Republicans running for Senate ducked and dodged when pressed about abortion access in debates across the country this month, continuing to struggle with a key electoral liability that threatens to deny their party both control of Congress and the White House in November.
The calculated effort to soften the GOP’s image on the hot-button issue began soon after the Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade, a historic decision that fueled a backlash against the party at the ballot box, costing Republicans critical seats in the 2022 midterm elections.
Since then, many Republicans have misrepresented or outright lied to voters about their record, evading questions about extreme abortion bans currently on the books in states across the country.
Last week, for example, conservative Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), in a debate with his Democratic challenger, Rep. Colin Allred, repeatedly avoided giving a direct answer to questions about his position on exceptions to abortion bans for cases of rape and incest.
“Why do you keep asking me that?” Cruz asked the moderator at one point after he failed to answer the question, before quickly pivoting to his support for states setting their own laws.
Nearly 20 states have severe or near-total abortion bans in place, some without exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother, leading to devastating consequences for many women, including in Texas. Women have been denied care and left to bleed out in hospital parking lots or were forced to travel out of state for care.
Advocating for states to make their own decisions on abortion, as the Supreme Court held, necessarily means embracing the idea that some states might adopt abortion restrictions without exceptions.
GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has repeatedly boasted about his role in reversing federal abortion protections, has also struggled with questions about extreme state abortion bans. After initially criticizing his home state of Florida’s six-week abortion ban last month, he announced that he would vote against a ballot measure seeking to repeal it.
“The people are deciding, and in many ways, it’s a beautiful thing to watch,” Trump said during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity last month.
In Nevada, a majority pro-choice state where abortion is legal up to 24 weeks, Republican Senate candidate Sam Brown similarly glided over his past support for abortion restrictions without exceptions for rape or incest during a debate with Nevada Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen over the weekend. Brown, a businessman and U.S. Army veteran, said he now supports those exceptions, pledging not to back a national abortion ban that Democrats fear is coming in the future.
“I would not support a national abortion ban,” Brown said. “I would not appreciate when people lead with deception on this issue.”
Rosen, meanwhile, warned that Brown and other Republicans are hiding their positions on the issue to get elected in November.
“He has a decade-long record saying he’s against any exceptions on abortion even in case[s] of rape or incest,” the senator said of her opponent during the debate over the weekend. “If you don’t believe me, I’ve got some ocean-front property on Las Vegas Boulevard to sell you.”
In Pennsylvania, another critical battleground state, Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick borrowed language Democrats typically use when talking about women’s reproductive rights — namely, keeping unelected officials out of the equation — during his debate with Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) last week.
“Courts shouldn’t decide, judges shouldn’t decide, people should decide,” McCormick said of abortion limits. He added: “And there’s very different views across states. So I believe it’s a state’s rights issue.”
In 2022, however, McCormick touted his staunch commitment to opposing abortion before the Supreme Court’s ruling repealing Roe v. Wade. Asked at a GOP primary debate that year if he would support exceptions, he said he believed in them in “very rare instances” when a woman’s life was at risk.
But it’s not just newcomers seeking political office who are now presenting themselves to voters as moderates on abortion. Mike Rogers, a former Michigan congressman of 14 years who is now running for Senate, for example, tried to distance himself from his lengthy record of voting for abortion restrictions during his debate with Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin, the Democratic nominee in the race.
After Rogers pledged to uphold Michigan law on abortion, which allows the procedure up until 24 weeks into a pregnancy, Slotkin called him out for his past record.
“He’s put his finger in the wind and says, ‘Now I can’t win if I don’t look good on this issue,’” Slotkin said last week. “So he’s changed 30 years of being unilaterally pro-life, of never breaking once with his partly on this issue. It’s not a talking point to women. It is our lives, it is whether we bleed to death in a parking lot. It’s who and when gets to decide when we have a family.”
She added: “Do not trust him.”
Abortion is one issue where Democrats, who have struggled to combat voter perceptions of the economy and immigration, hold a political advantage.
Support for legal abortion has risen since the Supreme Court’s ruling repealing Roe v. Wade, and more people think their state should generally allow a person to obtain an abortion for any reason, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The big question in this election is whether abortion will play as big a role as it did in the 2022 midterms, or whether voters choose to prioritize other issues.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee did not return a request for comment.
Tommy Garcia, a spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said GOP Senate candidates “have shown voters how out-of-touch they are on one of the defining issues of this election: a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions.”
“Republican Senate candidates’ well-documented support for abortion bans and their callous disregard for women’s reproductive freedom is dominating the closing days of the Senate races and will lead voters to reject them,” he added.
