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But it wasn’t always that tidy. Quite a few people I spoke to said a shared outlook on abortion rights enabled them to date across the political aisle. There were a smaller number of people in relationships where one person was for abortion rights and the other was against. And I had a long conversation with one woman with anti-abortion views who said that in the past she wouldn’t have seen a future with someone who was an abortion rights proponent, but she is reconsidering that stance.
A woman who asked to go by her middle name, Grace, 24, who lives in a rural part of Virginia and describes herself as a liberal Democrat, said she started dating her libertarian boyfriend, who has voted for Donald Trump, right when Roe was overturned. “We had many, many conversations surrounding our views on abortion, as well as other political issues,” she said. The pair met on Bumble, and even though his profile didn’t list his political views, she suspected he could be a conservative because in one photo he was sporting a mullet. (When I asked if it was an earnest or an ironic mullet, she said, “It was pretty ironic, but he did rock it for a couple months there.”)
“So I was asking him his stance on abortion and everything,” she told me, and he supports a woman’s right to choose even though he is morally uncomfortable with abortion. “I was OK with that, because I would’ve had a hard time dating him” otherwise, she said. “And when we started dating, we weren’t looking for a serious relationship or anything. So the fact that he had different political beliefs than me, I decided it wasn’t a deal breaker for just a casual relationship.” But as time went on, she explained, “we developed feelings for each other and I realized what a good person he was, and the fact that political beliefs really aren’t necessarily a reflection of your core values, and that we had more in common than I had originally assumed we would.”
Landon Halverson, 22, a moderate Republican who has been active in party politics in Washington State, said the fact that he’s pro-choice and not a fan of Trump are his saving graces in a dating market that’s heavily liberal and Democratic. “The women I’ve dated here, none of them identify as Republicans, and it’s been an interesting conversation every time,” he told me. He found that he and the last woman he dated agreed on about 80 percent of issues, which was far from her assumption when she found out he was a Republican. Mostly, Halverson has found that “it’s not so much about the dating itself that a lot of these young women are worried about, at least that I’ve met. It’s the social implications of dating a Republican. What do their friends think? What do their family think, and do they want to be associated in their circles with somebody who’s Republican?”
Charlie, 22, who lives in New Jersey and is an abortion rights proponent, is dating a woman who is anti-abortion. “When I talked about my views on abortion with my girlfriend I found it to be a positive experience, because I was able to think about my views and clarify them both for myself and my girlfriend by saying them aloud. I got to better understand my girlfriend’s beliefs on the issue, and we both got to have a respectful conversation with each other on an issue we disagreed on, which I think was a sign of strength in our relationship,” he said.
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