Romney Should Have Attacked Obama’s Radical Abortion Record

Opinion   |   Kristan Hawkins, Brendan O'Morchoe   |   Nov 12, 2012   |   12:29PM   |   Washington, DC

Immediately after the presidential election was called last Tuesday evening, the pundits began placing the blame of the Republican challenger’s defeat on the abortion issue and proclaimed that now is the time for the Republican party to “moderate” some of it’s stances, i.e. change their pro-life platform stance to pro-abortion. Even one famed pollster who sat next to one of my friends and fellow pro-life leader last week on his flight to Los Angeles remarked how he wished Republicans politicians would just shut up about being pro-life.
However, saying that abortion was the reason that Mitt Romney lost his bid for the U.S. Presidency is hasty as pro-lifers, like millions of other Americans, simply did not turn out like pro-aborts to vote.
As soon as the exit polling was released on Tuesday, we knew we had a problem when Fox’s own poll showed that 59% of voters believed abortion should be legal and only 36% believed it should be illegal. These exit polling numbers do not appropriately reflect the view of abortion that most Americans hold, with Gallup’s own May 2012 poll showing that 52% of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all circumstances and 45% believe it should mostly or always be illegal.And before those in the pro-abortion wing of the Republican Party try to claim that being pro-life is a losing issue and the party should “moderate” its stance on the human rights assault, we first must consider how the Republican challenger talked about abortion. Or rather, how he didn’t talk about it. While we credit Governor Romney for saying he would de-fund Planned Parenthood and sign legislation presented to him that would ban abortion, his campaign failed to take the issue head on for what it is – a human rights violation.President Obama and the Democratic Party were the only ones talking about abortion. And somehow their scare-tatic strategy to equate the horrific violence of rape with abortion worked. As if abortion, could end all rapes.Despite the urging of many national pro-life leaders, the Romney campaign completely failed to point out President Obama’s extreme pro-abortion records. Data from Gallup, SFLA’s own polling, and other sources show that President Obama’s positions in favor of tax-payer funding for abortion, sex-selective abortion, and partial-birth abortion, and against protections for babies who survive abortions are extremely unpopular amongst all demographics. President Obama is in the minority of less than 25% of Americans who support each of these positions, yet the Republican Party never once called him on it.

In 2012, 18-29 year olds still comprised roughly the same percent of the electorate as in 2008, 19% to 18%. And, not surprisingly, the majority voted for President Obama at 60%.

The good news, however, is that his support amongst young people dropped 6 points from 2008. Even though we know and Gallup proves that the majority of our generation sees abortion as morally wrong, not all of them voted for the ostensibly pro-life candidate.
This proves 2 things:
1) The Romney campaign’s failure to talk about abortion, especially his opponent’s extremist views, hurt him. If the Republican Party had made any effort to highlight President Obama’s extreme pro-abortion record, we believe the results of this election would have been much different.
2) While it’s good news that this generation knows abortion is wrong, the bad news is that they don’t see how politics will solve the issue and are uncomfortable with the pro-life movement’s goal of making abortion illegal since they have been raised in a morally relative world.
Quite frankly, last Tuesday was a turning point for the pro-life movement. This will be a time where our movement will now be forced to fight for our very existence as we will be facing unprecedented assaults from President Obama and his administration these next four years and assaults from within the Republican party.
The next four years will be hard and will test our resolve, yet they will only make us stronger.
For example, during the last four years, Students for Life of America has more than tripled the number of campus pro-life groups, the amount of state legislation that has been passed to reduce and restrict abortion has been at an all-time high, and never before have so many abortion facilities been shut down.
Why?

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Because many pro-lifers across America realized something that many just figured out last Tuesday night: That we will have to abolish abortion, and we can’t rely on Washington, D.C. to do it for us.

Yes, the most extreme pro-abortion president was just re-elected and the next four years will be challenging for the pro-life movement. And many lives will be lost as a result of our president’s policies.

But all is not lost. Our mission of abolishing abortion in our lifetime still stands. It will happen in our lifetime. Culture shapes politics, and our culture is becoming pro-life.