Republicans are trying a new approach to abortion in the race for Congress

[September 20, 2024]  By LISA MASCARO

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the most contested races for control of the U.S. House, many Republican candidates are speaking up about women’s rights to abortion access and reproductive care in new and surprising ways, a deliberate shift for a GOP blindsided by some political ramifications of the post-Roe v. Wade era.

Looking directly into the camera for ads, or penning personal op-eds in local newspapers, the Republicans are trying to distance themselves from some of the more aggressive anti-abortion ideas coming from their party and its allies. Instead the Republican candidates are working quickly to spell out their own views separate from a GOP that for decades has worked to put restrictions on reproductive care.

In New York, endangered GOP Rep. Mike Lawler, sitting at a kitchen table with his wife in one ad said, “There can be no place for extremism in women’s health care.”

In California, GOP Rep. Michelle Steel explains her own journey to parenthood with in vitro fertilization and vows, “I have always supported women’s access to IVF, and will fight to defend it.”

And in Arizona, GOP Rep. Juan Ciscomani faces the camera and says, “I want you to hear directly from me: I trust women. I cherish new life. And I reject the extremes on abortion.”

It’s a remarkable new approach as the Republican Party works to prevent losses this November that could wipe out its majority control of the House. It comes in a fast-moving election season with high-profile and gripping stories of women's lives being upended and endangered by abortion restrictions.

The new strategy is both sanctioned and promoted by the House Republicans’ campaign arm, an acknowledgement of the GOP’s failure to grasp the political power of women’s reproductive care as an issue that would mobilize voters.

“The Republicans have always known they’re actually on the wrong side of this issue," said Ilyse Hogue, former president of the group previously known as NARAL Pro-Choice America, who is now a senior fellow at New America, a think tank in Washington. She said the party's shift “wouldn't surprise me.”

With the election fewer than 50 days away, the House Republican candidates are real-time road-testing how to talk about women’s access to reproductive care at a time when young women are more liberal than in decades.

On the national level, Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, has both celebrated the Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case overruling Roe v. Wade yet insisted it's best left to the states to decide whether to allow abortions. He's also distanced himself from the far right’s longtime goal of a national abortion ban.

With Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris having replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the party’s ticket, Democrats are capitalizing on the vice president’s ability to mobilize women, and others, and vow to reinstate reproductive care in a campaign whose rally-goers cheer: “We are not going back.”

The campaigns for control of the U.S. House are as tight as ever, with a few seats expected to determine which party holds the majority in the chamber, and whether Congress will become aligned with the White House or a potential opposition check on a new administration.

Republicans admit they did not expect abortion access to become such a determinative issue when the Supreme Court, in 2022, decided the Dobbs case that struck down Roe v. Wade, ending the right to abortion that had been the law of the land for nearly 50 years.

Voters didn’t always mention abortion access as a top concern in the 2022 election, Republicans said, but it became disqualifying for candidates who were portrayed as too extreme. The anti-abortion movement's push for a national abortion ban and proposed rollbacks of fertility treatments sparked a new focus. That November's promised “red wave” of Republican election victories never materialized and the party barely won a House majority.

Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., arrives for a House Republican caucus meeting at the Capitol, Friday, Oct. 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)

By summer 2024, polling by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed a solid majority of Americans oppose a federal abortion ban and a rising number support access to abortions for any reason. That’s an increase from 2021, a year before the Supreme Court decision.

In one contested San Diego-area House race, the Republican challenger Matt Gunderson speaks directly to the camera and declares: “I'm pro-choice.”

Jack Pandol, the communications director of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said that in 2022, Democrats spent hundreds of millions of dollars “lying about Republican candidates’ positions on this sensitive and nuanced issue.”

“Republicans can’t let Democrats lie any longer — they should be clear, direct, and forcefully push back against these false attacks.”

Still, House Democrats are redoubling efforts to gain control of the chamber by focusing on House Republican candidates and their abortion views — past and present.

“Republicans are trying to gaslight voters,” said CJ Warnke, communications director of the House Majority PAC, which is the outside group supporting House Democrats.

House Majority PAC is pummeling Republicans with millions of dollars’ worth of campaign ads warning against extreme GOP views on abortion and reproductive care. It has pulled up the voting records, bill sponsorships and past commentary from both incumbents and newcomers and is promising to spend at least $100 million this election cycle on the issue in House races.

Democrats, too, have shifted to speaking more openly and forcefully in favor of reproductive care, led in many ways by Harris' example.

Rep. Suzan DelBene, the chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, vowed, “We’ll make sure the American people will know exactly how the Republicans have voted to restrict reproductive rights."

Congress has served as a key battleground in efforts to advance the anti-abortion agenda for decades, as Republicans have repeatedly proposed legislation to limit different types of abortion services, including late-term abortions.

Trump, along with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, orchestrated the confirmation of three justices to the nine-member Supreme Court — a historic accomplishment — during the former president’s term in office, fulfilling a longtime party goal of shifting the court to a conservative majority.

First celebrated as a conservative victory when the court overtured Roe v. Wade, the aftermath of the Dobbs decision soon became a political liability for Republicans as states began instituting abortion bans.

One of the nation's leading anti-abortion advocacy groups, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, is encouraging candidates in a strategy memo to recommit to ending abortion and portraying the Democrats as extreme in seeking to make abortion access available nationwide.

But GOP Rep. Lawler said it was important he address the issue head on because Democrats are attacking him as extreme on the issue. “Voters have a right to know where I stand,” Lawler said.
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Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.

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