The new generation of younger activists are media-savvy than their predecessors. Anti-abortion groups learn from NRA

Even before Roe v. Wade, there was the National Right to Life Committee.

On this 40th anniversary of the landmark abortion decision, the NRLC remains the biggest anti-abortion group. But other groups have risen to claim the voice of the movement. Some, like Susan B. Anthony List, Americans United for Life and Concerned Women for America have brought on board a new generation of younger anti-abortion activists who are media-savvy, skilled at fundraising and able to extend the reach of the movement deep into statehouses and on ballots nationwide.


And even though the ultimate goal of outlawing abortion and overturning Roe v. Wade remains unrealized, this hodgepodge of groups can point to a continuous string of state-level laws across the nation restricting the procedure as evidence that they are winning partial victories along the way.

( Also on POLITICO: Poll: Keep Roe v. Wade)

In a divided Washington, new abortion-related bills are guaranteed to go nowhere. That doesn’t diminish the scramble to raise money for the anti-abortion movement, and it hasn’t slowed the growth of the disparate groups and their constant effort to keep up a 40-year-old fight. The groups have found niches from which they broaden their attack.

“There is a symmetry to the pro-life side,” Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said. “Where one group ends another one begins. [SBA List doesn’t] have a team of lawyers drafting legislation, we are happy for organizations like AUL [to do that] … We trust them to do their job, and then our job as the political arm is to advance those measures.”

Even some of their pro-abortion rights adversaries see the division of labor as a sign of the movement’s sophistication.

“The [pro-]choice women have always had this enormous array of different types of groups … we’ve had the lawyers, we’ve had the providers, we’ve had the electoral front, we’ve had the women’s groups,” said Frances Kissling, former head of the abortion rights group Catholics for Choice. “As any effective movement would do, [the anti-abortion groups] have come up with a multiplicity of strategies that they didn’t have before.”

Tactically, they’ve also learned from the political tactics of the NRA, said SBA List’s Dannenfelser. “The most important thing that we’ve done is operate a little like the NRA does. … the ‘votes have consequences’ piece of the whole thing,” she said in an interview. “There’s a sense that they’re always watching.” Anti-abortion groups now similarly monitor lawmakers’ abortion-related votes and make sure they get plenty of attention during campaign season.

( Also on POLITICO: W.H. gun plan: End run around NRA)

These groups have smaller budgets than the NRLC — which had a $9 million budget in 2011. But they’ve got big media presences and recognizable faces.

Formed in 1971, Americans United for Life also predated Roe, but it was more of a policy shop and less of an advocacy group in those days. Today, its leader, Charmaine Yoest, is highly visible. She testified at the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — and has made enough of a splash to be profiled by The New York Times Magazine.

Dannenfelser was also front and center in her push for anti-abortion candidates in 2012 — and sought to keep the focus on abortion, not on anti-abortion GOP-candidates’ digressions on rape, pregnancy and life-threatening diseases.

And both Yoest and Dannenfelser are mothers themselves — each with five children.

Kellyanne Conway, president and CEO of The Polling Company/WomanTrend, said Yoest and Dannenfelser, along with Concerned Women for America’s Penny Nance, represent “a new generation of pro-life activists” who manage to get an intense message across in an affable, nonthreatening way. “There’s nothing scary about them,” she said. (Conway’s clients include Susan B. Anthony List and NRLC.)

That sense of accessibility may matter, given that Americans remain ambivalent about abortion. Polls over the years, including one this month by Pew have shown that many Americans have moral qualms about abortion — but a majority don’t want Roe overturned.

Kissling says these organizations have also changed the messaging. They don’t just talk about the fetus — but also about the health and well-being of the pregnant woman. “There’s a way in which [the anti-abortion movement] recognizes the women’s health, women’s rights approach is accepted by a lot of people,” Kissling said.

That strategy is embraced by Jeanne Monahan, who moved from the Family Research Council to take over as president of the March for Life Education & Defense Fund in November. The March for Life will take place on Jan. 25, and Monahan is predicting record-breaking attendance to mark the 40th anniversary of Roe, which falls on Tuesday.

“We do still see groups focusing on the baby,” Monahan said. “You will see at the March for Life graphic images of abortion. I don’t think that’s the right approach to talk to people about this issue — they’re placing sort of extreme focus on the procedure and the baby in that moment.”

“What we’re seeing more and more is research … showing that many women do suffer emotional consequences after making a choice related to abortion. So for me, I do really like to emphasize that abortion is not good for women,” Monahan said. (Abortion rights advocates dispute the accuracy and objectivity of that research.)

The outlier is Colorado-based Personhood USA, built around its drive to give full legal rights to embryos from the moment of conception. Personhood’s approach is generally regarded as problematic by other established anti-abortion organizations, who think the language of its proposed amendments is so far-reaching that it does the movement more harm than good. Personhood hasn’t yet gotten a single ballot measure or state law passed, and it suffered a high-profile defeat from voters even in conservative Mississippi in 2011.

For the other anti-abortion rights groups, the focus is shared, even if the tactics vary, says David O’Steen, executive director of the National Right to Life Committee. “The core message is abortion remains the same, the killing of an unborn child,” he said.

The groups say they work well together — even if a hint of jostling can occasionally be discerned.

O’Steen says the NRLC — which dates back to 1968 — remains the organization that powers the anti-abortion movement’s energy across the nation. It currently has about 3,000 chapters across the U.S. And in 2011, the budgets of SBA List and AUL were each only about half that of NRLC’s.

“We’re the federation of the state right-to-life groups,” he told POLITICO. “When it’s time to have volunteers work in a political effort for a candidate, it’s usually our chapter members. When it’s time to lobby for a piece of state legislation, it’s our chapter members. … We provide the people.”

He attributed the spread of state “fetal pain” laws to NRLC advocacy. Nine states have enacted those laws, which ban abortion after 20 weeks on the assertion that a fetus can then feel pain, and O’Steen said almost all were based on NRLC-model legislation.

But if there’s an occasional hint of rivalry, the groups says they mostly see one another as partners in a busy anti-abortion advocacy scene.

“One of the strengths of the pro-life movement is that it’s broad and diverse,” Yoest said. “We try to do our best to work together as much as possible because we are all committed to the same objective.”