In the final stretch before Election Day, Republicans are ramping up efforts to distance themselves from the restrictive abortion positions that have defined their party since the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade \u2014 scrambling to soften, or appear to soften, their hard line positions.<\/p>\n
The group includes everyone from former president Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, to House members and gubernatorial candidates, and comes as nearly two-thirds of Americans say they believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.<\/p>\n
In Tuesday evening\u2019s vice-presidential debate, Vance \u2014 who during his 2022 Senate run described himself as \u201c100 percent pro-life\u201d and ran on a platform promising to \u201cend abortion\u201d \u2014 said he and Trump were working to earn \u201cthe American people\u2019s trust back on this issue\u201d and implied that he supported the decision by an unnamed friend in an abusive relationship to terminate her pregnancy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know she\u2019s watching tonight, and I love you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
That same evening, Trump \u2014 who regularly claims credit for overturning Roe \u2014 wrote in an all-caps post on social media that he would veto a federal abortion ban, writing \u201cit is up to the states to decide based on the will of their voters (the will of the people!).\u201d<\/p>\n
A small group of House Republicans and Republican candidates have also shifted their tone on the issue and are espousing a surprising stance \u2014 support for abortion rights \u2014 while not necessarily backing legal protections proposed by Democrats. In one example, Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.), recently described himself to The Washington Post as \u201cpro-choice,\u201d despite earning positive ratings from antiabortion groups because of his voting record.<\/p>\n
And several Republican gubernatorial candidates have released misleading ads that try to gloss over their past support for abortion restrictions and instead cast themselves as more moderate on the issue. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R-N.C.) released a new ad claiming he supports the state\u2019s current law \u2014 which bans nearly all abortions after 12 weeks \u2014 because of his and his wife\u2019s \u201cvery difficult decision\u201d three decades ago to have an abortion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I\u2019m governor, mothers in need will be supported,\u201d he says in the ad.<\/p>\n
But his previous statements have gone much further than the state\u2019s existing law, including saying he preferred \u201ca six-week bill\u201d \u2014 which would ban abortion before most women know they\u2019re pregnant \u2014 and describing abortion as \u201ckilling the child because you weren\u2019t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRepublicans are seeing the polls, and they know that their hostility to abortion is dragging them down, they know that the public is not enjoying the post Roe v. Wade world, so they are desperately scrambling to reverse those trends by lying about their stance,\u201d said Emily Martin, chief program officer at the National Women\u2019s Law Center Action Fund, an organization devoted to gender justice in law, policy and culture. \u201cBut it is a little shocking that there is such a shameless attempt to rewrite recent history.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though portions of the Republican base staunchly oppose reproductive rights, polls show that a majority of the country favors them. An August Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 62 percent of Americans opposed the overturning of Roe, while 35 percent supported it. A Pew Research Center poll from earlier this year found that 63 percent of Americans thought abortion should be legal in all or most cases. And two recent Fox News polls show 50 percent of Arizona Republicans plan to vote for their state\u2019s abortion rights amendment in November, while 54 percent of Nevada Republicans will do the same in their state.<\/p>\n
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe two summers ago, the issue of abortion has become a political albatross for Republicans. Democrats, meanwhile, have highlighted the topic to their electoral benefit, including in the 2022 midterms, when an emphasis on abortion rights helped stave off an expected \u201cred wave\u201d of overwhelming Republican victories in the House and Senate.<\/p>\n
This fall, abortion initiatives on the ballot in 10 states \u2014 including the critical western battlegrounds of Arizona and Nevada \u2014 seem certain to keep the issue in the political spotlight.<\/p>\n
David Winston, a Republican strategist, said that before Roe was overturned, the discussion on abortion was a national one, but now \u201crather than having a singular conversation, all of a sudden we\u2019re having 50 of them, and what that\u2019s done is it has really structurally changed everybody\u2019s interactions with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
Politicians, Winston said, are trying to work through \u201cwhere is their state at, what\u2019s their role in this conversation, how do they deal with other people in their conference.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you\u2019re watching a learning process in place,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n
