The recent vote in Ohio is just one of a string of cases where voters show they mostly support abortion access to some extent (1). Polls show the same. (2) So why do Republicans (specifically Republican politicians, not necessarily Republican voters) keep trying to do something unpopular?

My (perhaps cynical) view of Republican politicians is that they’re the “do anything to win” party. They would take any stance and pull any trick if it would give them a better chance of winning. So why are they so stuck on a losing issue?

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/08/ohio-takeaways-voters-abortion-00110411?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230809&instance_id=99621&nl=the-morning®i_id=78332928&segment_id=141508&te=1&user_id=2c229a9eb418d267c58bd9e6c665e49d

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/us/roe-v-wade-abortion-views.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare T

  • cerevant@lemmy.world
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    It is a wedge issue that has locked a portion of the population who are single issue voters into being Republicans despite literally all their other beliefs. That is basically what all the non-financial planks of the Republican platform have in common.

    • NewNewAccount@lemmy.world
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      I don’t know anybody that votes republican because of their abortion stance that doesn’t also agree with the rest of the party’s policies.

      • Enigma@sh.itjust.works
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        My mom was one. Didn’t realize until I was older, and long after she died. But yeah, she only voted Republican because she was anti abortion. She had an abortion and suffered from unintended side effects and didn’t want other women to experience the same. I get where she was coming from, but she definitely had the wrong idea with banning abortion.

        Oddly enough, it was a comment on Reddit that opened my eyes to everything. Something along the lines of “Dems don’t want women to have abortions. But we’d like the choice if need be.”

        • mookulator@lemmy.worldOP
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          Wow I’ve never heard of someone wanting to ban a medical procedure all together because they experienced an adverse effect of it. Thanks for the view into a psyche that I didn’t know about.

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            Yeah, she was unable to have kids going forward and ended up needing a complete hysterectomy at 40. This was also the 90s and I’m positive the procedures are more advanced now. But there can be side effects that are often not talked about among pro choice people. I mean they are rare, but it can happen. I know a lot of women who ended up severely depressed after (my mom ran a support group). But that doesn’t mean abortion should be banned, but that mental health support for women who have had abortions is desperately needed and necessary, especially if the baby is wanted.

            • mookulator@lemmy.worldOP
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              Yeah I mean I think most people know that there are negative consequences that can happen, just like with any medical procedure. I’m just surprised by the fact that people might get a medical procedure then want to prevent all future people from getting it because they had a bad experience. Shows what I know about people.

              • Enigma@sh.itjust.works
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                I agree. Like I said, I understand where she was coming from, wanting to prevent other women from suffering the same way she did. But there are other ways to go about that and I don’t think she understood that. She’s also black and let’s face it, there is negative history regarding abortions and black women. I mean to this day, you have doctors who believe in old racist bullshit like black people have a higher pain tolerance; medical treatment is often different if you’re white vs black as well.

          • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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            Scientists can tell with like 80% accuracy what the political identity of an American is… just from a brain scan.

            If the prefrontal cortex is larger and more active, that person is likely to be empathetic and use higher reasoning to control their emotion. Those people overwhelmingly vote Dem.

            If the amygdala is larger and more active, then that person is more likely to feel fear or anger and act based on those emotions without thinking.

            Then there’s the 20% where they’re just kind of average and it’s a coin toss.

            That is why a woman can view her individual experience decades ago with an abortion and use that to rationalize not letting any woman get one now.

            She’s not empathetic enough to understand other women may be in a worse spot than she’d have been if she kept.

            She isn’t using the critical thinking to understand decades of medical advancement means it’s a lot safer now.

            But she is still in fear of her bad outcome.

            And she’s still angry she had complications.

            If it doesn’t make sense to you, it’s because you’re brain isn’t working the same as the other side. The tragedy is only one side is usually able to understand it. The other side just keeps ranting about crazy shit because they’re constantly terrified or pissed off about a hypothetical.

          • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
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            I guess you can find victims of pseudo science that after suffering from them become activists against it. Abortion is rutinary health care and ilegal abortions kill women. Better have a complication while in a health care that in the back alley of an ilegal abortion clinic.

      • rusticus@lemm.ee
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        I don’t know anybody that WILL ADMIT THEY vote republican because of their abortion stance that doesn’t also agree with the rest of the party’s policies.

        FTFY

      • rynzcycle@kbin.social
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        Unfortunately I do, much of my extended family is what I call consistent Catholic. They oppose the death sentence, are in favour of funding good education and social programs, and yet, somehow every election they vote R because the pope tells them too. The only silver linings are that I think most of them abstained rather than vote for Trump and that they all live in a hard Red state anyway so they probably won’t have much impact. Still drives me crazy though.

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          The Pope? Pope Francis is more “leftist” than some American leftist! Why do they feel that he would tell them to vote Republican? I don’t know how American Catholics perceive the church, I just hear a lot about evangelicals in the US

        • NewNewAccount@lemmy.world
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          Catholics is pretty much the only major Christian denomination that leans left/Democrat in the US. I can’t think of a recent pope that advocated or implicitly encouraged a vote for Republicans.

      • cerevant@lemmy.world
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        It is fairly common among Catholics. I’ve known some fairly progressive Catholics who are Republicans because abortion. Now, that isn’t to say that a good number haven’t bought into the divisive rhetoric and gone full maga, but that’s not where they started.

    • That_One_Demon@lemmynsfw.com
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      I would argue it goes even one step further. Unwanted children are put into a system that is underfunded (because of republicans) or raised by families that don’t have the funds, ability, or desire to give them a good upbringing. This leads to them largely being poor and uneducated. This creates more adults that republicans want. Poor, ignorant, and in jail, or poor, ignorant, and voting republican.

      Not to say that every unwanted baby ends up this way. My mother was adopted and now at 50 has an amazing relationship with both the parents that raised her and the mother that gave birth to her. But the system as a whole is designed for these children to fail.

    • mookulator@lemmy.worldOP
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      Yeah here’s a take that resonates with my cynicism about Republican politicians. They literally see it as a way to get more numbers in the long run because they know it disproportionally affects poor people (ei forces them to have more kids) and they know they can get those people to vote for them through other manipulation.

      Seems like a pretty long con though right? The same cynicism tells me these politicians just care about short term wins.

    • zaph@lemmy.world
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      Girlfriend is pregnant? Better be a man and drop out of school so you can get a job. I hear the military is hiring…

      I feel personally attacked.

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    The anti-choice crowd isn’t the type you’re seeing on the internet. At most they have Facebook, but really a lot of them are piping Fox News into their eyeballs 11 hours a day.

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      My extended family watches Fox News so much the logo is literally burned into the TV even when it is turned off. It’s deeply disturbing.

    • mookulator@lemmy.worldOP
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      I’m not basing my statement (about American sentiment) on what I see on the internet though! The polls and votes seem to support abortion access.

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        You’re right that even among the republican base, abortion rights area slightly majority accepted, except in the case of the far right and religious extremists. I don’t really think the republicans in office care about religion at all, I think they care about money.

        The only thing then that makes any sense to me is that declining population growth is seen by some as an existential threat to capitalism and their way of life. Removing abortion rights means more population. They don’t care if that population is going to struggle with a difficult life, they only need them to work in the factories and serve them hamburgers anyway.

        It’s a bit conspiracy-like, but I struggle to come up with other explanations for this. I don’t accept that they’re doing it because of their strong religious values 🙄

    • Clent@lemmy.world
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      They are definitely on Facebook.

      I seek them out in their political groups. They are as batshit crazy as you might imagine.

      Their echo chambers are full of double think.

      Their lack of logical reasoning is unquestioned.

      These people stick their noses up at foxnews.

      Those are the surface level crazies. It goes so much deeper.

