Democrats bet big on “reproductive rights” this election cycle, even offering free abortions at their national convention. But the strategy didn’t pay off. Not only was abortion a flop with the electorate, it was Republicans—not Democrats—who pushed the winning women’s-rights issue: fighting the encroachment of biological men into women’s spaces and sports.
“We will get. . . transgender insanity the hell out of our schools, and we will keep men out of women’s sports,” Donald Trump said to roaring applause at his Madison Square Garden rally a week before the election.
It’s easy to understand the Democrats’ thinking. Legalized abortion access has surged in popularity since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. In 2020, half of Americans said it should be legal in all or most cases; by 2024, two-thirds thought so. In the past two years, 11 states approved referendums enshrining permissive abortion laws into their constitutions. Still, in this year’s presidential election, half of the people who say abortion should be “legal in most cases” voted for Trump. Four years earlier, Joe Biden won those same voters by 38 points.
But this dynamic, too, is easy to understand. In the final months of his campaign, Trump had moderated his party’s abortion stance (“leave it to the states”) in a way that satisfied many pro-choice Americans, most of whom aren’t single-issue voters. Yes, he nominated three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe—but that hasn’t been as disruptive as expected. In blue states (where most people are pro-choice), abortion is widely accessible, and at least six states have no gestational limits. In Colorado, for example, you can get late-term abortions because you don’t like the baby’s sex or the father is no longer on the scene. Meanwhile, in red states (where most people are pro-life), you can get the procedure only in a medical emergency, and at least eight states have no exceptions for rape and incest. Even if you’re a minor.
While Harris and Co. argued Trump was hell-bent on signing a federal abortion ban, he consistently denied that claim, noting that he’d veto one if Congress passed it. His administration “will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” he added on Truth Social. His wife, Melania, released a memoir saying a woman has a “fundamental right” to “terminate her pregnancy if she wishes.” And, after he was chosen as Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, a Catholic convert, moved away from his restrictionist rhetoric on abortion and said he supported access to mifepristone, the drug used to induce medical abortions through 10 weeks’ gestation.
During the vice-presidential debate, Vance also told the story of a pregnant female friend, from his childhood neighborhood in Ohio, who’d been in an abusive relationship and “felt like if she hadn’t had that abortion, that it would have destroyed her life.” He added that, as a Republican “who proudly wants to protect innocent life,” his party needs to do “a better job” of winning back “trust” on reproductive issues. He stressed that the GOP should be “pro-family in the fullest sense of the word,” including giving women better access to fertility treatments, and making it easier for mothers to afford babies and young families to pay for a home.
Trump’s move to the center upset his pro-life base. But it didn’t upset their decision to vote for him. Trump correctly calculated that he could afford to offend such voters because they would never choose Harris over him. In 2020, as a senator, Harris went so far as to vote against the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which required medical providers to “preserve the life and health” of a child who survives an abortion procedure with the same professionalism as one “born alive at the same gestational age.” Asked in the final days of the race whether she would offer any concessions on the issue—say, exempting Catholic hospitals from performing abortions—Harris said she wouldn’t “be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body.” Even when asked if there should be term limits on abortion—a simple question that should have been easy to answer—Harris refused multiple times to take a stand.
Harris’s lack of clarity or compromise on abortion had a stunning effect: In 2020, Trump had a 45-point lead over Biden among voters who say abortion should be “illegal in most cases.” This year he won them by 85 points.
Meanwhile, the Republicans adopted a pro-woman stance that resonated widely with the electorate: a ban on male transgender athletes participating in female sports. And they pushed a pro-parent policy, too: barring “gender-affirming care” for distressed minors.
For the past four years, the Biden-Harris administration has promoted a highly pro-trans agenda, starting with the embrace of “gender-affirming care” for minors with gender distress despite growing evidence these treatments are dangerous. They also overturned a Trump-era edict that only biological women can participate in women’s sports. And in April, Biden’s Department of Education broadened Title IX’s definition of sex-based discrimination to include “gender identity,” essentially requiring all schools receiving federal funds to admit biological males into women’s private spaces and sports teams.
What’s more, as a U.S. senator, Harris had her own baggage on the trans issue. In 2019, she promised taxpayer-funded sex-change surgeries for incarcerated illegal aliens. She supported the Equality Act, which would redefine sex in federal antidiscrimination law, requiring Americans to treat men identifying as women as women with the full protections of the law—from schools and shelters to hospitals and prisons.
Democrats’ pro-trans positions were unpopular with the average American voter. Polling shows that nearly 70 percent of Americans oppose males in women’s sports and sex-change procedures for minors. Many Americans were appalled to see Lia Thomas, a 6-foot-1 transgender athlete crushing female competitors at the NCAA swim championships. And many were surprised to see Joe Biden invite Dylan Mulvaney, the trans activist who tanked Bud Light, to a White House conversation where the president called state laws banning medicalized gender transitions “immoral.”
Meanwhile, influential figures like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk have expressed outrage over transgender athletes in women’s sports. Days before the election, Megyn Kelly, who stumped for Trump in Pennsylvania, addressed “the women who are thinking about voting for Kamala Harris based on abortion rights,” saying, “I want you to know that she cannot pass an abortion law that covers all 50 states. She neither has the power nor the votes to do this,” whereas Trump does have the power to remove “the ridiculous Title IX revisions that Joe Biden put in place.” In Pennsylvania, Kelly said Trump “will be a protector of women. And it’s why I’m voting for him.”
The Trump campaign spent roughly $215 million on political ads targeting Harris’s transgender stance. As one ad succinctly put it: She’s for they/them, he’s for you.
“Several years ago, we saw this transgender issue as a major way to break ground and win over swing voters, and even some soft Democrats,” Terry Schilling, a conservative strategist, told The Daily Wire this week. Schilling said he showed Trump “voter impact research” demonstrating that the trans issue “shifted tens of thousands of votes in Arizona” as well as 72,000 votes in Wisconsin in 2022. “We wanted to make sure that he knew that this is a winning issue,” Schilling added.
Some Democrats saw the writing on the wall. Bill Clinton was one figure who urged Harris to moderate on the issue, telling the Harris campaign, “We have to answer it and say we won’t do it,” referring to the inclusion of transgender athletes in female sports. But Harris ignored him at her peril.
In the end, abortion wasn’t the animating women’s-rights issue in this election cycle. What motivated Americans is a much more modern issue that presents a new and more immediate threat: the erosion of women’s sex-based rights and protections.
Madeleine Kearns is an associate editor at The Free Press. Read her piece “She Was Arrested for Praying in Her Head.” Follow her on X @MadeleineKearns.
To read River Page on how Trump won the votes of young men, click here.
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