With Abortion on the Ballot in 10 States, the Pro-Life Community Must Regain Women’s Trust

When I spoke with her last year, Tonya, a stay-at-home mother of 7 kids (4 biological and 3 adopted), whose husband works as a utility locator, had recently voted in Ohio’s much-watched 2023 referendum on abortion. Despite some deeply-held pro-life views (“I wouldn’t shame someone, but I’d never have an abortion”), Tonya voted yes on Issue 1, the proposed amendment to the state constitution to guarantee abortion rights, which ultimately passed 56.6% to 43.4%. 

“I was weighing the good and the bad and how I should vote,” she told me in December 2023. “I was thinking of my daughters—thinking about how I’m going to help them.” She mentioned the importance of “birth control and women’s healthcare for my girls.”

I found it interesting that Tonya, who also describes herself as pro-life and votes Republican, would vote to enshrine abortion rights in her state’s constitution. She believes in the personhood of the unborn, only supports abortion when medically necessary, and thinks that adoption is the preferable choice. 

How does Tonya make sense of this tension? And what might this mean for the pro-life movement going forward in a post-Roe world? 

When I followed up with Tonya in a conversation last week, she clarified that if Issue One hadn’t been such “a big umbrella” that—in her understanding—also included birth control and D&C’s (a procedure she once needed after she miscarried twins), she might have voted differently. 

“If they had it [on the ballot] as medical abortion versus birth control-type abortion, then I would vote yes for the medical and no for the other,” she said, adding that it frustrates her that these issues are lumped together. 

“I don’t know if I’m pro-life or pro-choice,” Tonya said when I asked how she would describe her views. “I don’t know what I would label myself. I want to say pro-choice, but I’m pro-life at the same time.”

On the one hand, Tonya is wary of government restrictions because she’s uncertain of the implications for women experiencing miscarriages like she did, or her friend who had an ectopic pregnancy. (These are concerns we in the pro-life movement tend to sidestep but would do well to address carefully, compassionately, and directly, especially if we want to speak to women like Tonya—women who would otherwise be supportive of the pro-life cause.) 

Tonya strongly believes that the rights of the unborn have weight. “I know everybody’s like, ‘it’s your body, it’s your choice.’ Well, in my view, that baby didn’t have a choice to be brought into the world, and then you’re taking that away from them,” she emphasized. “Like, it’s their body, not your body. I believe once you conceive a child, they’re their own being altogether.” 

She also volunteered something that I did not expect: Tonya thinks that the father should have to agree to an abortion and have the chance to raise the child even if the woman doesn’t want to. She’s seen this happen to men she knows who want to be fathers. “I don’t think men’s rights should get taken away just because the woman is the one carrying the baby,” she noted.

That such beliefs coexisted with a “yes” vote on Issue One makes me think that Ohioans voting for abortion protections in the constitution is less a sign of unequivocal support for abortion rights than might be assumed. According to a 2022 Pew survey, nationwide “about a third of Americans who generally support legal abortion (33%) say the statement ‘human life begins at conception, so a fetus is a person with rights’ describes their own view at least ‘somewhat’ well.”

These complex attitudes may be the norm rather than the exception for many Americans, particularly the poor and working-class. As I’ve written before, based on interviews with non-college-educated women in southwestern Ohio, when you’ve sacrificed some of your own stability to bring a child into the world, it doesn’t necessarily make you more pro-abortion, but it can reinforce attitudes about the value of every human life and the rightness of having a baby even in difficult economic circumstances.

“That’s life," as Tonya put it. "Most of America lives paycheck to paycheck.” She and her husband faced an unexpected pregnancy early in their marriage before they were ready for children. “There are lots of resources,” she said, describing how they went to a Women’s Center, part of the Elizabeth’s New Life Center network, that helped them apply for Medicaid, enroll in parenting classes, and get needed baby items. “But I feel like they’re not advertised enough,” she added, which is something that proposed federal legislation could address by creating an online clearinghouse of pregnancy and postpartum-related resources, searchable by zip code. 

I found it interesting that Tonya, who describes herself as pro-life and votes Republican, would vote to enshrine abortion rights in her state’s constitution.

Still, it’s an unfortunate irony that states with more abortion restrictions are the least likely to have a strong social safety net (even while it is also true that as states have passed restrictions, they have also enacted some legislation intended to support new mothers). There is more work to be done, as the powerfully reported Pro Publica story of Mayron Hollis—a Tennessee mother in addiction recovery whose story illustrates the complexities of pregnancy in a state with an abortion ban and tenuous public support—suggests. 

Leanne, a 20-something waitress who is currently living in a sober living home and whose name has been changed to protect privacy, knows something about the difficult situations of women who “are coming out of addiction and have faced a variety of serious traumas.”

She shared that “it honestly infuriates me…when I hear the things that these women have gone through.” When it comes to abortion, for her the “biggest question” is “what services are available” and the “biggest concern” is with “the help that these women have.”

