Hypothesis: The only way for a moderate Republican Party to exist in the face of a Trump-led Patriot Party is to give up the Pro-Life Litmus Test.
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You have 10,000 reasons not to believe me. It’s my job to convince you.
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Here are (some of) my priors:

1. I’m a man (for the sake of this argument).
On one level, yes, since I have no ovaries my opinion isn’t as valid as that of others. This being said, I still care about the genocide of Uygurs and the imminent murder of Navalny even though I am neither Chinese nor Russian.

2. I’m of the “legal, safe, and rare” school of thought on the matter of abortion, and I’d make an argument (different than this one) that opinions like mine are at least partly responsible for trends like this: https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2019/09/us-abortion-rate-continues-drop-once-again-state-abortion-restrictions-are-not-main#

3. My wife and I have never had to make this decision, either now or before now, neither together nor separately. But I still care about what it means as a human being.
See my argument re: (1.)

4. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican.
I have enthusiastically voted for Mitt Romney, John McCain, and (grinds teeth) Lindsay Graham, as well as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
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End listable priors.

Argument:
1. The Republican Party has been in an existential crisis since 2010 and the Tea Party. The roots are deeper but this was the proximate mover.
The party survived the 2016 election by consolidating the anti-HRC sentiment with even more white nationalism. It can’t last.

2. Donald Trump will shatter the Republican Party to bits (electorally) if it means he stays out of prison and his children can gain more power.
This means that it is 100% guaranteed to happen, especially with Mitch’s lessened status in the party.

3. QAnon has seized the Republican party at every level between the former POTUS, the House of Representatives, to State and Local office holders. The exact extent of this madness and its roots are outside the scope of this argument.

4. In the event of a schism in the Republican Party, the QAnon fifth column sides with the Trump-led Patriot Party and the Republicans find themselves with a gaping hole in their base.

5. The only way to remain a viable party in the face of losing your base to your right (regardless of how fucking insane they are) is to build bridges to your left.

6. There are plenty of congressional Democrats (see e.g. the historic Blue Dogs), and more importantly, 2020 Democratic voters who agree with 60-70% of the Reagan/Bush era Republican platform.

6 cont. Think of things like the national debt.
Things like an American foreign policy focused not on isolationism but on projection of soft power not just because it is in our interests but because we believe in the inherent “rightness” of representative deomocracy.

7. The left doesn’t need us.
If the Biden-led center-left faces serious challenges it will be from his left because the right is so fractured right now. (See e.g. “Biden is controlled by Leftist Squad into making the US a Socialist utopia” discourse)

8. And here’s where the argument gets dicier. (1-7) are pretty rock solid irrefutable, I’m hoping. (8.) is where ima lose folks.
(8.) Given the statistics referenced in Prior (2.), why wouldn’t a center-right party in desperate need of bridges to the left consider all options?

9. Democratic and Republican administrations have come and gone since Roe v. Wade, and are completely in correlated with the data referenced supra.

10. If abortion rates are going down regardless of the party in power isn’t it best to focus on improving societal norms rather than political ones?
If the goal is to lower abortion rates to zero and we all agree that rate is independent of R vs D in power, why die on that hill?

11. If the sane, reasonable, non-QAnon right is about to be gutted by the desertion of their base, why not agree to release the litmus test of Pro-Life? If you agree on 60% of the same things as other sane-minded Americans, isn’t it better to fight the good, long, hard fight?