The Abortion Red Pill
How the Left could "Wake Up" America to the "Conspiracy" to Control Women's Bodies
On Tuesday, Arizona’s Supreme Court ruled that the state may enforce a 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions and suggests that doctors may be prosecuted for performing the procedure. The state was able to enforce the law after the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022. The recent decision will likely shutter all the clinics in the swing state during a presidential election year. This is a devastating blow to women’s health, for sure, and a political game changer.
Immediately, Arizona Democrats rallied with a commitment to promote “Pro-Choice” candidates this fall. Last month, State Representative Eva Burch publicly told her own abortion story for a very wanted pregnancy that turn out to be nonviable. Abortions like hers would now be illegal with the administering doctor potentially imprisoned.
Today, Rep. Burch made a statement that, aside from being politically prudent, was also rhetorically powerful. She engaged what has typically been a right-wing turn-of-phrase about a conspiracy of a small number of elites controlling American bodies:
“We’re talking about a small number of really extreme political leaders calling the shots for everybody else.”
The speech and this particular sentence reminded me of the right-wing use of the “Red Pill” metaphor, which describes a sensation of “waking up” (like Neo in the movie, The Matrix) to the ways in which the powers-that-be in corporate America, government, or media are controlling you against your interests. MAGA-types would claim these institutions did not simply have a left-wing bias, but a coordinated agenda. The right-wing typically uses the Red Pill metaphor to describe “media control” over the masses, a grand scale hypnosis to get regular folks to not realize the ways in which the powerful are serving themselves and not citizens or their customers. It has been an ongoing trope that has a powerful resonance for people feeling like they’ve had a “revelation” that Democrats (and many Republicans) are part of a shadowy capitalistic cabal and the MAGA movement is both the messenger of this news and provider of the answer.
In the Arizona Representative’s case, the conspiratorial language of “a small number of really extreme political leaders” describes the concerted effort right-wing media, religious organizing, conservative political strategizing, and judicial activism have made pregnancy and its complications run the risk of becoming a crime.
Certainly sounds like a conspiracy, no?
This phrasing could work wonders for the Left, Democrats, and anyone who thinks women should be able to get an abortion or save their life when pregnancy complications arise—without government interference. It also signals the powerful opening Democrats have to accuse MAGA Republicans and the machinery of conservative judicial activism of trying to control American bodies.
It gives the Left its own believable “conspiracy” to campaign on, a conspiracy that is beginning to have very real physical impacts on women and doctors around the country.
From Rights to Freedom
“Choice” and “rights” can sound like neoliberal luxuries in a robust marketplace. Quite frankly, “choice” feels technocratic and even outdated in a country that feels like it’s struggling to have options, let alone choices, in many of the institutions and markets that govern our lives.
“Freedom” from “conspiracies” or government control sounds like a life-or-death thing to fight for in a country that loves “freedom” (even Beyoncé wrote an excellent song on the concept). Abortion rights activists must move away from the “choice” linguistic-matrix to embrace the idea there is a conservative power-matrix (like the movie if you will) controlling them. Americans need to take the Abortion Red Pill and “wake up” to that domination — and use this language.
There are some other ways of messaging this health crisis that go beyond the staid language of “choice.” This fight is about more than choice or “rights;” it is about control and power. In the recent state-level victories for abortion access, messaging has followed this trend. One firm, Global Strategy Group, noted that “Should we restore the rights we had under Roe v. Wade?” was not as effective of messaging as “Should personal decisions like abortion be up to women rather than the government?”
Framing this as a fight about government control is a powerful tool, one that Democrats should lean into. Democrats are often accused by Republicans and MAGA-stans of using government to dominate the lives and choices of Americans. Now, mortal consequences of limited abortion access (not just for birth control, but for sheer survival or fertility) are hitting home as the “conspiracy” the Right has built for the better part of half a century is taking effect.
Embracing language about freedom also takes a rhetorical tool away from MAGA, whose rejection of vaccination mandates or fearmongering about “the media’s agenda,” feel less pressing than helping women survive nonviable pregnancies and maintain their fertility, or preventing doctors from being imprisoned for offering life-saving abortion care.
Already, MAGA Republicans are distancing themselves from the Arizona ruling and accusations of government control. MAGA firebrand Kari Lake once celebrated the near total ban along with her base, but today she walked back from it calling for a “commonsense solution.” Trump, who took credit for the repeal of Roe v. Wade, has declined to support a federal abortion ban.
Yet Americans have taken the abortion “Red Pill” and know who is behind this now.
Not Fiction Anymore
The Red Pill metaphor from The Matrix exploded online in the lead up to the 2016 Trump election. Whether it was the pharmaceutical industry, entertainment, academia, or news, MAGA-fans blamed powerful interests for not just having a left-leaning bias, but a flat out conspiracy against America. The metaphor of “waking up” from the simulation felt very contemporary: machines keeping us in a chemically-induced mental simulation to extract our energy? This sounds like our smart-phone laden and social media addicted civilization. The Red Pill became a meme from fiction that felt like reality.
The story in The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel about a dystopian patriarchal society controlling fertile women as if they were chattle, exploded during the Trump years. Many red-cape adorned abortion right’s activists, dressed like “handmaids,” warned of the fragility of Roe v. Wade were the Supreme Court to swing conservative. Such a reversal would leave states with the power to imprison patients and doctors who received and provided abortions — much like in the novel. At the time, many comfortable liberals thought the Handmaid’s-mania was politically useful at best or histrionic at worst. Turns out literature can be predictive.
The Right is very good at cultural strategy, understanding that underneath all of the technocracy and structure of government is culture—stories, ideas, vibes—that motivates all of us to action. Not just fear but consequences articulated in stories like The Matrix or The Handmaid’s Tale get people moving. With few Americans supporting such draconian abortion bans, MAGA anti-abortion activists have an uphill battle this fall.
Now is the moment to embrace the language of conspiracy because the impact of the conspiracy is hitting now.