Like Tonya, Leann describes herself as having a mixed political identity on abortion: "I'm prolife, but I’m also pro-women’s choice; I  want to make sure that it’s the woman making the choice,” she noted. “Is she getting the services [she needs]? What kind of support does she have?”

In other words, is a particular abortion the result of choice—or constraint? 

As we talk, Leann sits in the basement of her residency, by the laundry machines, perched on an upturned 5-gallon bucket and using another bucket as a table for her water jug. It’s where she goes when she wants some quiet in the house, to think or to write. 

She described how “of any woman I’ve ever heard talk on the subject of abortion, I think I’ve only heard one that seemed to not have any sort of remorse or regret...Compared to a whole handful of other women who have had an aftermath experience of shame or guilt, experiencing pressure from other people, where maybe they were young, maybe they were in a situation where they didn’t know if the father was going to be around, or they didn’t have the finances, or just that fear.”  

Leann has spent a lot of time thinking about what she would do if faced with a complex pregnancy, such as in the case of rape. “I would choose to keep the child,” she told me. “That’s my mindset, my mentality.” She described a woman she knows who bore a daughter after being raped, and who has experienced a lot of joy and meaning in her life because of her daughter and grandchild. 

She also mentioned the father’s role in abortion decisions (unprompted by me), and the sadness he might experience if he doesn’t get a say in the matter, something she has watched a man she loves have to process and live with. 

“Eventually, we all pass away and what do we have to leave behind but our children?” Leann asked pensively, reflecting on her family’s history of infertility and the way it has shaped her view of children as “a privilege, a right, a duty.” As a child, she recalls singing along to Natalie Grant’s song, Held, about infant loss, and her mom, after a string of devastating miscarriages, telling her that: “The most important gift you could ever receive from God is life itself.” 

This belief in the preciousness of all life is in tension with Leann’s empathy for women in difficult circumstances. She worries that making abortion illegal might even lead to more abortion overall because of the backlash when something is taken away and that it might lead to “a desperation that wasn’t there before.” 

“Of course, we need law,” she said. “I think there are some situations where if it’s pretty late-term, I think it’s cruel.” When it comes to voting for abortion regulation, though, “that is still in question for me.” 

She doesn’t trust politicians on abortion, in part, because they seem so “confident,” on both sides. She would prefer a leader who is “strong enough to be vulnerable” and “human enough to openly say maybe there should be an entire barrage of exceptions and exclusions.” 

Leann recalled her own voting experience at last year’s election, the same one Tonya voted in on Issue One. 

“I’m just remembering it so vividly right now. You know, where I was at my precinct, and I’m at the booth, and I stood there probably longer than anybody else,” she shared. “Because I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, how can I make one decision or vote on a subject like this when I can’t make that decision for somebody?”

She said she remembers pausing and saying a prayer, feeling nervous. “I felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders just to fill in one of those bubbles,” she admitted. “Honestly, I felt wrong about it in so many ways…like I was playing God.” 

Similar to Leann and Tonya, most Americans do not have cut and dry opinions when it comes to abortion, and the conflict of conviction is sincere and deep. It would be good for the pro-life movement to meditate on this as it discerns where to go next in its efforts to protect human life. 

One possible way forward, as Daniel K. William’s compelling history of the pro-life movement suggests, is to look backward to its origins. "Many of the mid-20th century’s pro-life activists were New Deal liberals who favored an expanded social welfare state and viewed the right to life as part of a liberal human rights campaign to protect the less fortunate," Williams writes.  "In keeping with 20th century Catholic social teaching, they viewed the right to life not merely as an individual right to be protected from harm, but as a comprehensive social obligation to support human life at every stage of human existence, beginning at conception."

One can imagine a future pro-life movement that integrates its nonprofit crisis-pregnancy center work with advocacy for a more effective social safety net for single mothers and robust family policy. What if, for example, a parish right-to-life group continued baby bottle campaigns, and also called on elected officials to expand the Child Tax Credit? This kind of approach might increase trust and credibility with voters who have pro-life sympathies and sensibilities but don’t want those views to come at the cost of women’s well-being. 

Perhaps in that case, Leann would feel less stranded at the voting booth.  

“You know what?” Leann interjected towards the end of our conversation. “I’m not trying to change my narrative, because my memory really isn’t all that great sometimes. But I’m thinking about that moment [in the voting booth] and I’m like, did I actually vote?”

She thought about it “way too long.” And today, she questions if she even filled in that bubble. “I wonder, if I left it blank?” she wondered. “I may have been like, ‘This is in God’s hands. I’m not going to vote one way or the other.’” 

It’s a poignant anecdote. And with voters in 10 states facing abortion-related measures on election day, it’s a challenge for leaders on both sides to give Americans better choices more closely aligned with their values that support both mother and child. 

Amber Lapp is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, a contributing editor at Comment magazine, an advisor at American Compass, and co-investigator of the Love and Marriage in Middle America Project, a qualitative research inquiry into how working-class young adults form relationships and families. She and her husband David live in southwestern Ohio with their six children.