(LifeSiteNews) — Kellyanne Conway, a longtime GOP strategist and former advisor to President Donald Trump, is taking criticism from pro-life leaders as well as other conservative women for pushing Republicans to embrace contraception as a campaign message heading into 2024.
Conway is reportedly working with Independent Women’s Voice (IWV) CEO Heather Higgins to “brief Republicans on how they might get ahead of Democrats’ attacks that the GOP is anti-woman by talking more about protecting contraception and less about banning abortion,” according to Politico. Conway has long been a supporter of the pro-life movement, including speaking at the March for Life in 2017.
Conway, Higgins, and lobbyist Susan Hirschmann were set to meet Wednesday with Republican leaders “to warn that if they don’t talk about birth control and work to make it more accessible, they risk losing voters and confirming arguments from the left that the party that outlawed abortion in much of the country is coming next for contraception,” according to Politico.
Hirschmann’s other lobbying clients include pharmaceutical companies that make abortifacient birth control, including Merck and Pfizer, according to OpenSecrets.org.
Most hormonal birth control can operate as an abortifacient by “inhibit[ing] implantation if fertilization occurs,” according to a description by Verywell Health. Contraception also raises moral problems, since it deliberately interferes with the procreative ends of sex.
READ: Abby Johnson – Sorry folks. Contraception access increases abortions. And here’s the proof.
Higgins did not respond to a media request for comment on Wednesday. LifeSiteNews asked how she would respond to the objections about birth control acting as an abortifacient as well as religious objections to contraception. LifeSiteNews also asked about any data showing Democrats would switch to Republicans if birth control were free. IWV, through another related entity, pushed a pro-contraception message, calling it “conservative” as a matter of “personal responsibility.” IWV has also held pro-contraception messaging events.
LifeSiteNews also asked if Higgins could share a question for Conway, who is Catholic. LifeSiteNews asked if Conway had spoken to her pastor about supporting hormonal birth control and how she is reconciling her faith with her promotion of a mortal sin.
But in addition to the moral problems, young women are becoming wary of the numerous health consequences of hormonal birth control, which include depression, blood clots, hair loss, and heart problems. The news of the birth control push caused significant backlash from leading young conservative females, including some who are affiliated with Independent Women’s Forum (IWF). IWV is the political arm of IWF.
“Casual sex = unplanned pregnancies = more abortion. This is NOT the pro-life answer,” Heritage Foundation’s Emma Waters wrote on X (formerly Twitter). She is a visiting fellow for IWF. She also reshared other criticism of the Conway birth control plan on her X account.
“Telling GOP to push contraception is regressive, anti-woman, and anti-life,” Mary Margaret Olohan, a visiting fellow with IWF and a reporter for The Daily Signal, wrote on X.
She was sharing a message from National Review reporter and IWF fellow Caroline Downey who criticized the Conway plan.
https://twitter.com/carolinedowney_/status/1734990803481616504
Catholic conservative commentator Liz Wheeler also criticized both the health risks of birth control and directly called out Conway for violating her Catholic faith.
“You don’t fight against evil by compromising with it, @KellyannePolls, this is a TERRIBLE move,” Wheeler wrote.
“First of all, many birth control pills & IUDs are abortifacient. Second, contraception hurts women. It leads to anxiety, depression, breast cancer, infertility, and women who discontinue the pill find they aren’t even attracted to the mate they picked while under the influence of the pill,” Wheeler said.
“There’s a reason a whole generation of young women are rejecting it. Third, the contraceptive mindset is the root of the abortion mindset,” Wheeler wrote further.
She also noted that birth control allows “men and women” to “use each other as objects” and “degrades [female] fertility to something that needs to be medicated and destroyed.” She also noted that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger supported birth control as “race control.”
“You’re Catholic, Kellyanne. You know better than to propagate contraception for political points. It won’t work anyway, and it’s gravely immoral,” Wheeler wrote. (Conway also accepted an award from the Log Cabin Republicans after she affirmed her daughter’s homosexual desires.)
Alex Clark, a conservative commentator with Turning Point USA, also criticized Conway.
“I will DIE ON THIS HILL: women don’t need abortion OR birth control,” Clark wrote. “We need EDUCATION ON BOTH. Republicans should be championing THAT.”
Alexandra Desanctis Marr, also with National Review and the Ethics and Public Policy Center, called the birth control push a “mistaken strategy.”
https://twitter.com/xan_desanctis/status/1734946507252511088
“Statistics actually suggest that increased access to birth control *increases* the abortion rate because it leads to more unplanned pregnancies,” Marr wrote, while encouraging people to check out the work of Professor Michael New, at Catholic University of America. New spoke to LifeSiteNews for this article.
Birth control also doesn’t reduce abortion, experts note
Birth control can never be morally justified because it separates the unitive act from the procreative. But Conway’s premise is also flawed when she argues that birth control can be used to reduce abortions, and therefore pro-lifers should support it. This is the same position as Ambassador Nikki Haley, a 2024 Republican presidential candidate.
Efforts to increase access to contraception “are ineffective at best or counterproductive at worst,” according to Professor New, a social scientist at CUA.
“Twenty-three studies published in the period 1998–2006 all show that easier access to emergency contraception failed to achieve any statistically significant reduction in rates either of unintended pregnancy or abortion,” New, an expert on pro-life policies and polling, wrote yesterday in National Review.
“Pro-lifers have wisely realized that greater access to contraception often results in more sexual activity, more unintended pregnancies, and more abortions,” he added.
He provided additional comments to LifeSiteNews about Conway’s political strategy. “If Kellyanne Conway wants Republican elected officials to embrace a strategy that is good politics and good strategy, she should encourage them to promote the outstanding work of the nearly 3,000 pro-life pregnancy help centers that provide valuable services and material resources to thousands of new mothers and pregnant women every day,” New told LifeSiteNews.
Ryan Bomberger, co-founder of the Radiance Foundation, also questioned Conway’s political approach.
“Democrats literally celebrate the violence of abortion and the silence of the GOP. The Republican Party should be proud of its defense of women and their children (born and unborn),” Bomberger told LifeSiteNews. “Why should they shy away from exposing the abortion industry’s exploitation of women and the billion-dollar commercialization of killing the unborn? We should be a society that is principle-driven, not poll-driven.”