During the run up to last November’s elections, I was astonished that many conservative women would openly support Donald Trump despite his reputation as a serial adulterer and his openly hostile attitude towards the female sex. Then I saw an interview with one of these supporters who said, very clearly, “He’s an ass but I vote for whoever the Republican Party nominates because of ‘Abortion’.”

I’m sure there were many such women who may not have been as overt about their political affiliations but nevertheless held their noses and voted for Trump because of this single issue. And I get it. If you think abortion is equivalent to killing a child, you cannot, in good conscience, vote against it.

This is the uphill task many Democrats face as they try to win hearts and minds of conservative women within their community. Women vote, and women care, but this single issue has been a wall that we have not been able to breach. The irony is that many Democrats have similar feelings towards abortion. So why are we not able to bridge this divide?

Here I propose a script that we can use to talk to our conservative women friends about abortion. Essentially, they are my feelings towards the subject and if you share some of my thinking, feel free to modify it to suit your own experiences. Let’s reach out across party lines in an effective way so we can get widespread support for causes and organizations that support women’s health and well-being.

(I’ve tried very hard to be respectful to the beliefs of people who oppose abortion but if you feel the language is condescending or patronizing in any way, please point it out and I will fix it.)

My 2 cents:

Abortion is horrible. Anyone who has had one, or even a miscarriage, knows what I am talking about. We women are biologically primed to celebrate and anticipate motherhood, so when a woman decides to have an abortion, it is a gut-wrenching choice. It is also, probably, a last resort.

When there were a couple of times in my life when I was scared by the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy, I had to consider my options. And I recall that my gorge rose at the thought that I might have to have to terminate my pregnancy. I remember thinking, “I can’t do this. I know I have a choice, but I just can’t.” When it became clear that I was not pregnant, I almost collapsed in relief. I’ve talked to some close friends about this and they have shared that they felt the same way when this happened to them.

Now my daughter is in high school. She is the smartest and most responsible person I know, but I have to be realistic about the fact that a teen pregnancy is, biologically speaking, possible. I’ve gone through the scenarios in my head. And I know, choice or not, if she happens to get pregnant, I’m going to encourage her to keep the baby.

So, feeling the way I do, why do I still support a woman’s right to choose?

It’s precisely because I know that abortion is horrible and a last resort that I believe that decisions about pregnancies should be left to women. We don’t take this decision lightly. If we are looking for an abortion, there is a good reason for it. Even if the reason appears casual on the surface, like a teen getting knocked up and then shrugging her shoulders about it, it is probably because she was never educated about taking precautions, never given the “talk”, or doesn’t have a frank and open relationship with her parents that she can talk about these matters openly.

And the data available to us on this subject is pretty clear that when teen girls are given sex education, counseling, and access to contraceptives, unwanted pregnancies go way down. Here is a chart about abortion rates over time. You can see clearly that having the right to choose as granted by Roe v. Wade has not made abortions more popular.

There has been a move among conservative states to shut down clinics that provide such services. And there has been an all-out effort to close Planned Parenthood branches and gut federal funding for the organization.

At first glance, it appears that such efforts bring down abortions in states that enact strict anti-abortion laws. But data also shows that the abortions just migrate to the nearest state that offers the services. For instance,

An influx of women from out of state also was cited as a reason for Louisiana’s increase. Ben Clapper, executive director of Louisiana Right to Life, said abortions for nonresidents jumped by more than 1,200 between 2010 and 2012, and suggested new restrictions in Mississippi and Texas were a factor.

From the same article,

The biggest decrease in abortion, percentage-wise, was in Hawaii, where abortions fell from 3,064 in 2010 to 2,147 in 2014. Laurie Temple Field, government relations director for Planned Parenthood in Hawaii, said more women were getting access to health insurance and affordable contraception. She also credited the state’s policies on sex education in public schools, which includes information to help teens avoid unplanned pregnancies.

Five of the six states with the biggest declines — Hawaii at 30 percent, New Mexico at 24 percent, Nevada and Rhode Island at 22 percent, Connecticut at 21 percent — have passed no recent laws to restrict access.

So the data suggests that abortion is a matter of desperation, and that women looking to terminate will travel miles to find a provider and, if that is not possible, will resort to back-room procedures incredibly dangerous to their health.

Here’s my question to you. Isn’t it far better to not have unwanted pregnancies at all instead of having to make the difficult choice of keeping the baby or not? I am pro-choice, but in a perfect world, I would also like to see no abortions at all. I just happen to believe that the way to do this is to have more counselling services, more education, and easier access for contraception for women. And if after all these services have been provided there is still the rare pregnancy that is unwanted, yes, I believe in a woman’s right to make choices about her body, because bringing an unwanted and unloved child into this world is pretty cruel to the child and the mother. And in cases of rape or incest, I’m sure you can understand why the pregnancy may be emotionally devastating.

So let’s work together to reduce the need for abortions. Organizations like Planned Parenthood whose principal work is in counseling and health services with a very small part of their funding going towards abortions need your support too. What you are supporting is free or cheap health care, contraception, and services that help teens and young women make better choices. When it comes down to it, all of us women, no matter our party affiliation, want the same thing for our society and our children. We have much more in common than you think.