Tag: anti abortion
'Losing Sucks': Virginia GOP Discord Surges After Campaign Failure

'Losing Sucks': Virginia GOP Discord Surges After Campaign Failure

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin's recent major legislative loss is shedding light on state Republican infighting, The Washington Post reports.

As other GOP members push to remove House Speaker Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) from his position over failing to counter Youngkin's Spirit of Virginia political action committee's anti-abortion $1.4 million TV campaign, Virginia Delegate Terry Kilgore (R-Scott) is challenging the speaker for his seat.

The Post spoke with three GOP delegates who "said the governor's PAC did not consult them about the ad buy or the flurry of mailers on the same theme that the PAC sent to some districts," and the claimed the PAC also "ignored their concerns and made last-minute demands for them to appear at Youngkin-led rallies and other events, which they said were primarily meant to promote his potential last-minute bid for president."

The Postreports:

With prospects for his conservative agenda and potential White House bid on the line, Youngkin and his team made abortion a central theme with all 140 House and Senate seats on the ballot and both narrowly divided chambers up for grabs.

The strategy was a notable shift for Virginia Republicans, who have tended to play up kitchen table issues — such as the economy, schools and crime — and downplay abortion. After wooing GOP caucus voters with a vow to 'protect the life of every Virginia child born and unborn,' Youngkin himself said little about abortion in the 2021 general election. He was captured on video saying he had to downplay the issue to win swing voters but promising to 'go on offense' against the procedure once elected.

The governor eventually "proposed banning abortion after 15 weeks, with exceptions for rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at risk," the report notes.

Two people familiar with the campaign told the Post that Kilgore was aware of "the abortion strategy and approved of it," but one delegate denies that claim.

"I have worked with the Governor and support his agenda whole heartedly," Kilgore said in a statement to the Post."However, this isn't about the Governor — it's about the future of leadership in the House of Delegates, and making the changes we need to make to be successful in the long term for the Virginians we represent."

He added, "While we are at a crossroads that we neither wanted nor expected, now is the time to come together and move forward."

The Post emphasizes that "infighting within the Virginia GOP suggests that Youngkin, at the midpoint of his four-year term, could have trouble with his own party as he faces a General Assembly controlled by Democrats."

Referring to the failed anti-abortion campaign, another Republican delegate told the Post, "We literally ran on one of the third rails of politics. We told them, this is the year to run on inflation, grocery bills, gas bills, fuel costs, freakin’ child care. … If we're not providing an answer or a solution to those things, then the people are looking at us like, 'Why are you talking about abortion?''

According to the report, the PACs executive director, Matthew Moran, said "on X that he looked forward to addressing any criticism at a panel discussion Monday night," writing, "Losing sucks, and I'm never afraid to wear anything on my chin. You can't be prepared to take the credit if you’re not also prepared to take the criticism. … I expect a good discussion on the effect of the Secure Your Vote Virginia program, the role of abortion and the thoughts behind our strategy to combat the attacks (most of them completely false), and why we invested in certain races. I look forward to all of that."

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet


Angry Trump Hints Anti-Abortion Movement Is A Grift

Angry Trump Hints Anti-Abortion Movement Is A Grift

Donald Trump cannot stop blundering on his abortion stance.

To be fair, he’s in a difficult position: Trump is the relatively rare Republican who understands that abortion bans are unpopular, and he wants to look ahead to a general election, in which support for a federal ban could really hurt him. But he's still competing in a Republican presidential primary, and that means he’s going to need the votes of anti-abortion extremists. It’s a tough balance to strike, and he’s … not succeeding.

If Trump didn’t have such a huge lead in the primary polls, he would have faced massive opposition from anti-abortion groups by now. And his latest gaffe might draw out more of that.

In an interview with The National Pulse, Trump appeared to question the motives of anti-abortion groups:

“This is an issue that’s been going on for 52 years. I was able to end it. That gave tremendous negotiating power to the pro-life movement. Tremendous negotiating power. Because they can’t do the things that they used to be able to do,” Trump said, returning (as he always does) to his grievance that he’s not properly appreciated for his pivotal Supreme Court appointments.

