The November 3 midterm elections largely devastated conservatives, as a blue wave rolled over the country, seizing Republican strongholds. The performance of the pro-choice party subset proved no exception.

Pro-choice incumbent Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) lost reelection to Democrat Troy Jackson in a hotly contested race. Pro-choice Republican candidate Michelle Tafoya also lost her Senate race in Minnesota to Democrat Peggy Flanagan. 

Republican Mike Rogers was defeated by radical Muslim Abdul El-Sayed (D) in the race for the Michigan U.S. Senate seat after Rogers made a controversial commitment not to fight the state’s liberal abortion law.  “The people of Michigan have voted,” Rogers said. “Abortion is legal in Michigan. And they have enshrined it in the ... state of Michigan Constitution.”  He added, “Will I go to Washington, D.C., and try to undo what the citizens of Michigan voted for? I will not.”

His statement stunned several conservatives who’d watched Rogers over his years in Congress and considered him pro-life.  It was, many believed, a sad effort to win over moderates.  Family Research Council President Tony Perkins lamented the shift in a social media post Monday. “Mike Rogers, who had a solid pro-life record in Congress, abandoned the unborn for perceived political gain. Voters in Michigan have the disappointing choice between Mike Rogers, who now says he does not believe the unborn have a right to exist, and Abdul El-Sayed declining to say Israel has a right to exist.”

He went down in defeat to the radical Democrat a handful of days later.

“I was glad to see Mike Rogers lose,” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, admitted to The Washington Stand. “And I hate to say that, but when I knew we had lost the chance of getting the majority in the Senate, I’m glad to see all the pro-choice Republicans went down in flames.  We need to shout this from the rooftops and cement it in people’s brains and finally put that whole question to bed about whether or not we can have pro-choice Republicans,” she insisted.

Hawkins explained that Republicans lack a united front on the issue of abortion that their opponents don’t. “Democrats demand ideological purity. So now, when they all get sworn in in January, they’re all going to be together that they want to pass the Women’s Health [Protection] Act, that they want to see abortion up until the moment of birth shoved down the throats of every state and every American in our country.”

It is “definitive” that GOP candidates describing themselves as “pro-choice” does not pay off, she continued. 

Policy Analyst for Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity Joy Stockbauer told TWS that the pro-life movement’s next step should be conveying clarity. 

“Moving forward from this election, the pro-life movement’s single greatest focus needs to be education. The general public, which sadly includes many elected officials, still doesn’t view abortion as a human rights crisis for the unborn — but that’s the only thing you can accurately call it. Abortion kills living, squirming, precious babies who deserved love and a shot at life,” Stockbauer underscored. 

“Furthermore, while pro-lifers wring our hands hoping that wishy-washy elected officials will take the bare minimum action once in a blue moon, children are being still killed in this country every single day. The midterms might have fallen flat for the GOP at large, but I pray this is the wake-up call the party needs to return to real conservative values. We must restore a robust pro-life agenda to the party platform. We must withhold support from candidates unable to articulate a coherent pro-life vision. We must clean house — from the top down.” 

Hawkins agreed, adding that the Republican Party needs to stop pandering to so-called “conservatives” who do not value the sanctity of life. 

“We’re like the desperate kids at the school cafeteria that just want more friends to sit with us, and we’re willing to take anybody to our table. The mean bully kid, the kid that’s a little awkward, the preppy girl, whoever it is, we’ll take them at our table because we just want more kids at our table,” she described the current state of the party. “Doesn’t matter if they’re not going to be our friends. Maybe they’ll be a little bit mean to us. It doesn’t matter. We just want more kids at our table.”

For Hawkins, the inability of the GOP to deliver more wins in the pro-life movement hinges upon its inclusion of pro-choice Congress members. “We couldn’t get done what we need[ed] to get done because of pro-choice Republicans in the Republican Party.”  That, she argued, needs to change.