It's impossible for me to over-stress how toxic the GOP has been to any kind of productive conversation about fetal rights as a concept and how transparently op

It's impossible for me to over-stress how toxic the GOP has been to any kind of productive conversation about fetal rights as a concept and how transparently opportunistic they've been about using abortion as a means to preserve power, lock in voters, and push back on progressive policies in general. It makes it incredibly difficult to talk to many pro-life people about abortion in any context, because there's a huge effort happening to convince Evangelical voters that: A) literally any sympathy for the parent, nuance, or lack of ferver is the same as wanting the unborn to die. B) it's a primarily religious issue and that being an Evangelical means voting a certain way and aligning with a set of political issues, and that conversations about abortion must be approached through a religious lens. C) that because it's a religious issue, there is one singular "correct" way to focus on reducing abortion, and any deviation from that specific strategy is literally a religious failing. I see people just shut down during conversations about abortion, like even talking about it is itself a sin. ---- There is still a lot of nuance; I'm not trying to lump an entire group together or demonize people or say that Evangelical conservatives all collectively hate women. But there is (to me) a very obvious intentional push coming from some parts of the political spectrum and from some Church leaders to eliminate any nuance or openness that those people have -- to get people to approach abortion though a very specific lens and to only ever acknowledge or think about that specific lens, because those leaders/politicians see it as a really convenient way to create an identity that requires people to vote/associate in a certain way, to demonize people who those leaders/politicians would like them to demonize, and to go even further and tie that political identity to people's religious security in a way that is inherently dangerous for them to question or examine. As a result, it then becomes easier for people to tie that religious identity to other political topics as well; the more that pro-life becomes shorthand for Christian, and the more that Christian becomes shorthand for "votes Republican", the easier it is to pick out other social/political issues (wealth inequality, LGBTQ+ rights, racial justice, even entirely amoral, purely practical questions about things like economic policy), and to say that deviation from the expected party position is literally a sin and that non-party positions are guilty by association with the enemy. And again, definitely not all Evangelicals and absolutely not all Christians. I grew up in white Evangelical communities; I see their flaws and their occasional strengths. And regardless of the flaws I still care about people in that community. But it is a very concerning problem that the Church needs to grapple with; at some point something needs to break and white Evangelicals need to decide whether their primary identity is Christian or Republican.