Republican strategists are increasingly worried that abortion politics will cost the party a chance to regain a Senate majority after the GOP lost a seat in the chamber in 2022.
Senate Republicans, who only have 10 seats up for reelection in 2024 and no at-risk incumbents, believe they have a leg up over their Democratic counterparts who have to defend 23 seats, including those of vulnerable incumbents in Montana, Nevada, Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. But as Democrats prepare to make abortion rights a key issue in 2024, Republican strategists told The Hill the issue was a major factor in the Democratic wins in the Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania Senate races that GOP senators should be cautious of.
"It's true that abortion was the chief inhibiting factor for preventing Republicans from gaining an even bigger majority in the House, and of the Senate seats where we came up short last cycle the only way we can win this cycle is if we don't let an issue like that pull voters away from our party," one anonymous Republican Senate strategist told the outlet.
"In the Senate, Republicans have a huge opportunity to get the majority back, but suburban women voters will not vote for our candidates if they are turned off by what they feel are extreme views," the source continued.
"Any state where Republicans have trouble with suburban voters because of the Trump brand, they had double trouble with suburban voters because of abortion politics, and it was for no reason because there is no chance a federal ban on abortion happens, ever," the strategist added.
Senate Republicans, however, are as divided as ever on whether to leave decisions on abortion rights to the discretion of state legislatures, a stance held by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnel, Ky., or to rally behind the federal abortion ban that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., argues 2024 Republican presidential candidates should embrace.
Graham, who maintains that abortion is "a human rights issue," intends to reintroduce legislation that would ban abortions at the federal level at 15 weeks but still allow states to impose stricter provisions that would apply to earlier stages of pregnancy.
"Some Republicans say abortion is a states' rights issue. I reject that," Graham told The Post and Courier last month.
"I think there's a role in protecting the unborn in Washington," he added, before comparing the abortion rights conversation to the debate over slavery in the 1800s.
In the lead-up to the 2024 election, Republican strategists are trying to dissuade Graham from pushing the 15-week ban back onto the national stage, arguing that debating abortion policies in Congress would play right into Senate Democrats' political hand.
"I firmly believe that there is no position on abortion that will ever be accepted as legitimate in both Mississippi and Massachusetts, so I think the wiser course of action is to let the state legislatures decide, but that's a debatable proposition," Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster and strategist, told The Hill.
"If they're going to argue for one national position by Congress, it needs to be something close to consensus middle ground for the country. Seems like that's somewhere around a ban after 15 or 16 weeks with exceptions for severe cases, like the life of the mother," he said, adding that Graham's proposal "wasn't really a national 15-week ban" because of its allowances for states to tighten the restrictions at earlier stages of pregnancy.
Graham first revealed the abortion-ban proposal in September just weeks before the November midterm, a move Republican strategists at the time criticized.
"It was awful," the anonymous strategist said of the proposal's unveiling. "From a campaign practitioner's standpoint, it was awful."
Some of Graham's Republican colleagues also disagree with his approach, arguing that it doesn't allow candidates the room to assert their own beliefs on the matter.
"The idea that you're going to say, 'I'm going to find the national consensus' and not give any hint about what the national consensus might be is not going to cut it. Democrats will wrap you around the axle. Try to say what you really believe," Ayres said, encouraging GOP candidates to instead say, "let's do what the Supreme Court allowed and that's let the state legislatures to decide it."
A second anonymous strategist, however, shared the opposite opinion, arguing that Graham's play is the right one.
"Lindsey Graham is right. Democrats are going to run on abortion no matter what, any Republican who wants to win needs to take a stand on the issue instead of letting Democrats define them," the strategist said.
The Democratic leaders last month on the anniversary of the Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Center decision, which struck down the federal protection of the right to an abortion, sought unanimous agreement to pass four bills ensuring abortion and reproductive health rights. The first bill would protect the right to contraception, while the second would bolster the freedom to travel across state lines to obtain an abortion. The third would grant legal protection to doctors who provide abortion care to people who travel across state lines, and the fourth would prevent the use of their online health and location data against people who obtained an abortion.
The Dobbs decision had a "huge impact" on the 2022 midterm election, Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, told The Hill.
"It was a twofer — it mobilized record numbers of young people and record numbers of Democrats, particularly Democratic younger women, and then it also helped us set up these races as a choice rather than a referendum," she said.
To secure a win in 2024, "we need to make this a choice, not a referendum," she added, noting the value of emphasizing candidates' different stances on abortion.
Lake also noted that more than 20 states have limited access to abortions since the Dobbs decision last year. Fourteen states have banned most abortions, and some states, like Gov. Ron DeSantis' Florida after he signed a six-week abortion ban, are embroiled in legal battles over the tighter restrictions on abortion they proposed.
With President Joe Biden's approval rating hovering in the low 40s, Democrats are turning to the abortion issue to generate more enthusiasm among voters, a play Republican strategists recognize would also work in Democrats' favor in the 2024 election.
"There's two things Democrats need: Donald Trump and the abortion issue," GOP strategist Brandon Scholz said, adding that abortion is a difficult issue for Republicans to handle because "it is an issue that stands alone" and that Republicans' better polling issues can't easily counter.
"Today I think Republicans still have to figure out how they're going to address it because Republicans are split," Scholz said. "Some want no action, some want exceptions, some want even tougher language. There's no consensus among Republican Party members."
