“Rethinking the script on abortion”

The New York Times takes notice:

 Rick Perry’s voice softens when he talks about the joy he gets from looking at his iPad and seeing “that 20-week picture of my first grandbaby.” Marco Rubio says ultrasounds of his sons and daughters reinforced how “they were children — and they were our children.” Rand Paul recalls watching fetuses suck their thumbs. And Chris Christie says the ultrasound of his first daughter changed his views on abortion.

If they seem to be reading from the same script, they are.

With help from a well-funded, well-researched and invigorated anti-abortion movement, Republican politicians have refined how they are talking about pregnancy and abortion rights, choosing their words in a way they hope puts Democrats on the defensive.

The goal, social conservatives say, is to shift the debate away from the “war on women” paradigm that has proved so harmful to their party’s image…

…“The out-of-sight, out-of-mind mantra that propelled the pro-choice movement for decades is forever gone,” said Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster who has been hired by conservative candidates, anti-abortion groups and the Republican National Committee to help conservatives sharpen their message on the issue. (Ms. Conway has advised Republicans, especially men, to describe their recollections of seeing ultrasound images for the first time because it can be disarming. Coincidentally or not, many of the party’s presidential contenders did so in New Orleans this month at a gathering of the National Right to Life Committee.)

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