In an unexpected but timely twist, former first lady Melania Trump on Thursday released a black-and-white video \u2014 part of promotion for an eponymously titled new memoir \u2014 in which she offered up a personal view on abortion at odds with that of her husband and the party he leads.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndividual freedom is a fundamental principle that I safeguard,\u201d she says in the video. \u201cWithout a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right that all women possess from birth \u2014 individual freedom. What does \u2018my body, my choice\u2019 really mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
Excerpts from her book, which the Guardian reported before her video, go even further. \u201cA woman\u2019s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes,\u201d Melania writes in her book, according to the British paper. \u201cRestricting a woman\u2019s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump, meanwhile, ran for president in 2016 describing himself as \u201cpro-life\u201d and promising to appoint the sorts of conservative justices to the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe. He kept his promise, fundamentally altering the court\u2019s makeup with three new judges. But he has struggled with the political fallout of his actions, repeatedly vacillating between boasting about the overturning of the landmark decision (which animates his political base) and offering a more moderate stance (which appeals to the mainstream and independent voters he will also need to propel him to victory).<\/p>\n
In a single 24-hour period in August, Trump first suggested that he would support an amendment in his home state of Florida that would protect abortion rights before \u2014 amid backlash \u2014 reversing himself to say he would vote against the amendment after all, calling it too \u201cradical.\u201d The former president also recently claimed that his administration would be \u201cgreat for women and their reproductive rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Republican House candidate Matt Gunderson, a business executive running in a California swing district, released an ad last month in which he calls himself \u201cpro-choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe abortion should be safe, legal and rare,\u201d Gunderson says in the ad, looking directly into the camera. \u201cI don\u2019t want politicians dictating health care for my daughters. You might disagree. And that\u2019s okay.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to North Carolina, the Republican gubernatorial candidates in several other key battleground states are also pushing back on the idea that they previously supported significant abortion restrictions. In New Hampshire, former Republican senator Kelly Ayotte released an ad claiming that her opponents\u2019 attacks on some of her past abortion positions \u2014 including her 2015 vote on a national 20-week abortion ban and her calls for the overturning of Roe \u2014 were unfairly \u201cpoliticizing abortion to win votes.\u201d<\/p>\n
And in Washington State, Republican gubernatorial candidate and former House member Dave Reichert released a direct-to-camera ad, saying he would not change his state\u2019s abortion laws and stating, \u201cI do not believe any politician, regardless of personal belief, has the right to make that decision for any woman.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, in Congress, Reichert supported a national 20-week abortion ban, repeatedly voted to ban federal funding for Planned Parenthood and had an 83 percent approval rating from the National Right to Life Committee, a leading antiabortion organization.<\/p>\n
\u201cRepublicans running for governor like Mark Robinson, Kelly Ayotte, and Dave Reichert know their antiabortion records are too extreme and unpopular to run on, so they are running from them,\u201d said Emma O\u2019Brien, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Governors Association, in an email statement. \u201cUnfortunately for these Republicans, we have the receipts, and will make sure that voters in each of these states remember every time they voted for an abortion ban or outlined their plans to put themselves in front of women and their doctors.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to highlighting Republican turnabouts, Democrats also plan to leverage the abortion initiatives on ballots across the nation to help keep the issue salient in the national conscience.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re to argue that they are moderating because they\u2019ve left it up to states,\u201d said Christina Reynolds, senior vice president of communications for Emily\u2019s List, a national group that backs female Democrats who support abortion rights. \u201cAnd to that I would say: \u2018Please go look at what these states are doing.\u2019 This is not a change in agenda \u2014 this is just lying to voters.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In the final stretch before Election Day, Republicans are ramping up efforts to distance themselves from the restrictive abortion positions that have defined their party since the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade \u2014 scrambling to soften, or appear to soften, their hard line positions. The group includes everyone from former president Donald Trump and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10620,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}