In an election year full of unrelenting twists and turns, Republicans have added yet another unexpected plot twist: They are trying to rebrand as “pro-choice.”
In television ads and op-eds and on social media, Republicans in close contests are trying to proclaim a sudden change of heart on reproductive health care positions like abortion, IVF and birth control — mere weeks away from Election Day. But Republicans’ extremist agenda hasn’t changed. They’ve just read the polls.
Abortion is now the single most important issue to young female voters, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll, and a recent Gallup Poll found a record-high 32% of Americans say they will vote only for candidates who share their views on the issue.
Abortion is now the single most important issue to young female voters.
Protecting abortion has been one of the largest factors driving voter turnout in every election since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. Republicans spent years orchestrating how to take this very right away from women, even as Americans’ majority support for abortion has only continued to grow.
It’s a miscalculation that has Republican candidates terrified about their political prospects in November. They know they can’t win without distorting and obfuscating their anti-abortion agenda. So now, their only way into office is to deceive the American people. Even when the party officially adopted the policy of “leave it to the states,” it left loopholes that, as The Washington Post notes, leave “open a path to legislation or court decisions that would grant fetuses additional legal rights.” But the truth is, these extremist Republicans don’t have a branding problem; they have an agenda problem.
Sen. JD Vance demonstrated this strategy at the vice presidential debate, attempting to temper his extreme beliefs and feign being moderate to voters. Vance tried to claim that he has never supported a national abortion ban, despite having done so while also defending state laws that made no exception for rape or incest. (He even admitted to CNN in late 2023 that his party wanted to go where Americans wouldn’t follow, saying, “We have to accept that people do not want blanket abortion bans.”) He said he supports fertility treatments for families after he voted in the Senate against protections for IVF. And he denied that a Trump-Vance administration would monitor women’s pregnancies nationwide, despite Republicans’ already having Project 2025’s full-blown playbook for how to force states to report women’s miscarriages and abortions to the federal government.
The same sorry tactic is being used by his Republican allies across the ballot, like Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who ran ads declaring he would always protect access to IVF less than one day after he voted against IVF protections. Or Republican Maryland Senate nominee and former governor Larry Hogan, who is newly labeling himself “pro-choice.” But records don’t lie: As the governor of Maryland, he vetoed a law that would have expanded abortion access across the state and withheld millions of dollars that were allocated to train new abortion providers. It’s sad, deceptive and plain anti-democratic.
The rise of the “pro-choice” Republican is not only a myth; it’s also a losing strategy.
I’ve seen it fail firsthand. In the 2022 midterms, Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin spent millions trying to conceal his party’s anti-abortion record and worked overtime to rally extremists around a “moderate” 15-week ban, only for voters to reject his Trojan horse unequivocally. Instead, they turned out to elect Democratic majorities to both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly. We worked closely with the Democratic pro-choice women who helped secure those majorities. We saw that voters weren’t buying it. They knew that Republicans, if given the power, would quickly restrict access to abortion across the state. Now more than ever, voters see through such thinly veiled attempts to mislead them. The rise of the ‘pro-choice’ Republican is not only a myth; it’s also a losing strategy.
A growing number of Americans know exactly what’s at stake for our reproductive rights if Republicans win power in November. Recent research by EMILYs List — which advocates to get pro-choice Democratic women elected — found that while just 20% of battleground voters believed Roe would be overturned before it happened, a majority (57%) now believe that Republicans intend to pass a national abortion ban if given the opportunity. (The margin of error is +/- 2.5 percentage points.) We can’t trust what Republicans say; we can trust only what they’ve shown us. And everywhere you look — their voting records, financial records, old interviews and audiotapes — their real goal is apparent: devastating care against the will of the American people. The stakes of this election are too high. With our freedoms on the line, Americans need and deserve one basic thing: elected officials they can trust. With leaders like Kamala Harris, we don’t have to sift through ever-changing, contradictory stances on abortion — because she has never wavered in her belief in a woman’s right to choose, and she has the record to prove it.
Jessica Mackler
Jessica Mackler is the president of EMILYs List, the nation's largest resource for women in politics. For nearly 40 years, the organization has worked to elect Democratic pro-choice women at every level of the ballot. 