He continued: “The pro-life was fighting it, we have these groups fighting this thing for so many decades, but it’s exactly 52 years as of a date in the not-too-distant future. And that’s a long time. Everybody’s raising money all the time—I don’t know, maybe it’s some kind of a business. I don’t know what’s going on, but everybody was amazed that I was able to do it, and I put them in a great negotiating position.”

There’s a fair bit of Trumpian word salad there, but “Everybody’s raising money all the time—I don’t know, maybe it’s some kind of a business” does jump out. Being Trump, he’s probably torn between admiration for anyone raising money and irritation that the money isn’t going directly to him, but, as the DeSantis War Room account said, it kind of does sound like he was accusing anti-abortion groups of grifting.

That cannot help an already strained relationship between Trump and those groups. Trump has been reluctant to promise a 15-week federal abortion ban, has suggested that Republicans need to include stronger exceptions in their abortion bans, and has criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for signing a six-week abortion ban, calling it “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.”

Last spring, Trump did come under pressure from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America for dragging his feet on a 15-week ban—but following a private meeting, the organization’s leader praised him, and the pressure eased. At this point, Trump’s standing in the primary may look too strong for anti-abortion groups to be willing to criticize him too harshly, knowing that they’re likely to have to rally the troops behind him in the general election. But he’s certainly challenging their resolve on that one.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Nancy Mace

'We're Going To Lose Huge': Mace Warns Of GOP Wipeout Over Abortion (VIDEO)

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) warns that the GOP risks facing a wipeout at the polls in 2024 if her colleagues remain focused on passing strict state-level abortion bans rather than finding a “middle ground” on the issue.

Mace, a sometime Trump critic who survived reelection last year, sounded the alarm on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, two days after the U.S. Supreme Court chose to keep abortion pills legal, freezing a Trump-appointed federal judge’s ruling that restricted the drug.

Taking aim at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new six-week abortion ban legislation and a Republican bill in the South Carolina legislature that proposes “punishment by death” for women who undergo abortions, Mace said the GOP was sending "the wrong message heading into '24."

The Republican insisted that the anti-abortion extremists within her party were out of touch with their constituents, a majority she contended didn’t want abortion severely restricted or outlawed.

"We're going to lose huge if we continue down this path of extremities and finding that middle ground. The vast majority of people want some sort of gestational limits, not at nine months but somewhere in the middle," Mace told ABC anchor Martha Raddatz.

"They want exceptions for rape and incest — they want women to have access to birth control,” she added.

Indeed, the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National poll, released Monday, found that two-thirds of Americans (64 percent), including a majority of Republicans, opposed banning medication abortion — that is, the use of a prescription pill to end a pregnancy.

A CBS News/YouGov poll released over a week before found that 69 percent of Americans who support abortion wanted the Biden Administration to ignore court rulings seeking to end widespread access to the abortion drug mifepristone.

Americans’ broad support for abortion after the Dobbs decision has remained the same since the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v Wade last June, with a Pew Research Center poll showing that support rose from 61 percent in March 2022 (before the ruling) to 62 percent in July (after the ruling).

Mace’s comments offered a window into the divide within the GOP over abortion bans, an issue Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, recognize was central to the party’s historic underperformance in the 2022 midterms.

TheWashington Postreported last Thursday that Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, urged her party’s candidates in private to “address abortion” before it damaged them politically.

“You have to address it, not avoid it,” McDaniel reportedly said. “And then you can talk about other things.”

Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway implored Republican donors and candidates to infuse “compassion” into their discussions on abortion and emphasize the need for exceptions in abortion legislation.

During her ABC interview, Mace suggested that anywhere but the fringe of anti-abortion extremism were “commonsense positions that we can take and still be pro-life.”