  • Cylusthevirus@kbin.social
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    Republican electoral fortunes rely on the Evangelical Christian vote. Without them, they lose most of the time. But in the 70s, some Republican strategist realized they could use them to win, so this happened. It’s a worthwhile read.

    Basically they realized that here was a giant bloc of people who were kinda easy to manipulate (and pretty racist). That’s the Modern Republican target demo in a nutshell.

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    Republicans increasingly rely on the most extreme voting base for energy. It works mostly because we only have two viable parties and even the less extreme Republicans think the extreme right is the lesser of two evils. How many Republicans do you suppose will wring their hands in 2024 but vote for MAGA candidates and Trump anyway? Almost all, even if they say otherwise. We know preference falsification is a thing now. People will just lie if they’re too embarrassed to admit what they’re doing.

    • Rolder@reddthat.com
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      Even then, it still doesn’t make sense to push so hard for restricting abortion. The extreme righters will vote Republican regardless, and they run the risk of alienating the center/undecided voters. The vote margins when they win were already super thin as it was…

      • scarabic@lemmy.world
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        It’s a question of which side will see more voters activated by the issue, and go on to vote: remember that winning is largely about generating the momentum for people who already support you to vote at all, not just swaying hearts and minds to vote for you. It’s barely that latter at all.

        So they calculate they can get more church ladies and reactionary males to get fired up about protecting babies and punishing jezebels than the democrats can get people fired up about protecting women’s healthcare. Given how shafted women are across the board, betting on hate may be a winning move.

      • Overzeetop@lemmy.world
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        Republicans (conservatives, generally) have limited empathy. Relatively few people will ever have the need to seek an abortion as a percentage of the population - only half are even eligible. The lack of empathy means they do not consider that it is a problem for them until it actually happens to them. For the base it’s a litmus test which allows the candidate to do or say almost anything and still guarantee a vote; for the rest who have never had to seek or don’t expect to need to seek an abortion, it’s a non-issue and they can cite more (American) moderate right policies like lower taxes and less regulation as their driving force.

  • TwoGems@lemmy.world
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    Because it empowers their voting base to turn out. To me that’s the most basic answer. So they enact policies that hurt others (something their voting base for some reason enjoys) and that gives them a higher chance of being elected. And the youth (that won’t be statistically as likely to turn out) generally won’t.

    Though, this sometimes backfires with it pissing the younger crowd off.

    • lgstarn@kbin.social
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      they enact policies that hurt others (something their voting base for some reason enjoys)

      Let’s just say it - they enjoy hurting others because they are cruel if not downright evil. I’m not being dramatic here, that’s just by definition. Intentional cruelty has no place in government and they need to be stopped again and again and again like they were last night. To prevent being targeted by sport for the entertainment of these cruel fucks, vote in every single election you can - they certainly will.

      • mookulator@lemmy.worldOP
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        I’ll say I don’t buy this argument, though that’s just my opinion. I don’t think these politicians care one way or another what happens to people as long as they get more power. I find it far fetched to say they’re seeking power so that they can be cruel.

        Cruelty is a means (or side effect), not an end.

  • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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    I am a republican. It’s because they’re stupid.

    It’s obvious the majority want access to abortion. It’s their job to make sure the people get what they want.

    I’m pro choice. I feel most the arguments against abortion are religious in nature. As such it’s a false argument. Not everyone shares your religion.

    • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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      I feel most the arguments against abortion are religious in nature.

      Cue the religious person who will astroturf and say, “Well I’m an atheist and I think abortion is wrong because scientifically it’s a human life and should have the same rights as other human life.”

      Bullshit, they had their position already and invented a road to it. They got there because of their literal interpretation of the poetic, “Surely I was sinful from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” and others, and also a misunderstanding of the story of Onan (which also explains their misplaced hatred of masturbation).

      • mister_monster@monero.town
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        Believe it or not, there actually are some of us that don’t believe in god and think abortion is wrong. Actually, I hate religious arguments against abortion, they muddy the water and aren’t necessary.

      • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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        I’ll admit I support some restrictions. Otherwise it’ll never pass. I just don’t think your “generic your” religion should be forced on me. Roe vs wade was bad law and looking to be overturned. I get that. I’m most disappointed in congress not acting and how quickly the republicans went nuts on abortion.

        Polls and just talking to people show people want access to abortion. Kansas which is very red even said they want access to abortion.

        While I want republicans to win. I won’t vote republican until they change their stance. I find their stance extreme and I am not an extreme person. I strongly believe it’s your body and your choice.

        • Captainvaqina@sh.itjust.works
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          You seem like a reasonable enough person.

          Blows my mind that someone like you would still identify with the party hellbent on stripping freedoms, destroying our right to vote, and reinstalling a felony commiting traitor in the whitehouse.

          • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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            I don’t agree they’re trying to destroy the right to vote or stripping anyone’s freedom. Without examples it’s hard to have that conversation. Oh I don’t want Trump to run again. I am shocked he’s still so popular. Ignore the debate about his crimes. The courts have to evaluate those.

            As a person, he’s just a jackass. He’s not really a conservative. He’s just a jackass.

            Right now I’m not sure there is a single republican running for president I can vote for.

            • Captainvaqina@sh.itjust.works
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              Btw, there’s nothing to debate about whether or not the front running republican presidential candidate is a felon or not.

              The evidence is overwhelming and some of the most damning is public. Grand juries have just a 1% non-conviction rate.

              You will be aligning with a fascist party who seeks to elect a seditious FELON for president. Those are your people.

            • Captainvaqina@sh.itjust.works
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              Here’s more than 425 examples: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_efforts_to_restrict_voting_following_the_2020_presidential_election

              Republicans know they’re in the minority, and they know their “policies” are unpopular. So they resort to fascism.

              You personally might not want trump to run again. But the republican party is full-throatedly lying for and defending that filthy fucking traitor with all their hearts.

              So that’s what you support when you vote for Republicans. The end of democracy and the installation of America’s first dictator.

    • mookulator@lemmy.worldOP
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      Granted, but that doesn’t really answer the question. I’m asking why they’re so insistent on doing it, not how they’re maintaining power despite being unpopular.

      • Ducks@ducks.dev
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        The article touches briefly on it, essentially even though a minority wants these terrible policies, that minority are the GOP base and are generally single issue voters and religious. That minority has an outsized say due to gerrymandering. And there is also a feedback loop in this country where the GOP gerrymanders, they cut education and other social services, blame the “enemy” for the downturn in QOL for their constituents, and repeat. It solidifies the us vs them mentality that has these people voting against their own interests.

        Obviously super simplified outlook on it since it is a very complex issue. Other people in the thread have explained better.

  • Coreidan@lemmy.world
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    Because republicans are shitty people. There isn’t any other reason to consider.

  • Ragdoll X@lemmy.world
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    There’s a few reasons. From a substack I wrote a while back:

    A 2014 study analyzed the data of more than 7400 people and found that “perceptions of preborn humanness explained very little of right–left differences in abortion support, and the association between preborn humanness perceptions and abortion opposition was no stronger for those on the political right (vs. left).”4

    By contrast, a 2017 study found that sexism accounted for 30% to 70% of the left-right difference in abortion stance even after controlling for other relevant variables.5 An earlier study found that authoritarianism had a significant correlation with an anti-abortion position and aggression towards women,6 and a 2019 study found that right-wing authoritarianism had a significant correlation with anti-abortion stigma both before and after controlling for other variables.7

    A Pew poll also found that 33% of Americans simultaneously believe that a fetus is a person with rights and that the decision to abort should be up to the woman, so the idea that life begins at conception explains only some of the difference in abortion opinion, with it mostly being determined by factors such as sexism, religiosity and sex. It should go without saying that Republican politicians are mostly conservative religious men, and there’s far less diversity of demographics and opinions among them compared to their constituents, and the Republican party takes sexual abuse far less seriously than Democrats.

