“When the obituary for the Republican Party is written, the year 1980 will be cited as the beginning of the end. Reaganism was in full flower, but the big tent was already folding. Republican leaders endorsed a constitutional ban on abortion at the convention that summer, ending the party’s historic commitment to women’s rights and personal freedom.
‘We are about to bury the rights of over 100 million American women under a heap of platitudes,’ protested Mary Dent Crisp, the co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee. Her colleagues assured her that the platform was nonbinding and that reproductive health services were not in danger.
But she was prescient. As pro-choice Republicans, we refuse to support a party that has rightly earned the labels anti-woman and anti-common sense. Our organization, the Republican Majority for Choice, the organization founded by Ms. Crisp in 1988, is shutting its doors. The big tent has collapsed for good.
As Republicans, we spent four decades working inside the party to produce effective policies helping women and families. Despite growing malice from an anti-choice faction, we kept our disagreements within the family. We redoubled our efforts to find common ground, rather than simply walk away.
But these successes [by the Republican Majority for Choice group] were dismissed by party leaders who became increasingly beholden to the social extremists who were winning primaries in our broken, gerrymandered electoral system.
Lifelong Republicans were booed out of state and local committee meetings for just raising abortion rights and family planning ideas. The nastiness escalated to personal attacks on men and women who had dedicated countless hours and dollars to the party.
We don’t have the space to outline President Trump’s transgressions, but it is important to understand that his rise is an inevitable result of the hostility to women within the Republican culture. Women’s reproductive freedom has shifted with the wind: Remember that Ronald Reagan once supported abortion rights, as did George H. W. Bush, Mitt Romney and Mr. Trump himself.
It is no wonder that women are voting with their feet. According to a recent analysis by the Pew Research Center, 56 percent of women identify as or lean toward Democrats. The gap is even wider among college graduates and minority voters. The party should take note that 70 percent of millennial women have either registered as Democrats or lean Democratic. We will no longer be available to help the Republicans appeal to these changing demographic realities.
It has become taboo within the party to even say ‘pro-choice’. Most of our supporters gave up on the party as it moved to the extremes not just on abortion but also on other social and fiscal issues.
This Republican Party is no family of ours. And so we say goodbye.”
B&B orig: 9/20/18
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