How Anti-Abortion Politics Swallowed Up the GOP

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

66% : Over the years, anti-abortion activists became certain that campaign finance laws were the enemy.
59% : Anti-abortion operatives helped make control of the Supreme Court a deciding issue for conservative voters who had no legal background.
53% : Despite the presence of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas on the court, right-to-lifers felt that Republican presidents still too often gravitated to consensus nominees who could sail through Congress -- the kind of judges who shied away from overturning a major precedent like Roe.
52% : As anti-abortion groups made campaign finance a priority, NRLC leaders also retooled their strategy to dismantle abortion rights.
48% : But even when other conservative movements dictated strategy, right-to-lifers understood more than enough about what changed campaign finance rules could mean for the Republican Party:
48% : It was no surprise that pro-life leaders would try to gain more leverage.
47% : He asserted that deregulating campaign finance would help pro-life candidates win and that, if right-to-lifers helped Republicans raise and spend more money, the anti-abortion movement would prove its worth to the GOP.
47% : Abortion itself was merely one issue -- and to the establishment, far from the most important -- in a broad right-wing agenda.
44% : By focusing on the anti-abortion movement and its complex relationship with the broader religious right, my book Dollars for Life: The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment shows that this partnership with the movement had consequences for the GOP that went well beyond abortion.
43% : Anti-abortion lawyers gave a crucial boost to the efforts of other Republican insiders, hoping to convince social conservatives and party leaders that opposing campaign finance limits was a matter of principle.
42% : Rather than try to influence legal elites, pro-life leaders set about convincing grassroots activists, even those with no knowledge of the law, that control of the court was essential.
41% : But to many Republican leaders, the justices they nominated and confirmed were often more valuable for other reasons, such as limiting environmental and workplace regulations, than for their opposition to abortion.
38% : The court's decision in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey convinced many in the pro-life establishment that their movement lacked real influence over the GOP.

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