This did not happen by accident.
In the run-up to last November’s election, the pro-abortion movement blanketed social media—where most twenty-somethings get their news—with ads about abortion. For weeks whenever twenty-somethings turned on their phone, they would see something like “Your right to choose is on the ballot. Vote!”
We always see lot of young faces at the March for Life, but it turns out that, post Roe, this is not representative of young people as a whole. The Supreme Court decision captured the short attention spans of these young “pro-choicers,” as they thought of themselves, and Democrats were quick to capitalize on it. According to Pew Research, 74% of 18 to 29 year-olds support abortion in all or most cases. That’s three out of every four voters.
And vote they did. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civil Learning and Engagement, this demographic turned out in much larger numbers in the 2022 election than in previous elections. To make matters worse from the pro-life point of view, nearly two-thirds of those who voted cast their ballot for a pro-abortion candidate, which is to say, a Democrat. Fully 63% of youth voted Democrat while only 35% voted Republican.
Obviously, the pro-abortion propaganda campaign paid off in terms of voter intensity, which is a key driver of who actually shows up to vote at the polls on election day. And here we find more troubling news for pro-lifers.
Post-Roe, young people are more likely than older Americans to rate abortion as the most critical issue facing the nation. The difference are significant. While 44% of 18-29 year-olds rated abortion as their top voting issue in the 2022 elections, only 31% of 30-44 year-olds did, and only 23% of those 45 and older.
These numbers suggest two things to me. First, the pro-abortion fear campaign was obviously highly successful at stampeding young people to the polls to protect their “reproductive rights,” even in states where these “rights” were not in danger.
Second, some pro-lifers, reveling in their victory over Roe, became complacent. We—that is to say, you and I and every other pro-lifer—should have been out telling people that, while we have won a battle in overturning Roe, the war for Life is still raging. We should have been out hustling the vote, and ensuring that our people got to the polls.
Above all, we should have been doing more outreach to young people. It’s obvious that the young care deeply about the questions surrounding Life. After all, that’s how the pro-aborts were able to mobilize them in the first place. But, in the majority of cases, they are currently on the wrong side of the issue.
In the 2022 election, it was left to the pro-abortion movement to seize the initiative and, largely unopposed, drive the youth to the polls. The youth turnout was one of the highest in decades, second only to the 2018 midterm elections, in which the Democrats gained 41 seats in the House. Although Republicans did win the popular vote, the turnout among the youth in key states turned the expected Red Wave into a Red Trickle.
The youth turnout also accounts for some of the more shocking outcomes on referenda. A majority of Montanans voted 52% to 47% not to try and save the lives of infants born alive after a failed abortion. In other words, they voted in favor of infanticide.
President Donald Trump, in commenting on the 2022 midterms, lamented the lack of pro-life energy going into Election Day. “I was a little disappointed because I thought [pro-lifers] could have fought much harder…a lot of them didn’t fight or weren’t around to fight,” he said.
I think a lot of us share his disappointment with the outcome. We must do better.
With the overturning of Roe v. Wade—which would not have happened absent Trump—we have won a war.
But the battle for Life rages on.
