Judge Susan Crawford’s resounding victory in the April election that determined ideological control of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court should alarm Republicans. Crawford won by 10 points even though her conservative opponent received $8 million more in donations than she did. The result underscores a glaring vulnerability: the GOP’s failure to articulate a compelling stance on abortion. For Republicans eyeing state offices in 2026, this election is a clarion call to rethink their approach to an issue that now helps shape electoral outcomes.
Abortion was one of the issues that dominated the Wisconsin court race. Last year, polling by Marquette University Law School showed in general that 15% of Wisconsin voters ranked abortion as their top concern, with 30% of Democrats prioritizing it most of all – helping give Crawford her commanding margin of victory. While only 5% of Republican voters in the state said they prioritized the issue of abortion, nationally the nonpartisan, nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute has found that 36% of Americans said they wouldn’t even consider a candidate who doesn’t share their views on abortion.
The subject played a particularly crucial role in determining who would fill the open Wisconsin court seat in part because of the power the courts have in determining whether a state abortion ban dating from 1849 goes into effect. The pre-Civil War statute criminalizes abortion except to save the life of the mother. It became the law of the state after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June 2022, but in December 2023 a Wisconsin county circuit court ruled it didn’t apply to most abortions.
That has effectively reinstated a 2015 law allowing abortions until 20 weeks of pregnancy and even longer in certain cases where the life and health of the mother is at risk. Yet the 1849 law remains under review by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the state’s highest judicial body; oral arguments were heard last November, and the decision is pending.
Though the 1849 law is dormant for now, Crawford’s allies capitalized on the specter of the ban to galvanize voters against Elon Musk-backed Judge Brad Schimel. “Brad Schimel would ban abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest or the mother’s health,” warned a Crawford campaign ad. “Don’t let him take your rights away.” With appeals like these, Crawford effectively made the issue personal to women.
Schimel, meanwhile, defaulted to dodging the issue where he could and treated abortion as political, not personal. Identifying himself as “pro-life,” he argued that abortion should be left to voters. But Wisconsin doesn’t allow citizens to initiate ballot questions, an approach that has proven effective at preserving abortion rights in places such as Kansas and Ohio.
As I’ve found in my research talking to voters, many of them – particularly women and independents – felt Schimel’s reticence to spell out his views on the legality of abortion, on any time limits for conducting the procedure and on any exceptions he would allow to those limits implied that Crawford’s warnings might well be justified. The Crawford campaign’s call for “women to make their own health care decisions” seemed like the better alternative.
My organization, Independent Women’s Voice, is awake, not woke. We need conservatives – without whom we would not have a policy agenda that keeps men out of women’s spaces and opportunities; promotes merit instead of diversity, equity and inclusion practices; encourages legal immigration and safe borders; and pushes for upfront, transparent prices in health care – to win office in order to implement our policy goals. While we take no position on abortion, we recognize that the issue is driving electoral outcomes.
For those who hope to minimize abortions, there are more compassionate and respectful ways to communicate their beliefs that won’t cost them elections, as the Trump-Vance campaign figured out last year.
While the “pro-life” label began as an appeal to the humanity of voters to oppose abortions of unborn children, today the term is too often interpreted as meaning someone who doesn’t care about women. Many presume, regardless of the stated policy positions of self-described “pro-life” candidates, that their real goal is banning all abortions without exceptions – possibly even for the life of the mother.
Unless banning all abortions actually is the position of a GOP candidate, they should avoid the misleading branding of the “pro-life” label. Instead, they should simply state the specific exceptions they support and the amount of time into a pregnancy (e.g. four months) that they believe abortion should be allowed – all of which are current GOP pro-life policy positions. Then-Ohio Sen. JD Vance did this effectively in his encounter with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz during the 2024 vice presidential debate, never using the “pro-life” label but instead describing his position with empathy, acknowledging that women often feel they have no choice but to get an abortion. Additionally and importantly, he acknowledged that the GOP needed to rebuild trust with women, and he reassured voters that he would respect the decisions of voters in different states.
That was a smart approach because, according to PRRI, nationally only 9% of Americans are pro-life as popularly understood: They want a ban on abortion in all cases. At the same time, according to Gallup, just 22% support the most robust pro-choice position that a healthy baby can be aborted at any time during pregnancy. The rest, the empathetic 70%, have what you could call a “life and choice” position: they support either some time in which abortion is legal short of viability and/or additional exceptions throughout the pregnancy, such as the ability of the baby to survive and the health of the mother.
Republican candidates in many states would be better off if they articulated a nuanced position that reflects this popular sentiment. But either way, they must lead with compassion for women who have had abortions and acknowledge, as Vance did, that there are cases in which women believe they require abortions. They must never shy away from talking clearly about their stance on the issue, but they should avoid at all costs words that are controlling.
Instead, they need to focus on being the genuinely pro-women candidate. Abortion is often less a choice and more a symptom of a bigger problem we should work to limit: unplanned pregnancies. Republicans should help women avoid such pregnancies, as well as recognizing many need support if they decide to carry the pregnancy to term.
Family planning and contraception are supported by 84% of Republicans, according to a poll conducted on behalf of my organization. But that planning should also include giving women more options for growing families – which is why we saw unequivocal support for in vitro fertilization from President Donald Trump.
Wisconsin’s outcome foreshadows a broader reckoning. If Republican candidates don’t change how they express themselves on abortion and find ways to stop the fearmongering about their positions, the party risks losing hard-won legislative majorities.