Abortion Advocates Say GOP Candidates Are Tempering Rhetoric as Electoral Ploy

In New York’s Hudson Valley region, first-term GOP Rep. Mike Lawler is vying for reelection by saying he will never vote for a federal abortion ban and will fight to “preserve access to mifepristone,” one of two drugs commonly used for medication abortion.

In Southern California, where Matt Gunderson is challenging three-term Democratic Rep. Mike Levin, the Republican car dealership owner is running an ad that says he is “pro choice” and believes “abortion should be safe, legal and rare. I don’t want politicians dictating health care for my daughters.”

In competitive U.S. House races from coast to coast, Republicans are distancing themselves — rhetorically — from their party’s hardline anti-abortion stances, sharing positions on reproductive health care that include supporting some access to abortion and protecting procedures such as in vitro fertilization (IVF). Most, however, are still less supportive of abortion rights than their Democratic rivals — and in some cases, the policies they say they support or oppose now are undercut by their records and past stances.

It is a departure from the 2022 midterms, when Democrats’ focus on protecting abortion allowed them to outperform expectations in the first federal elections after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Though Republicans still regained control of the House that year, it was by a much smaller margin than projected, and it was in large part because Republican candidates did not articulate abortion positions that resonated with voters, if they were talking about abortion at all. Some exit polls that year showed abortion was the top issue for as much as 27 percent of the electorate.

The Republican Party’s advice for its candidates is different this year. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) told candidates early on that they needed to articulate their abortion positions before Democrats’ ads did it for them. “Republicans don’t have a policy problem — we have a branding problem,” NRCC Chair Richard Hudson, who represents a district in south-central North Carolina, told reporters as Roe marked its 51st anniversary at the beginning of this year.

The NRCC did not respond to requests to further delineate its preferred strategy for candidates on issues related to reproductive rights.

Making matters more confusing for voters, at the top of the Republican ticket, Donald Trump has offered conflicting statements when asked about how his administration would handle abortion.

Trump touts nominating three of the conservative Supreme Court justices who decided Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and has said the issue is best left up to the states. Last week, for the first time, he said “everyone knows” he would veto a national abortion ban after previously declining to provide his definitive stance. In a soon-to-be published memoir, Melania Trump calls abortion a “personal freedom,” echoing the framing of her husband’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump embraced the Republican Party’s official policy platform that supports enacting fetal personhood, while also saying he approves of IVF, which are fundamentally incompatible positions, according to most legal experts.

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Lawler’s stances on abortion are among the most protective of the Republicans attempting to moderate their approach — he is defending one of just 13 House seats held by GOP representatives that Cook Political Report rates as true “toss up” contests this year. In one of Lawler’s campaign ads, he and his wife discuss how they used IVF to conceive, then he says: “There can be no place for extremism in women’s health care — from the left, or the right.” He opposes GOP attempts to curtail access to mifepristone.

But even Lawler is far less supportive of abortion rights than a moderate Democrat and has earned a “B” rating from the anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America. He personally opposes abortion and believes 13 weeks is a reasonable abortion limit that would be supported by most Americans. He did not break with his party in their unanimous support for the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, legislation that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called “not based in science or medicine.” (The Born-Alive Infant Protection Act was enacted during the administration of George W. Bush and remains law.) It relates to a GOP talking point — and an anti-abortion lie repeated by Trump — that Democrats want abortion “on demand” until birth and plan to execute babies after being born. Lawler also opposes nurses and midwives providing abortion care.

Gunderson, meanwhile, says he is both “pro choice” and supports leaving the issue of abortion up to the states — he would support neither a national ban nor codifying Roe. He also said in a recent debate with Levin, his opponent, that he opposed a ballot measure in California in 2022 that enshrined abortion protections in the state’s constitution because it was too expansive.

In another toss-up race in Southern California, two-term GOP Rep. Michelle Steel is emphasizing that she supports access to IVF after withdrawing her sponsorship of a fetal personhood bill that defines personhood as beginning at conception. It was a tacit acknowledgement that fetal personhood is widely seen as prohibiting IVF because it bestows legal rights to fetuses and embryos. In an op-ed explaining her IVF position, Steel nevertheless reiterated that she believes life begins at conception. SBA Pro-Life America gives her an “A+” rating.

Other Republicans in competitive races who removed themselves as co-sponsors of the fetal personhood legislation include Reps. David Schweikert of Arizona, David Valadao and Mike Garcia of California, Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa and Don Bacon of Nebraska.

In Arizona, where Rep. Juan Ciscomani is in a rematch against former state house lawmaker Kirsten Engel, the first-term Republican has called the state’s now-defunct strict abortion ban from the 1800s “archaic” and says he supports IVF. He has long characterized abortion as an issue for the states and not the federal government but as a member of the House Appropriations Committee backed banning the distribution of mifepristone by mail. The provision was not included in the final bill over the objections of moderate Republicans. Ciscomani’s committee vote is the subject of an ad run by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). He too has an “A+” rating from SBA Pro-Life America.

“House Republicans know their extreme anti-choice records are their biggest vulnerability, so they’re saying anything in a desperate attempt to deceive voters,” DCCC spokesperson Viet Sheldon told The 19th, adding that the organization will continue to fact check GOP candidates’ records in the final weeks before Election Day.

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In yet another toss-up race, in Oregon, Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer says she will oppose federal legislation that might change access to reproductive health care. The first-term lawmaker voted for a bill to block the Defense Department from reimbursing military service members and their dependents who have to travel out of state to obtain an abortion. She also supported a GOP effort to prohibit insurance plans sold on Affordable Care Act exchanges from covering abortion. She has a “B” rating from SBA Pro-Life America.

New York Rep. Brandon Williams, who has an “A+” rating from SBA Pro Life America, wrote an op-ed saying that while he personally opposes abortion and called Dobbs a “monumental victory” for the anti-abortion movement, he would never override the will of New Yorkers and does support some exceptions to abortion bans. In a debate last week, abortion was center stage as Williams and his opponent, Democratic state Sen. John Mannion, accused each other of lying about one another’s records.

In competitive districts where Democrats are trying to hold onto their seats, Pennsylvania Rep. Susan Wild is being challenged by Republican Ryan Mackenzie, who touted his “100% pro-life voting record” as recently as May before removing it from his website. As a state lawmaker, Mackenzie voted for bills that would require a funeral or cremation for fetal remains; prohibit dilation and extraction abortions after 20 weeks; and prevent Affordable Care Act plans from covering abortion.

In western Michigan, where Rep. Hillary Scholten is the only Democrat to win the seat since the early 1990s, her Republican opponent, Paul Hudson, has said he does not support a federal abortion ban and respects that Michiganders voted to add abortion protections to the state constitution. Hudson is endorsed by Citizens for Traditional Values, a conservative group that wants to overturn the will of the voters and restore a 1931 abortion ban.

Christina Reynolds of EMILYs List, which works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, said some Republican candidates are “counting on voters to be busy and not drill down on this” issue.

“What we fundamentally believe is that Republicans have not changed their agenda, they have changed their wrapping around it, they are trying to rebrand,” she said. “The good news is that voters understand who got us here.”

Jessica Kutz contributed to this report.