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Some Republicans really don’t want you to know about their positions on abortion.
One of them is Blake Masters, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in Arizona. Until recently, his campaign website promoted him as a “100% pro-life” candidate and pledged support for “a federal personhood law (ideally a Constitutional amendment) that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed.”
Then, last week, correspondents from NBC News learned the website’s language had changed.
The reference to Masters as a “100% pro-life” candidate? Gone.
Mention of the personhood law? That’s vanished, too.
Instead, the website now touts his opposition to late-term abortion and support for the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of taxpayer funds to finance abortion.
Something similar has happened in Michigan, where Republican state Sen. Tom Barrett is running for a U.S. House seat.
Barrett’s website once touted his opposition to abortion under any circumstance and his promise that “I will always work to protect life from conception.” As recently as this past May, he told Melissa Nann Burke of the Detroit News he opposed allowing abortions in cases of rape or incest.
But at some point, the abortion section vanished from Barrett’s website. When Burke and her colleague Craig Mauger asked Barrett for an explanation, he said he wasn’t aware of the change but assumed it was a routine update to focus on issues more important to voters.
It was a strange explanation, given that two polls from the previous week found abortion to be the No. 1 issue in Michigan right now. By Monday, the website had another update with new language on abortion and, echoing the new Masters website, it focused on Barrett’s opposition to late-term abortion.
The website for Barbara Kirkmeyer, Republican candidate for a U.S. House seat in Colorado, used to include language on the “sanctity of life.” That language is not there anymore. (The Washington Post has details.)
And the website for Mark Ronchetti, GOP candidate for governor in New Mexico who in a previous campaign said that “life should be protected — at all stages,” now promises a “middle ground” approach that focuses on prohibiting late-term abortion. (Politico has that story.)
There are probably more such examples out there, with more likely to come. And it’s not hard to figure out what these Republicans are trying to do here — although whether their gambit succeeds will depend a lot on how much voters are paying attention.
Republicans Face A Major Backlash On Abortion
The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Care, which overturned Roe v. Wade and ended its guarantee of abortion rights, has sparked a political backlash capable of changing the outcome of elections in November.
You can see it in the polls showing majorities opposing the Dobbs decision. You can see it in the figures for new voter registration, which consist disproportionately of women, younger voters and Democrats. Or you can see it in the outcome of recent special elections, including last week’s surprise win by an underdog Democrat in a swing district from upstate New York.
Republicans are reacting to this the way politicians always do when they find themselves on the wrong side of a public opinion divide: by trying to change the subject and, when they can’t do that, by disguising or distancing themselves from their previously stated, more unpopular position.
In this case, that means scrubbing references to total bans on abortion and shifting the focus to late-term abortion, where Republican support for prohibitions has traditionally polled well.
It’s an open question whether the strategy will work this time. Democrats have an answer on late-term abortion ― namely, that the procedure is rare and comes up in medically dire, ethically complex cases in which judgment is best left to a woman and her doctor.
Although that hasn’t always proved persuasive in the past, reactions might be different in the wake of Dobbs, given how the Supreme Court’s ruling has focused public attention on questions of bodily autonomy ― i.e., who actually gets to make these sorts of decisions.
And even if the Democrats’ argument remains unpersuasive, it’s not clear how much voters will care when abortion at any stage ― under almost any circumstances ― is already unavailable in some parts of the country and on the verge of becoming unavailable in even more.
Abortion Access Is Really At Stake In November
Michigan is the perfect example. A 1931 law prohibits abortion, with only a narrow exception for the life of the mother.
A series of lower state court rulings have blocked enforcement, but only temporarily. Its legality in the future depends on how the state Supreme Court rules in a series of cases before it; who controls statewide offices and the state legislature; and whether a reproductive rights amendment gets onto the ballot and passes.
All of that is up for grabs in November. And while the outcome of Barrett’s bid won’t affect that literally ― he’s now running for U.S. House, not state legislature ― he’s part of a broader Republican ticket that has long supported bans on abortion. At the head of that ticket is gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon, who has said she supports the 1931 law, including its lack of exceptions.
In the hypothetical scenario in which Barrett wins, it’s likely Republicans are winning a bunch of other races as well, and the chances of that 1931 law taking full effect go way up. To put it another way, whether abortion remains legal in Michigan depends on whether state voters realize access to the procedure at any stage is in jeopardy ― the very thing that Barrett’s campaign website change makes ambiguous.
Likewise, if Barrett and Masters and all the other Republicans altering their website language make it to Washington, that will mean more votes in Congress for more aggressive national restrictions on abortion ― maybe even including a total nationwide ban, at any stage of pregnancy. That type of legislation is already on the agenda for major anti-abortion groups like Americans United for Life, as Mary Ziegler, a University of California law professor and frequent writer on the subject, explained in The New York Times today.
This isn’t surprising. It’s what these groups and their supporters have been hoping to achieve for decades. But it doesn’t appear to be what most Americans want, which is why Republicans who once pledged fealty to this cause seem so reluctant to talk about it now.