    In that same Pew poll they also found that while a significant chunk of Republicans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, a majority (60%) still believed that abortion should stay illegal in most or all cases. So Republican politicians may also believe that this is still a winning issue for them in the culture war (although the “red wave” that never was may suggest otherwise).

    The GOP also gets a lot of donations from anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion religious groups, so they are undoubtedly motivated to please said donators to keep the money coming, even at the expense of their voters.

  • kool_newt@lemm.ee
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    Republicans are not trying to be representatives of the people of Ohio. They are trying to rulers.

  • NXTR@artemis.camp
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    Republicans voters to fantasize about restricting the rights of their fellow citizens but when republican politicians actually implement these into law their voter base tends to be less than enthusiastic. The lack of a “red wave” during the midterms is an example of this. The reality is that most republican voters don’t actually know what republicans stand for. In fact, many republican voters view Medicaid expansion in a favorable light which is in contrast to their legislators who wish to shrink the size of Medicaid.

    As republicans pass more laws to restrict the rights and erode away the already rotting social safety nets in this country, the less support they will receive. Unfortunately, this doesn’t hold true when marginalized groups are targeted. Instead, their base tends to solidify their support. If they aren’t directly or indirectly affected then they don’t care.

    To answer your question, I think republicans thought they could get away with restricting abortion rights since their rhetoric didn’t scare away voters in the past. However, when they actually implemented it and it directly affected republican voters the mask came off and their support waned.

  • donut4ever@lemm.ee
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    Easy. It’s all about religion. Not that Republican politicians care about religion, their voters do. So, politicians do what their religious voters want. Banning abortion is one of them.

  • Hillock@kbin.social
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    Republicans know their voter base is slowly dying out. Younger generations tend to vote more and more Democratic. To counter this decline in voter base the Republicans have to increase the number of younger generations that would become Republican voters.

    A lot of women who opt for an abortion do so because they aren’t ready for a baby. If they suddenly are forced to give birth, they are very likely to be stuck in the lower middle class. Their children are unlikely to go to college. And then the Republicans blame immigrants and other minorities for their struggles. Luring them to vote Republican.

    After abortion ban we will see restrictions on birth control, to further increase the number of children born. Next will be restrictions on divorces, forcing families into the lifestyle Republicans want or further increasing the amount of lower middle class people. Who, due to having a child, can’t start fighting the system and instead are glad to hold a job. So it’s a win-win situation for Republicans.

    Also, everyone knows the no-abortion rule doesn’t apply to them and only to “others” because their abortion had “reasons” that are “different” from others.

    And of course there is the big fear of “white people are being bred out”. The fear of white people becoming a minority is very ingrained in Republicans. But the current economic system also relies on a constant increasing population. With birthrates decling the system starts to fail. So the only options are, increase birth rates, allow more immigrants, or change the economic system. Only one option aligns with Republicans.

    • Phoebe@feddit.de
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      You are right. I want to add some historical perspective as well (but sorry i am no englisch naitive):

      Marriage is importaint for a society who has land and money to own. To give it to the next generation, your kind. Marriage wasn’t that of a deal until martin luther, who declared it as a holy union between two people.

      Every republican tries to argue with Religion, but they don’t know where these stuff came from. They don’t care, cause if they unreavel it, they would see it’s all constructed.

      All of history woman worked in all kind of jobs. There never was a big issue about that. But the industrial Revolution chanced that. Since than rich people tried to structure workplaces, tried to increase their money. While making a huge impact on societys structures. Woman became unpaid housewifes. Put into care work. City Infrastructur, healthcare is for men, so they can work more and better. So their boss can make more money.

      It is scary. So scary. And frustrating. But it is importaint to deconstruct what conservatives are saying. They try to argue with Tradition or science. But we felt for it over the decades. We made fun of feminism, queer folk, vegans or PoC. Or disabelt people. We turned on each other.