How can Republicans win the abortion debate they're clearly losing? A strategic retreat.

It’s over. The broad question of whether abortion will be legal is decided. It will be legal and safe and widely accessible to women.

Republicans who insist on blanket prohibition are fighting a war they’ve already lost. They are not only being crushed in Arizona and across the United States, but across the world.

In the last 30 years, more than 60 countries have changed their abortion laws. All but four have liberalized those laws, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The United States is one of the four outliers. Its Supreme Court essentially overturned Roe v. Wade and sent the question of legalization back to the states.

Scorched-earth abortion policy doesn't work

Since the fall of Roe, however, the pro-abortion left is winning harbinger elections wherever they are held, in states such as Ohio, Kentucky, Kansas, Virginia and Montana.

In a new Quinnipiac poll, a record-low 5% of Americans believe in a blanket ban on abortion. Five percent. That’s not just a losing coalition. That’s desolation.

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It’s why Joe Biden is pressing the abortion issue in the 2024 presidential election and Donald Trump is ducking it.

In Arizona, Democrats enjoy enormous momentum as they recently won the vote to repeal an 1864 near-total ban on abortion and are likely to pass a ballot measure in November that will enshrine abortion rights in the Arizona Constitution.

Also in November, Arizona Democrats hope to ride abortion to near total control of the state by flipping the House and Senate. They already have the governor’s office, the attorney general, the secretary of state and — more or less — the state’s two U.S. Senate seats.

This despite Republicans holding a 240,000-plus voter registration edge.

What can anti-abortion Republicans do?

If you are a Republican who wants to stop abortion, what options are left?

• You can surrender, and abortion will march on, only this time with a victorious left that doesn’t just tolerate it but celebrates it.

• You can fight on. You can continue to use the Republican Party to press for broad abortion bans. But if you do, you will help Democrats take total control of the state and the country. That won’t be a win for unborn children.

• Or you can stake out new ground upon which to fight.

Already Republican leadership is beginning to move in that direction. Donald Trump has said he could embrace a 15-week ban on abortion. With 93% of abortions already happening in the first 13 weeks, this is conceding that more than 9 of 10 abortions will be legal.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the million-plus-member Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said, “We will oppose any presidential candidate who refuses to embrace at a minimum a 15-week national standard to stop painful late-term abortions while allowing states to enact further protections.”

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Dannenfelser was setting the limits for what is acceptable in Republican candidates, but that’s a pretty permissive ceiling. In Arizona, 95% of abortions are performed in the first 15 weeks.

The American people have decided they want most abortions to be legal. And conservatives are likely to continue losing if they fight these headwinds in courts and legislatures.

Step 1: Win over the culture on children

Before you can win the abortion debate there, you have to win the culture. And that’s a different sort of contest.

That’s about pressing a message on major platforms that parenting and children are among the greatest joys in life — not something to avoid or forever put off, but to pursue and embrace.

Our culture sends all kinds of negative messages to young people that children are a burden and a threat to the future of the planet. The people who prize children need to counter those signals aggressively on social media, television and film.

Promote birth with all the powerful messaging at hand — the testimonials of parents and grandparents who can speak to the blessing of children and how they make you better people by raising them.

Then on the legal front, start pressing laws specifically aimed at the tiny percentage of unborn children who are healthy and could thrive outside the womb only to be aborted late-term by their mothers. Poll after poll shows that a strong majority of Americans still expect some limits to abortion.

These are unborn children with their own DNA, own heartbeat, own nervous system.

By focusing debate on this more-narrow range of healthy children in the womb, lives that are more fully developed and viable, you more easily demonstrate their humanity.

Then it will be up to Democrats to explain why those lives deserve no protection.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com. 

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Republicans can still win the abortion debate. Here's how