Eye on Virginia: How Republicans talk about abortion could shape the election outcome

As most of the country is just gearing up for the next election, Virginia is already at the height of its election season. The November 2023 general election in the Commonwealth will give the country at look at what to expect in races across the country next year. And one of the most interesting variables to watch will be what the candidates and, ultimately, the voters have to say about abortion.  

In the last Virginia statewide elections in 2021, Republicans saw major wins, including all three state executive offices and a majority of seats in the House of Delegates. Virginia Republicans were able to achieve these victories by going on offense in their messaging on education and economic issues.

Our statewide candidates understood intuitively that Democrats had jumped the shark in their rhetoric on the key issues voters cared about, especially the now infamous gaffe by former Governor Terry McAuliffe on the role of parents in their children’s education.  

This time, Virginia Democrats are attempting to take the same approach, believing that last year’s Supreme Court decision to overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision could prove to be equally decisive.

The instinct of many Republicans in Virginia and beyond is to take a defensive posture on abortion and focus heavily on the specific features of their pro-life positions, such as what exceptions they would or would not accept and what timelines they deem appropriate. 

This is the wrong approach. It cedes the emotional storytelling to the Democrats, negates the logical underpinnings of the pro-life arguments, and alienates voters on both sides of the abortion issue. Why, in the wake of one of the most significant Supreme Court victories of our lifetime, would Republicans speak from a position of weakness and not strength?

Virginia Republicans should take a page from their own 2021 playbook and apply an offensive strategy, putting the Democrats on defense.

Virginia Democrats have already given Virginia Republicans plenty of room to take this approach. In 2019, Democrat Delegate Kathy Tran (D–Fairfax) made national headlines after introducing a bill to allow for late term abortions. In comments that she later walked back after extreme backlash, she even stated that her bill would allow for a mother to abort her child at the moment of labor, just before birth.  

At the same time, Virginia’s former Democratic Governor, Ralph Northam, who also happens to be a medical doctor, discussed his support for the measure by endorsing post-birth abortions for babies born disabled or deformed.

“The infant would be delivered,” he said in a WTOP radio interview. “The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

What he is describing here is not even an abortion. This is his way of endorsing the practice of medically neglecting and thereby killing an already-born, treatable baby.

So even among pro-choice voters, the positions of leading Virginia Democrats are quite radical, far beyond what the average Virginia voter would support. Virginia Republicans should be aggressively forcing their Democrat opponents to answer for and defend these extreme positions.

When approaching this issue from a position of offense instead of defense, Republican candidates will find themselves in a position to talk about necessary economic policy fixes as an attack on the abortion industry. After all, is there any more grim indicator of economic hardship in society than doctors killing unborn children because their parents cannot afford them? 

Republican candidates should be running on creating an economic environment in which no parent ever feels forced into such a horrific and false choice.

One Virginia candidate for re-election, Delegate Kim Taylor (R–Dinwiddie), seems to be taking this approach. When interviewed about specifics on abortion laws, Taylor said that “a woman should never be made to feel that her right to motherhood is being denied by circumstance,” and went on to detail her emphasis on economic development. 

Notably, in 2021, Taylor won her seat in a district with an 18-point Democratic advantage, and thus secured the Republicans’ majority.

Based on the cookie cutter ads that almost every Democrat in Virginia is running, they clearly believe that attacking Republicans on abortion is a winner. Republicans who give them a pass on their party’s position are ceding the field and potentially the slim majority they hold in the House of Delegates. 

Virginia Republicans (and Republicans nationwide) should view this apparent focus on abortion by the Democrats as an opportunity to put the focus where it belongs — on the extreme abortion policies that Democrats have espoused in recent years, and on providing economic answers to the false perception that abortion is necessary for women and families to succeed. If they do this, they will have a compelling argument that pays dividends at the ballot box in November.

Sean M. Spicer, a NewsNation contributor, is former communications director and chief strategist of the Republican National Committee. He hosts the Sean Spicer Show podcast. He lives and votes and Alexandria, Va.