| | | The Ads That Won the Kansas Abortion Referendum
Avoiding progressive pieties, the ad makers aimed at the broad, persuadable middle of the electorate.
Three months ago, after the leak of the Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, the House Pro-Choice Caucus caused a stir by, ironically, deeming the word choice to be “harmful language.” It encouraged the use of the word decision instead. The messaging guidelines also rejected the “safe, legal, and rare” abortion formulation that was Bill Clinton’s mantra in the 1990s in favor of “safe, legal, and accessible.”
Even before the leak, activist groups and establishment insiders were bickering over whether Democrats should freely and proudly use the word abortion or rely more on indirect phrases like “reproductive freedom.”
These disputes reflected generational and ideological divides in the Democratic Party, between moderate elders accustomed to playing defense in the abortion debate and younger progressives eager to seize the offensive.
But for those who won the fight to protect abortion rights in Kansas, all that noise..............................
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