One-time Republican talks about how her pro-choice views conflicted with the party
Susan Bevan ran an abortion rights group in the GOP before leaving during Trump presidency
Abortion politics is usually seen as an extension of partisanship, with Republicans fighting for one thing and Democrats for another. But most people’s perceptions of it are generally far more nuanced and don’t neatly split along traditional battle lines.
Susan Bevan, who once ran Republican Majority for Choice, an abortion rights group in the GOP, spoke to me about the troubling tendency to purify political beliefs along a strict set of collective views, many of which conflict with each other when viewed from a more skeptical perspective.
“They have somehow lost their way with respect to individual autonomy and personal responsibility,” Bevan said.
Bevan was a Republican for most of her adult life until the Trump presidency. That’s when she publicly broke and distanced herself from the party, including in an editorial in the New York Times.
Bevan likened the discussions around reproductive issues to the debate over the Israeli-Palestine conflict. There isn’t enough education on the topic to weigh in on it, let alone craft a policy regarding it.
“There's an incredible lack of knowledge and education,” Bevan said. “It's really an issue of people not knowing what they're talking about and trying to act on it.”
As many, if not most, of my readers know, the roots of the tension over reproductive politics extend long before Dobbs. For decades, Republicans exploited the issue without really thinking that Roe would be overturned. It was merely done for political gain.
Bevan said the party now has to backpedal on abortion because they’ve seen what happened in states like Kansas and Ohio, where an amendment recently passed to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.
“Republicans are getting a little bit slapped upside the head because they went too far,” Bevan said.
Bevan said that Trump was among the most craven politicians she’s ever seen. He had once gone on Meet the Press to declare that he was unapologetically pro-choice. Then, when he ran and served as a Republican President, he moved the country in the most antiabortion direction it had ever taken in nearly a century.
Bevan finds Republicans' often conflicting views on when and why the government should intrude on individuals' rights most troubling.
“There's no consistency in their ideology when it comes to this issue,” Bevan said. “And that makes me crazy. Because if you don't think the federal government should be involved, why should the state government be involved?”