MAGA bashes "single issue" abortion voters — but Florida shows these women are the smartest citizens

Owen Shroyer, a conspiracy theorist and Infowars host who was convicted on trespassing charges for his presence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, knows his audience wants badly to believe women are stupid, especially if they are cute girls who read books. Last Sunday, Shroyer posted a video titled "College Women Admit They Only Vote For Kamala Because Of Abortion," featuring interviews with young women on campus who believe in basic human rights. 

Shroyer's goal is not subtle. He's pandering to MAGA men who want to feel better about themselves with a fairy tale about how the cute girls who won't date them are a bunch of bimbos. To underscore this narrative, Shroyer floats irrelevant questions about "the economy." Perhaps if he spent more time studying and less time bashing students, he would know that this is what logicians call a false dichotomy. Voting pro-choice is also voting for a better economy. Vice President Kamala Harris has a solid economic plan to reduce costs and grow the job market. Donald Trump, whose economic plan is to gut Social Security and slap a 20% sales tax on all imported goods, would likely send inflation into the stratosphere. 

It feels a little silly arguing this point with people who plan to vote for a man who proposed treating COVID with bleach injections. They are in no position to judge anyone's intelligence. Sadly, however, this misogynist propaganda can be effective beyond soothing the fragile egos of MAGA men. All too many people are ready to buy the sexist narrative that, because college girls giggle nervously when put on the spot, what they're saying isn't worth listening to. But recent events show that these young voters understand the stakes of this election far better than any of their detractors. So-called "single issue" abortion voters are the smartest voters. They get that the battle over reproductive rights stands in for the whole constellation of matters that will determine whether the U.S. remains free and prosperous, or whether it devolves into an authoritarian hellhole. 

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Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is proving how anti-abortion views open the door to authoritarianism and even fascism. Shortly after the far-right Supreme Court ended abortion rights, the Republican-controlled Florida legislature passed a near-total ban on abortion. In response, pro-choice activists successfully petitioned to get a ballot measure into November's election, which would allow Florida residents to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. 

DeSantis pulled out all the stops to prevent voters from using their democratic rights to restore their human rights. He sent state police to harass people who signed the ballot petition. He's using taxpayer money to fund an anti-amendment campaign, which the ACLU argues is illegal. He fed disinformation to anti-abortion activists to be used in a lawsuit trying to block the amendment.  Now, chilling information is coming out showing that DeSantis attempted a likely illegal censorship campaign to prevent pro-choice advertisements from being aired. 

DeSantis' administration has sent threatening letters to television stations, threatening criminal prosecution if they ran an ad featuring a woman explaining she needed an abortion to avoid dying of cancer. Here is the ad DeSantis is so scared of voters seeing:

Court documents reveal that DeSantis ordered Florida's attorneys to prosecute TV stations that aired this ad. The state's general counsel, John Wilson, resigned rather than abuse the law to strip Floridians of their First Amendment rights. A federal judge has now issued a restraining order against the state of Florida, barring it from threatening to prosecute TV stations for running pro-choice ads. 

Shroyer and his MAGA compatriots want to reduce the abortion issue to a matter of "stupid" women who, to quote the GOP gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina, aren't "responsible enough to keep your skirt down." But MAGA men are the ones not exercising intelligent judgment, and not just because they would not like it very much if women took the advice to quit having sex. Pro-choice voters are the ones smart enough to understand the bigger picture. Leaders like DeSantis don't trust women with the fundamental right of self-determination. It's not a leap from there to believe that women — and anyone who believes in women's rights — cannot be allowed the right to vote, speak or otherwise exercise civic duties. "Might makes right" may start in controlling other people's uteruses, but swiftly leads to trying to control their minds. 

Even a staunch conservative like former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney can see the direct link between abortion bans and other fascistic crackdowns. Cheney has broken with her party over Trump's attempts to overthrow democracy and appeared at a campaign event in Michigan with Harris on Monday. "There are many of us around the country who have been pro-life," Cheney told the audience, but have started to shift after seeing "what's going on in our states since the Dobbs decision." 

Cheney singled out Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for "suing to get access to women's medical records." Specifically, Paxton is suing the Biden administration over a federal rule blocking states from subpoenaing women's medical records. This is not a matter of silly girls who supposedly have "too much" sex, but a serious effort to seize control of the most intimate parts of people's lives. Already, Paxton's legal allies in Texas have been using the abortion ban to harass women who divorce their husbands. Armed with medical records, the Texas government will be able to unleash all manner of hell on women for perceived transgressions against the "moral" order, such as having premarital sex or ending unhappy relationships. 

It's not just Twitter trolls who assert that only bubbleheads take abortion rights seriously Last month, a video leaked of the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio, Bernie Moreno, lambasting women as "crazy" for choosing their own voting priorities. He especially sneered at women over 50 who care about reproductive rights, saying, "I don't think that's an issue for you."

But, as with the college girls, the post-menopausal women who value abortion rights know exactly why this matters. The contempt for women's intelligence Moreno shows is hardly limited to believing women can't be smart enough to choose when to give birth. Woven into these attacks on "single issue" female voters is an unsubtle loathing of women's suffrage. The implication isn't hard to suss out: if women use our enfranchisement to vote for our rights, then we're somehow "abusing" our right to vote. 

Sometimes the anti-suffrage dog-whistle turns into a blowhorn. In Christian nationalist circles, the concept of "household voting" has become popular, in which only one adult — the alleged "head of household" — is permitted to vote. Since they also believe women should always be under the control of a father or husband, this is their method to advocate for the repeal the 19th Amendment while not coming right out and saying it. A speaker who advocates for this was featured at Trump's Republican National Convention in 2020. Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, has rolled out his own version of "household voting," in which parents would have more votes than non-parents. This sounds gender-neutral, but functionally fathers would control most of these votes. It's the same idea: Give men extra votes, so they can cancel out women's votes. 

The irony in all this is that the true single-issue voters are not pro-choice women. For such voters, abortion rights are rightly seen as the foundation of any system where all other rights and freedoms are protected. The true single-issue voters are the misogynists Shroyer is pandering to with his video. These are men who are so angry and threatened by women's equality that they would tear down our democracy rather than share power fairly with half the human race. The only shallow voters are the men who are so bitter that they would shred human rights to stick it to the ladies who swipe left on them. Abortion rights are incredibly important. What's short-sighted is being a single-issue voter seeking vengeance against cat ladies. 

CORRECTION: This article has been edited since its original publication to revise the reference to Owen Shroyer’s involvement in the events at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The article could have been read as mischaracterizing the charges on which Shroyer was convicted. Salon regrets any possible inaccuracy.