By Karen Cross, NRL Political Director
Editor’s note. This appears on page 4 of the March issues of NRL News. Please share with family and friends.
It is not uncommon to hear someone question, “Does my vote really matter?” But in the pro-life movement, we know that every vote matters. We also know that elections have consequences. When pro-life candidates win, we gain new opportunities to pass legislation to protect unborn children and their mothers.
Studies show the impact of pro-life legislation—lives are saved! Conversely, when pro-abortion candidates win, they pursue the abortion industry’s legislative priorities, putting innocent lives at risk. This is precisely why we have to be engaged in politics. The lives of unborn children and their mothers hang in the balance, and our vote enables us to be a voice for the voiceless.
Sometimes just a handful of votes determines an election’s outcome. In the 2020 elections, pro-life Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks won her Iowa Congressional seat by just six votes! That same year, pro-life Congresswoman Claudia Tenney of New York prevailed in her race by 109 votes. Both women defeated staunch pro-abortion Democrats.
In Georgia, pro-life Senator David Perdue secured more votes than pro-abortion Democrat Jon Ossoff in the November 2020 general election. But, because neither candidate received more than 50% of the vote (Perdue stood at 49.7%), the race went to a runoff. Turnout declined in the runoff and Ossoff ultimately defeated Perdue by a margin of 1.2%. It was the closest Senate race of the 2020 cycle. The result meant that Democrats had taken control of the Senate.
Currently, Republicans hold a narrow five-seat majority in the U.S. House. When added together, the number of votes by which the five closest House races were won in the 2022 cycle was less than 7,000. Put another way, 7,000 votes, spread across five key districts, essentially determined that pro-abortion Democrat Nancy Pelosi would no longer be Speaker of the House and Republicans would regain control.
In 2022, Pro-life Congresswoman Lauren Boebert nearly lost her seat to a pro-abortion Democrat challenger in Colorado’s 3rd District. When her opponent conceded, he was only 551 votes behind in the vote count. Pro-life Republican John Duarte was declared the winner in California’s 13th Congressional District, winning by just 660 votes. In Michigan’s 10th Congressional District, pro-life Republican John James eked out a win by 1,600 votes out of over 326,000 votes cast. The next two closest House races were called for pro-life Republican Mike Lawler in New York’s 17th District by 1,787 votes and for pro-life Republican Zach Nunn in Iowa’s 3rd District by 2,145 votes.
With pro-abortion Democrats in control of the U.S. Senate and the White House, taking back the House in 2022 was absolutely crucial. And every vote in these races mattered.
On the state level, Minnesota underscores the importance of every vote and that elections really do have consequences. In 2022, control of the Minnesota Senate flipped from Republican to Democrat after the deciding race was won by a Democrat by just 361 votes out of nearly 43,000 cast. Soon after, the Minnesota Senate passed a radical pro-abortion bill that established abortion on demand in the state and invalidated many existing pro-life protections for unborn children and their mothers.
In New Hampshire, a 2022 state House race even resulted in a tie! Authorities held a “redo election,” but in the midst of lower turnout, a pro-abortion Democrat prevailed.
Polls may suggest that your state is not a battleground or the races in your area are not competitive. Ignore the polls. Treat every race like it is a tossup. Polls are often wrong, and the elections experts featured on cable news are not infallible. Who can forget 2016 when many of the most highly revered pollsters and political commentators predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the presidential election?
There are always surprises in elections and we owe it to the innocent lives that we are trying to save to show up every time. Every vote matters!