influence, and indoctrinate young people.
Now, abortion is incredibly popular—so this kind of effort could take decades. But conservatives are willing to wait it out. After all, they’ve done it before. And with the power of the Trump administration and motivated funders behind them, it’s no wonder that we’re seeing a movement so wholly uninterested in compromise or rest.
I don’t say any of this to add to the stress and defeat we’re all feeling right now, and I certainly don’t want any of us to feel hopeless. It’s precisely the opposite: now is the moment when we need to muster all the hope and energy possible. But the only way we do that is by being truly clear-eyed.
And here’s the thing: It’s a good thing that these attacks aren’t random. That means we can identify trends and patterns, and predict what they’re going to do next. Reminding other Americans that none of this is an accident is also helpful: anti-abortion lawmakers want voters to believe that this post-Roe nightmare of child rape victims and ‘walking coffins’ are just legislative growing pains. But they’re not.
All of the horrors that we’re witnessing—every single one—was planned for. Every Texas woman with sepsis, every Ohio cancer patient denied radiation, every little girl in Mississippi forced into childbirth—they were all strategized over, polled, messaged, and backed with billionaire dollars.
They knew women would die, so they started dismantling maternal mortality committees. They knew they’d get bad PR, so they started blaming doctors early. They knew voters would oppose them, so they attacked democracy.
As overwhelming and horrific as this all is, remember that we know exactly who they are and precisely how they operate. It’s not chaos—it’s choreography. All we need now is the powers that be to wake the fuck up and get behind us.
For more columns and explainers like this one, read below:
I’m writing something else up on Anderson and his study co-author for next week that I think you all will be VERY interested in.
There is so much worth quoting in here, I encourage folks to pick their favs and re-stack.
I personally enjoyed the "three incels in a trench coat" line but this post is packed full of important points it's hard to pick the most pertinent. For those who don't follow AED, I'm going w/this one:
"All of the horrors that we’re witnessing—every single one—was planned for. Every Texas woman with sepsis, every Ohio cancer patient denied radiation, every little girl in Mississippi forced into childbirth—they were all strategized over, polled, messaged, and backed with billionaire dollars."
The democrats are so colossally disappointing in every possible way right now. I also feel like everyday people are also just reeling, exhausted, and grieving - myself included. Even if we thought we knew, we were so unprepared for all of this and just how bad and coordinated it is. How can we get to a place where we aren’t just reacting?