Abandoning pro-life voters helped cause GOP midterm losses, pro-life org says

“This election wasn’t a blue wave, it was a blue tsunami, because the GOP ignored its base,” Dannenfelser said. 

Election analysts and polls have shown that continued his inflation and cost-of-living concerns, and the ongoing conflict in Iran that has led to higher gas prices despite President Donald Trump's vow during the 2024 campaign that he would not get the U.S. into more "forever" wars, are the main reasons Republicans lost so badly.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA) has detailed previously what they consider the importance of the pro-life vote to Republican candidates. According to SBA, Trump won 91% of the pro-life vote in the 2024 presidential election, but would have lost if one to two percent of these voters had not turned out.

Marjorie Dannenfelser said that as SBA’s voter contact program ahead of the midterms “reached nearly 4 million voters at their doorsteps, our canvassers found almost zero pre-existing enthusiasm among pro-life voters for Republican candidates this election.

“And it’s no wonder why,” Dannenfelser said. “Not only were Republicans silent on the abortion issue, but abortions have gone up since the Dobbs decision [that returned abortion decisions to the states] and the administration has left Joe Biden’s mail-order abortion drug policy in place.

“Their calculation that delaying action on abortion drugs would help Republicans in the midterms was a complete miss,” Dannenfelser said.

SBA ran a voter contact program ahead of the 2026 midterms, where canvassers went door to door explaining to pro-life voters and persuadable pro-life voters the “pro-life message” as well as “Democrats’ extremism on issues like late-term abortion and infanticide.”

SBA invested $80 million into the 2026 midterm elections in the efforts to ensure a pro-life majority in the House and Senate, The Center Square reported.

SBA put a vast amount of effort in the 2024 election as well with the “largest pro-life voter contact in history” that reached more than 10 million voters and made over 4 million house visits to battleground states, helping to win the presidency, flip the Senate, and hold the House, as stated by SBA.

Dannenfelser told The Center Square that “Republicans have a hard lesson to learn ahead of 2028.

“The GOP must stop running from the pro-life fight and start giving voters a reason to fight for them,” Dannenfelser said.

“Allowing the mail-order abortion drug status quo and parroting the pro-choice position of ‘leaving abortion to the states’ are not winning strategies, either to save lives or to win votes,” Dannenfelser said.

“We’re going to spend the next few years working to make that happen, and we hope leaders in the party will do the same,” Dannenfelser said.

Dannenfelser warned that “pro-abortion Democrats are going to do extreme things with majorities in Congress.”

“In their first 100 hours, they have promised to pass the so-called Women’s Health Protection Act which would ban states from having pro-life laws and establish abortion until birth nationwide,” Dannenfelser said.

Additionally, these Democrats have “committed to eliminating the Hyde Amendment so that taxpayers are forced to fund these abortions,” Dannenfelser said. 

“Republicans must stand strong against this, expose it, and more boldly step into the fight for life,” Dannenfelser said. “There's still time for them to get this right ahead of 2028.” 

Although Virginia voted to allow abortion up to birth this past Tuesday, Idaho voters rejected the ballot initiative that would allow for late-term abortions.

SBA released a memo directly following the 2026 midterms, where Dannenfelser stated that “Republican consultants got the campaign they wanted — and the defeat they earned.”