Pro-choice is poison at the General election. It does well as a ballot initiative, but the reality is that very few pro-choice moderates and right-leaning people will change their vote over the issue, whereas pro-lifers are far and away the strongest single-issue voting group.
If Harris and Trump were identical in every way except their stance on abortion, how many Dem voters would flip for Trump in order to vote pro-choice? Would you?
Because millions of people who are otherwise liberal-leaning vote based on their pro-lifer position.
The biggest reason Dems got a Roe boost in 2022 was pro-lifer voters who didn’t feel the need to vote Republican because they’d won and could focus on other issues. But running a campaign based on restoring Roe undoes that bump.