Abortion politics is emerging as a major headache for Republicans heading into the 2024 election and threatens to derail their chances of winning control of the Senate, as some Republicans think happened in last year’s midterm election.
Republicans are all over the map on what role the federal government should play in limiting abortion.
Some GOP lawmakers favor a national abortion ban, while others want to leave the hot-button issue to the states entirely.
Republican senators say they expect a lot of debate within their conference over the issue in the months leading up to the next election.
“This issue is not going away,” said Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), who added there’s not a consensus view “at the moment” within the Senate GOP conference on what role Congress should play in the national abortion debate.
“I think it’s something we’ll have a lot of discussions about. Clearly, we’re the pro-life party and we want to take policy positions that demonstrate that and value life. Exactly what form that takes right now I think is still a matter of discussion,” he said.
Republicans can’t agree on the broad contours of a nationwide abortion ban — whether it should kick in at 15 weeks, six weeks or even sooner — and the question is already emerging as a litmus test for Republican presidential hopefuls.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who is actively exploring a White House run, offered over just several days an array of answers about what kind of federal abortion ban he would sign into law if elected president.
During a trip through New Hampshire last week, Scott initially declined to say whether he would sign a 15-week abortion ban and then said he would “definitely” sign a 20-week abortion ban, before saying that he would sign “the most conservative pro-life legislation that they can get through Congress.”
Scott’s evolving answers left some of Republican colleagues who favor strict abortion restrictions cringing.
“I think they ought to say what their conviction is,” said one lawmaker who requested anonymity to comment on the 2024 presidential primary. “I think primary voters want to know that somebody is pro-life and fight for it. What they don’t want is wishy washy.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a six-week state abortion ban into law behind closed doors and then didn’t mention the accomplishment at a rally he held immediately afterward at Liberty University in Virginia, making only a brief mention of abortion at the Christian university.
Former President Trump, who rarely misses an opportunity to attack a rival, has stayed silent on Florida’s six-week abortion ban and has tried to avoid the issue.
Former Vice President Mike Pence declined to say in one recent interview what he thought about a proposal in South Carolina to make women who defy the state’s abortion ban eligible for the death penalty. A spokesperson for Pence later clarified that he does not support the idea.
Some Republicans saw the victory of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Janet Protasiewicz, a Democratic-allied candidate, in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election earlier this month as an early warning of another public backlash over abortion rights coming next year.
Brandon Scholz, a Republican strategist based in Wisconsin, told The Hill in an interview earlier this month that the state race showed the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the landmark abortion-rights case Roe v. Wade, continues to energize voters.
“Just like Democrats’ released the abortion ruling from the Supreme Court and energized the base last summer, same exact thing here,” he said, referring to Justice Samuel Alito’s draft abortion opinion, which leaked in May. The Supreme Court has investigated the leak but hasn’t yet found the person responsible.
Now Republicans are gearing up for an abortion debate in Washington, which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) tried to avoid in the lead-up to last year’s midterm election.
McConnell tried to assure voters that Republicans would not try to pass a nationwide abortion ban if they won control of the Senate and House in 2022, and he threw shade on Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) proposal to enact a 15-week nationwide ban.
McConnell emphasized in September that GOP leaders had not planned to push a federal abortion ban, telling reporters it was Graham’s initiative.
“In terms of scheduling, I think most of the members of my conference prefer that this be dealt with at the state level,” he said.
The GOP leader also downplayed the chances of any nationwide abortion ban passing the Senate, observing: “I think it’s safe to say there aren’t 60 votes there at the federal level, no matter who happens to be in the majority, no matter who happens to be in the Senate.”
Despite McConnell’s efforts, strategists in both parties believe the issue of abortion rights became a major factor in last year’s races. Democrats emphasized it in campaign ads played in races across the country.
After Republicans lost a Senate seat and failed to win as many House seats as they expected, Trump blamed party leaders for mishandling the issue.
“It was the ‘abortion issue’, poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on no exceptions, even in the case of rape, incest, or life of the mother, that lost large number of voters,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform, in January.
Senate Republicans now appear poised to battle each other over abortion policy once again, despite suffering another political setback in Wisconsin earlier this month.
Graham, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told The Hill on Tuesday that he plans to reintroduce his 15-week abortion ban.
On the other side of the intraparty debate, moderate Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have reintroduced bipartisan legislation with Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) to codify the right to an abortion before 24 weeks established by Roe v. Wade.
“I believe that there is a need for codification of Roe and that’s why last Congress we worked to put together a bill that we saw that reflected exactly that,” Murkowski said, adding “we would like to see it advance.”