Confuse and mislead: US anti-abortion groups’ strategy to soften extreme bans

In the year since the US supreme court ruled there is no constitutional right to abortion, the anti-abortion movement is still struggling to define a cohesive vision of post-Roe America.

Now they are employing a new strategy: use confusing or misleading language to repackage and soften the more extreme types of abortion restrictions.

Related: US doctors’ group will ‘stand with’ physicians who disobey unethical laws

A recent example appeared in the Hill, where Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the most powerful anti-abortion groups in the country, wrote an opinion column arguing that the United States does not actually have any abortion “bans”. Even states with the strictest abortion laws have some “exceptions”, Dannenfelser wrote, so there are no true “bans” on the procedure.

“The anti-abortion movement is fueled by vague language and misinformation,” said Rachel O’Leary Carmona, the executive director of Women’s March. “The more they obfuscate, the more successful they are, because when their agenda comes to light and is understood by voters, they do not win.”

Today, 14 states have abortion bans that do not offer any exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

Republican infighting has slowed the anti-abortion movement’s progress in states such as South Carolina, where the conservative legislature was and remains split on questions the American public broadly agrees on, such as whether abortion bans should include exceptions for rape or incest victims.

The problems facing the anti-abortion movement intensified last fall, when midterm voters turned out in favor of reproductive rights, opting to protect abortion access in states such as Michigan, Kentucky, Kansas and California. Even before the election, conservative state lawmakers were apprehensive on abortion after the demise of Roe.

The journalists Dannenfelser addresses in her opinion piece spent the past year documenting the way abortion bans – even those with exceptions for the life of the mother – are effectively useless when doctors fear prosecution for misinterpreting the law.

In March, five women sued Texas after suffering severe health complications during pregnancy. The state’s overlapping abortion bans were supposed to allow for the procedure in cases where the pregnancy risks substantial harm to the mother’s health. But the law also imposes strict penalties on doctors – hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and up to 99 years in jail for providing abortion care. Doctors’ reasonable fear of misinterpreting the law, the Texas women said, interrupted their ability to obtain life-saving abortions.

The Texas case is not rare. In August, a Louisiana woman was denied abortion care, even though her baby had no chance of survival, and continuing the pregnancy would jeopardize her own health. In December, an Idaho woman shared on TikTok that she had been bleeding out for 19 days before she received miscarriage treatment.

Dannenfelser is probably aware of these stories, O’Leary Carmona said. The anti-abortion movement knows that “exceptions” are not workable in hospitals and doctors’ offices.

“But they don’t care about real people. They know what they’re doing when they use this kind of language,” O’Leary Carmona told the Guardian. “This misinformation, making suggestions about what is and isn’t a ban, that’s a real threat that should be taken very seriously.”

Twisting the term “ban” helps win the support of people who might feel uneasy about a law that prohibits all abortions.

O’Leary Carmona said confusing language and misinformation are longstanding strategies used by conservative thinktanks and lobby groups to make extreme political goals, including sweeping abortion bans, appear more palatable to the general public.

The National Right to Life Committee, a leading anti-abortion advocacy group, is credited for a recent Idaho law that created the term “abortion trafficking”. In April, Idaho passed legislation requiring any person under 18 to get permission from a parent or guardian before traveling out of state to have an abortion. Any person who violates the law could be charged for abortion “trafficking”.

“It is disgusting to label access to healthcare as trafficking,” said Tai Simpson of the Indigenous Idaho Alliance, one of the plaintiffs behind a lawsuit challenging the Idaho statute.

In June last year, before the court ruling on abortion was announced, Jim Bopp, general counsel for the National Right to Life Committee, released a memo outlining potential legislation that could be pursued “in the event Roe v Wade is overturned”. Part of that document included a sample bill outlining the term “abortion trafficking”.

Simpson said Idaho abortion opponents used Bopp’s language to gain support for a controversial bill that grappled with the constitutional question of the right to interstate travel.

“They are misusing ‘trafficking’ to create fear where no fear needs to exist, to create a crime where no crime exists,” she said.