"I saw what happened after Roe v. Wade because I represent a very purple district, as purple as this dress, and I saw the sentiment change dramatically," Mace said. "And as Republicans, we need to read the room on this issue."

Mace also argued that dancing around or wholly ignoring the issue of abortion wasn’t a position Republicans should take, considering the widespread support for abortion among voters.

"We've buried our heads in the sand. We're afraid to talk about it. Because we're afraid, we want to go to the extreme corners of this issue. But that's not where the vast majority of Americans are right now. And we've got to show compassion, especially to victims who've been raped," said Mace, who has often shared her experience of being sexually assaulted at 16.

Nancy Mace

South Carolina Republicans Urge Death For Women Who Undergo Abortion

Members of South Carolina’s GOP-dominated House of Representatives are mulling a bill — introduced by a pro-Trump Republican and initially sponsored by 21 others — that would make women in South Carolina who undergo an abortion eligible for the death penalty.

According to Rolling Stone, the bill, dubbed “South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023,” would amend the term “person” under state law to include “an unborn child at any stage of development” — even as a fertilized egg.

If passed, the bill will “ensure that an unborn child who is a victim of homicide is afforded equal protection under the homicide laws of the state,” including punishment by death for offenders.

The bill explained its use of the term fertilization, stating, “As used in this article, ‘fertilization’ means the fusion of a human spermatozoon with a human ovum.” Such a fusion could happen in just six days after copulation, according to a Planned Parenthood article.

The proposed amendment “[acknowledges] the sanctity of innocent human life, created in the image of God, which should be equally protected from fertilization to natural death,” the bill stated.

Rep. Rob Harris, an anti-Roe advocate and Freedom Caucus member, introduced the bill in late February, arguing that abortions should warrant the same punishment as murders.

“We have due process laws, as long as they’re followed,” Harris said. “I’m not inventing any new processes. The constitution of both states require due process and equal protection. So if you’re accused of stealing a candy bar, if you’re accused of murdering somebody, it would go through the same process,” Harris told WBTV.

The day the Republican majority of the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that established abortion as a constitutional right, Harris took to his Facebook page to celebrate.

“Praise the Lord! Roe vs. Wade has just been overturned by SCOTUS! Now SC legislators need to step up and save our children! Let’s see what they’re made of. We’ll be keeping a very close eye on them!” he wrote.

Indeed, there are no exceptions for rape and incest in Harris’ bill — a point which Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who has long assailed her party’s stringent abortion policies, raised on the floor of the U.S. House on Friday, per The Hill.

“To see this debate go to the dark places, the dark edges, where it has gone on both sides of the aisle, has been deeply disturbing to me as a woman, as a female legislator, as a mom, and as a victim of rape. I was raped as a teenager at the age of 16,” Mace said.

She added, “This debate ought to be a bipartisan debate where we balance the rights of women, and we balance the right to life. But we aren’t having that conversation here in D.C. We aren’t having that conversation at home. We aren’t having that conversation with fellow state lawmakers.”

Harris dismissed Mace’s objections in a statement to Rolling Stone, saying, “There are other bills with exceptions, but will do little or nothing to save the lives of pre-born children.”

He suggested to the publication that the bill was appropriate because it contained a “‘duress’ defense for women who are pressured/threatened to have an abortion” exception and another for “medical care to save the mother’s life.”

“The functional language in that scenario is whether the baby’s life is forfeited ‘unintentionally’ or ‘intentionally,’” Harris told Rolling Stone.

When the Rolling Stone reporter asked Harris if it was ironic of him, a member of the “Freedom Caucus,” to draft a bill with such harsh restrictions on reproductive freedom, the Republican replied, “Murder of the pre-born is harsh.”

Two of the 21 Republicans who initially sponsored the bill, Reps. Matt Leber and Kathy Landing, requested to have their names scrubbed off the list of sponsors on February 28.

Five more Republicans backed out on Monday, the very day Rolling Stone and The Hill reported on the bill.