Abortion has been a major point of contention in the 2024 general elections. As some conservative states seek to maintain or increase abortion restrictions, some Latina Republicans across the country are seeking to leave the issue behind to prevent a potential career death.
Growing literature shows Latinos to be primarily pro-choice. For instance, 57% of Hispanics believe abortion should be legal in almost every scenario, compared to 62% of the general population, according to a 2022 study by the Pew Research Center.
These figures are constant, despite some Latinos being closely affiliated with their religion, Noticias Telemundo shows.
This is why politicians and strategists from both parties are hoping that the issue, which has proven to be divisive across the country, will energize the electorate to head to the polls in November.
For Latina Republicans, the issue has been a sore topic along the campaign trail, leading them to opt to leave it behind as they launch their election bids. "Abortion bans became a politically toxic issue for Republicans in elections across the country," explained The New York Times back in January.
Some candidates are trying to prevent this toxicity from splashing onto their own careers,
Monica De La Cruz is a Republican Representative from Texas' District 15 considered to be a rising star since she was able to flip her seat from blue to red in the 2022 midterm elections. A few years ago, abortion was a primary campaign issue for De La Cruz, but overtime, according to Telemundo, she has deleted references to the issue in her website and official appearances.
From 2020 to 2022, abortion was positioned near the top of De La Cruz's website, where she affirmed her opposition to the issue and that human life started at the time of conception. Now, that stance is gone altogether.
Similarly, Mayra Flores is seeking to head back to Congress, representing Texas' 34th District, after she lost her seat in 2022 against Democrat Vicente Gonzalez.
Flores told The New York Times back in 2022 that she felt attracted to the Republican party due to her anti-abortion stances. In May of that year, her pro-life position was the second position listed in her website. As she renovated her website ahead of the 2024 election, there is no mention of the issue at all.
These instances, which Telemundo says are just few of a national trend, are in part explained because "when the Curt repealed the right to abortion and we could see how this returned to the states, and we saw those states make changes in the law against access, this was, for the country and for politicians, a real-life experiment," explained Grant Reeher, professor of Political Science at Syracuse University.
An overall avoidance of abortion is evident from the Republican party, as they barely mentioned the issue in their recently published party platform, opting to instead focus on immigration, inflation and other topics.
The document, with a long introduction in the voice of Trump, overruled the concerns of anti-abortion activists who had previously wanted the document to explicitly call for a constitutional amendment to give embryos or fetuses legal rights. Instead, the platform said that the Constitution's due process clause grants states the power "to pass laws protecting those rights."
"After 51 years, because of us, that power has been given to the states and to a vote of the people," the document says. "We will oppose late term abortion while supporting mothers and policies that advance prenatal care, access to birth control, and IVF."
Similarly, former president and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump has also avoided the debate, simply saying it should be left to the states, as the Supreme Court dictated in its controversial 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.
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