Could Late-Term Abortion Be The Key To A Republican Midterm Sweep? One Group Thinks So.

WASHINGTON—With midterm elections fast approaching, Republicans are once again grappling with an issue they seem to have forgotten how to message: abortion.

For years, the GOP embraced the issue, with Republicans touting their pro-life bona fides and pledging to protect the unborn. But since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Republicans have struggled to find their footing on the issue. Nowhere is this clearer than at the White House, where President Donald Trump has largely avoided the issue, focusing instead on pro-life wins from his first term.

Still, many Republican lawmakers have remained engaged on the topic, going so far as to square off with with Trump on issues like abortion drugs. Pro-abortion groups think this will be the key to Democrats’ midterm success.

“Voters are fed up with Republicans treating their bodies and lives as political pawns, and the backlash is growing,” EMILY’s List President Jessica Mackler said recently. “Republicans’ politically toxic, anti-abortion agenda fueled Democratic victories up and down the ballot.”

One of the country’s top pro-life groups thinks this is wrong — and it wants Republicans to take note.

In a memo exclusively obtained by The Daily Wire, SBA Pro-Life America urges Republican candidates to highlight their Democrat opponents’ extremism by focusing on their support for late-term abortions. “Every top-performing message highlights the Democratic candidate’s support for late-term elective abortion,” SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser wrote to Republican candidates in late August.

Massachusetts just became the 12th state to allow abortions at any point throughout pregnancy — even when the mother and baby are healthy — a policy legal in just seven countries. SBA’s memo urges Republicans to prevent Democrats from avoiding specifics when discussing abortion — something Democrat strategists are encouraging candidates to do — forcing them to own their votes for policies that many voters find distasteful.

“These laws make their extreme position undeniably clear — and voters oppose it by overwhelming margins,” Dannenfelser writes. “Our message testing in swing races this cycle shows that going on offense to call out Democrats’ extremism on late-term abortion moves the margin 4-5 points towards the pro-life candidate.”

SBA Pro-Life America commissioned Evolving Strategies to conduct the polling through randomized controlled trial testing on the effectiveness of three different abortion messages in Senate and gubernatorial races in Iowa: the “attack” message,” the “soft positive” message,” and the “hard positive” message.

The “attack” message — highlighting Democrat candidates’ support for late-term elective abortions — was the most effective, shifting the Republican vote margin by 3.3 points for governor and 4.4 points for Senate. The messages SBA Pro-Life America tested called out candidates for supporting late-term abortions of babies in the third trimester, even when the baby is perfectly healthy, capable of feeling pain, and can survive outside the womb.

“In 2024, a shift of four points for Republicans would have meant a 57-seat majority in the Senate,” Dannenfelser wrote. “A shift this large towards Democrats would have lost the House and the presidency.”

SBA’s message testing also found strong effects when highlighting that the baby can feel the pain of later-term abortions, and pairing that messaging with another message highlighting the pro-life candidate’s support for “reasonable gestational limits with exceptions.”

That contrast moved voters between 5.3 and 6.6 points, the memo states. SBA Pro-Life America’s top performing message in a test of Hispanic Texans also moved voters 3.7 points in House races and 6.6 points in the Senate.

“These results match our experience during our 6 million (and counting) visits to voters’ homes across this cycle and the last,” the memo says. “‘Normie voters,’ including persuadable Democrats, are generally shocked and outraged to learn that anyone supports elective abortion late into the second and third trimesters.”

SBA Pro-Life America notes that even “moderate” Democrats like David Crowley or Sherrod Brown are on the record supporting abortion in the fifth month of pregnancy or later — putting them on the other side of most Americans.

“Elective abortion through all trimesters is the mainstream position of Democratic elected officials and politicians, even though less than half of their voters support such a view,” Dannenfelser wrote. “Nearly every single Democrat in Congress has cosponsored or voted for legislation that would legalize late-term elective abortion in every state.”