Yes, I’m a ‘Single Issue’ Voter

I’m all in for Abortion 2024

A video mocking young pro-choice women went viral this week, published by a conservative content creator who declared, “College Women Admit They Only Vote For Kamala Because Of Abortion.” With over 54 million views on Twitter alone, the sentiment is hardly a lark. Republican men can’t seem to understand why women voters are so riled up about abortion rights.

Last month in Ohio, for example, U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno blasted women as “crazy” for caring about the issue. Soon after, Montana’s GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy complained that young women were “indoctrinated” on abortion. “That’s all they want to talk about…it’s all about pro-choice, pro-choice,” he said. 

Both men griped that these women are “single issue voters.” 

I know the phrase is meant to be an insult—a dismissive jab suggesting that women’s political interests are superficial and simplistic—but I’m more than happy to don the label. Because the ‘single issue’ Republican men find so offensive isn’t really abortion: it’s women’s humanity. 

That’s why they’re going to lose in November. We are fighting for our lives and they mock us for it. 

Every time a conservative politician sneers at women’s fear, or rolls their eyes at our anger and sadness, what they’re really doing is reminding American women that they find us downright ridiculous for wanting to live. Don’t we have anything better to worry about? 

As if casting a vote to prevent women from dying and going septic is frivolous.

That’s the exact reason Republicans’ strategy is backfiring. They’re still talking about abortion like we live in pre-Dobbs America—as if voters haven’t seen women lose vital reproductive organs and little girls be forced into childbirth. They’re still messaging as if women haven’t died.

Because while abortion has always been about women’s lives and human rights, it was a lot easier for Republicans to call it a shallow side issue or partisan politics before Americans regularly saw news coverage of miscarriage patients turned away from hospital emergency rooms. 

That daily onslaught of post-Roe horror stories reveals the GOP’s dismissiveness of abortion for what it really is—misogynist cruelty. 

After all, as much as I don’t mind rhetorically reclaiming being a ‘single issue’ voter, let’s not lose sight of what Republicans really mean when they hurl the phrase in our direction: Conservative men are trying to collapse the infinitely far-reaching, complicated, and life-changing impact of abortion rights into a throw-away talking point. 

But the rise in infant mortality isn’t a single issue, nor is the exodus of OBGYNs from states where they’re forced to choose between treating their patients or prison time. Amanda Zurawski might never get pregnant after being denied vital care in Texas; I doubt she feels a ‘single’ way about it. Was Amber Nicole Thurman’s death a ‘single issue’? Will they still call it that when it’s one of their daughters or wives who dies?

The distressing truth is that conservatives mock women for caring about our humanity because they don’t believe we have any.

What’s more, calling women “single issue voters” isn’t just some sexist reflex—it’s a political tactic. There’s a reason Republicans dutifully trot out the phrase every time there’s an election: What better way to keep women in their place than to make them embarrassed or ashamed to care about their own lives, health, futures and families? How better to continue women’s subjugation than by convincing them it’s selfish to vote in favor of their own humanity and citizenship?

So yes, I’m a ‘single issue’ voter. Because if I’m not considered a full human being in my own country, then what else is there?

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