Marjorie Taylor Greene praises anti-abortion protesters as Republican Party tries to win back women

Early voting began in Georgia on Tuesday with a historic number of ballots cast early. As we enter the home stretch of election season, it's safe to say that campaigns are making their voices heard to their final voters. So it's notable that the Trump campaign chose as the opening speaker at Trump's rally there… Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

From a purely political perspective, it seems unwise for the Trump campaign to put the MAGA fringe group in the spotlight just weeks before Election Day. Greene's speech was full of conspiracy theories, including that Covid-19 is a “man-made virus from Wuhan, China that Democrats have used against you” (starting at 3:30 in the video below) and that FEMA has discriminated against Republicans while distributing relief supplies after Hurricanes Helene and Milton (at 7:38).

But it was her comments on reproductive freedom that struck me as particularly counterproductive to Trump and the MAGA movement's electoral hopes.

A September report from The 19th suggests that many Georgians are thinking about abortion as they prepare to vote, and Trump and Vance have tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to woo female voters. Part of that effort involved Vance obscuring his previous anti-abortion positions and Trump downplaying his role in shaping the Supreme Court, which opened the door to abortion bans now in effect in states across the country.

With that in mind, Greene told Georgians:

Pro-life protesters – the bravest people in the country standing in front of an abortion clinic praying for these women to save their baby – to keep their baby. be a mother. The greatest blessing that God has given to women is motherhood. And I'm here today to tell you: Abortion is not a reproductive right. It's murder and it's the killing of a baby. They lie to women – oh, they lie to women. And it's disgusting. But these pro-life protesters are in prison today because they prayed for these women and for these babies.

It's not exactly clear what anti-abortion activist Greene was referring to. In the past, she has been repeatedly accused of lying about an anti-abortion activist who invaded and blocked an abortion clinic in 2020. Activist Lauren Handy was found to have illegally taken fetuses from a clinic to keep at her home. In May, she was sentenced to five years in prison. In another case in July, four anti-abortion activists in Tennessee received different sentences for their roles in blocking an abortion clinic in 2021.

But Greene's final message to Georgia voters – and women in particular – was that motherhood is “the greatest blessing God has given to women,” that abortion is always and only “murder,” and that vigilantes are taking it upon themselves to Stopping women from exercising their reproductive freedom are “the bravest in the land.” That certainly doesn't seem like the kind of centrist message that could assuage voters' concerns about the MAGA movement's arch-conservative political goals.

While the GOP campaign appears to have focused on two goals — softening its image among women and appearing less extreme on abortion — Greene's extremism undermines both of those goals. I hope Georgia voters listened.

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