The GOP slowly builds a post-Dobbs abortion platform

The Scene

Donald Trump was on friendly turf. WABC’s Sid Rosenberg introduced the former president on Tuesday with an ad for gold — “Donald Trump is not the only comeback story of 2024” — and thanks for being an “incredibly gracious host” in Florida. It was unfair, said Rosenberg, that people thought Trump didn’t talk about abortion — “that’s just not true.”

This was how Trump, after a year of bobbing and weaving, endorsed a 15-week federal abortion limit; “even hard-liners are agreeing,” he told Rosenberg. The same day, Ohio Republicans nominated state Rep. Derrick Merrin, who’d advanced a six-week state abortion ban, for a Toledo-area House seat; in Cincinnati, they nominated Orlando Sonza, who’d told a local Right to Life group that he opposed “abortion-on-demand from fertilization to birth.”

One month after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that fertilized embryos had the legal rights of children, Republicans have moved closer to a clear abortion message: a national 15-week limit and carve-outs for IVF.

That position is being built in fits and starts. It’s contradicted by the actions of individual incumbents and candidates — some on record supporting stiffer limits, some opposed right now to IVF. On Thursday, the Republican Study Committee released a budget document that praised the Life at Conception Act, creating yet another headache for RSC members who’d backed away from that bill over concerns that it would ban IVF. That position is also still backed in the GOPs official platform, which has long included support for a human life amendment and extending 14th Amendment protections to fetuses.

But the anti-abortion movement has also given Republicans space to figure this out. Candidates who signed pledges to support life at fertilization, and now don’t support the federal Life at Conception Act, have gotten no serious pressure from issue groups. During the Republican presidential primary, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America urged candidates to endorse a 15-week federal limit, only to watch every candidate who clearly did so drop out before voting began in Iowa. After Trump’s meandering 15-week answer, all was forgiven.

“President Trump is right: protecting babies from painful late-term abortions is a place of national consensus,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “We challenge the Biden/Harris Administration and all Democrats to stop catering to the extreme Left and work with President Trump to enact the will of the people and eliminate painful late-term abortion — just like 47 out of 50 European countries do.”

David’s view

The most important development in the GOP’s messaging war is the soft touch of the anti-abortion movement, which is more interested in exercising power than in language games.

The best example of this: Lagging support for the Life at Conception Act, which lost 30 House co-sponsors from the last Congress to this one. California Rep. Michelle Steel co-sponsored it last year, delayed co-sponsoring it this year, signed on after the New York Times highlighted her apparent flip-flop — then withdrew her sponsorship after the Alabama decision, explaining that “it could create confusion about my support for the blessings of having children through IVF.”

What was Steel’s punishment? Nothing, really; she won 55% of the vote in this month’s all-party California primary. Anti-abortion groups aren’t attacking Republicans who say they support life at conception, but don’t sign onto bills that would protect it. In New York, Rep. Andrew Garbarino told the Long Island Coalition for Life he’d support “legislation to protect innocent human life from conception to natural death.” Asked about Garbarino not signing onto the existing bill that would do that, a spokesperson for the coalition showed no concern.

“The LICL doesn’t generally ask legislators/candidates if they’ll sign on to a specific bill,” they said in an email. “We may find out the position of a legislator/candidate indirectly. We encourage pro-lifers to contact their legislators asking them to vote for pro-life legislation (and against pro-abortion legislation).”

Other Republicans who’ve bailed on the bill have explained that they support exceptions, with no backlash yet from social conservatives back home. Asked why they sponsored it in 2022 but not now, two Republicans in seats that Joe Biden won had similar answers.

“I didn’t sign on this Congress because it doesn’t adequately address the concerns I had about exceptions for cases of rape, incest, and life of the mother,” California Rep. David Valadao said in a statement. “The decision decided this was an issue left to the states and that’s where I believe policy on the issue should be decided.”

Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon said that he wanted the bill “to include more specific language to clear up misconceptions about the legislation,” and didn’t sign on again for that reason. “The author’s intent was not to restrict abortions or IVF, but rather to be a statement of principle,” he said in a statement. “Seeing how the Dems distorted the bill last election, I asked that the bill be more carefully written to preclude confusion or distortion.”

And West Virginia Rep. Alex Mooney, who sponsored the bill, took a forgiving stance on the members who’d backed away. “House Republicans realize that the media hysteria over the Alabama IVF decision was overblown and did nothing to prohibit use of IVF treatment,” he said in a statement. “My bill does nothing to ban IVF treatment. Destroying or neglecting human embryos is not essential for IVF. The Life at Conception Act calls for embryos to be treated with dignity and humanity. I am proud that a majority of the House Republican Conference once again believes life begins at conception. The pro-life spirit is alive and well in the Republican Conference.”

The View From Democrats

Democrats have won a string of races, including last month’s special election on Long Island, by pinning down Republican candidates on abortion. They’re confident that this works. Ohio’s primaries this week, which produced nominees whose abortion records go beyond the 15-week promise, made them more confident.

“They’re trying to massage their language,” said Democratic Ohio Rep. Greg Landsman, who’s running against Orlando Sonza. “There’s no way around the fact that they still want a national abortion ban. They still want politicians — i.e., themselves — to make these decisions, taking away this core freedom from patients and their doctors.”

In the Toledo-based 9th district, where Republicans nominated Merrin to face Rep. Marcy Kaptur, Democrats said that Merrin’s work on the six-week limit would be an albatross for him in November.

“There is no short supply of extremism or corruption in Ohio’s Republican controlled state government,” Kaptur’s campaign said in a statement. “Getting between families and medical professionals is just another example of extremist overreach.”

In the competitive 13th district in and around Akron, Republicans nominated ex-legislator Kevin Coughlin to face Rep. Emilia Sykes. The congresswoman, who served with Coughlin in Columbus, said that his record there would be hard to spin away, along with his opposition to last year’s reproductive freedom amendment, which passed locally by a landslide.

“My opponent specifically said that he didn’t think people really knew what they were voting for,” said Sykes. “My constituents are not stupid. How dare you? You have a lot of nerve to say such a thing about the people in this district who you want to serve.”

Notable

• In Vox, Rachel M. Cohen marshaled evidence that Democrats might not benefit from abortion politics in 2024, which disproportionately moved “the kinds of voters likely to cast ballots in midterm and special elections.”

• In the Washington Post, Meagan Vasquez looked at how Democrats were using the Republican Study Committee’s budget against the GOP, highlighting elements that swing seat Republicans might not want to run on.