In one state, Republican women filibustered to block a near-total abortion ban introduced by their own party. In another, the Republican co-sponsor of a six-week abortion ban subsequently tanked his own bill. On the federal level, a Republican congresswoman warns that the GOP’s abortion stance could mean “losing huge” in 2024.
As states continue to bring in tighter restrictions on abortion following the fall of Roe v Wade, internal divisions within the Republican party on the issue are starting to show.
Divisions became most apparent last week in the deep red states of South Carolina and Nebraska, where Republicans roundly rejected further attempts to curtail abortion rights last week.
In South Carolina on Thursday, all five female senators – three of them Republican – led a filibuster that ultimately blocked a bill which would have banned abortion from conception with very few exceptions.
That was the third time a near-total ban on abortion has failed in the Republican-dominated senate in South Carolina since Roe was overturned last summer.
“We told them, ‘Don’t take us down this path again for the third time in six months – you will regret it.’ And so we made them regret it,” said state senator Sandy Senn, who spoke at length on the senate floor on Thursday, of the male Republican senators continually pushing abortion restrictions in her state – including in an earlier attempt this year to make abortion a crime punishable by the death penalty. Abortions remain legal until 22 weeks in the state, which has become a safe haven for abortion in a region with increasingly limited options.
With nothing having changed since the last two times the senators brought the bill, Senn said her Republican counterparts knew another abortion ban had no hopes of passing. But with an election looming in 2024, she believes they are keen to flaunt their anti-abortion positions.
“He was just trying to flex his Republican credentials,” she said of Shane Massey, the senate leader, who voted in favor of the bill. “He wants people to know, ‘I want a strict ban, I want no abortion. I’m going to try it for the third time and lose, but it’s not my fault that we lost – it’s these Republicans who voted against me.’”
In Nebraska, an attempt to bring a six-week abortion ban failed by a single vote in the majority Republican chamber. Merv Riepe, a Republican senator who had initially co-sponsored the bill chose to withhold his vote on Thursday, becoming an unlikely player in the bill’s demise, having voted in its favor as recently as two weeks prior.
But Riepe had raised hesitations about the bill back in March, telling local press that six weeks might not be enough time for a person to realize they are pregnant and get an abortion.
He did propose an amendment to the bill on Thursday, proposing a ban on abortion after 12 weeks, but other Republican legislators rejected it, saying they had already compromised enough.
Barrett Marson, a GOP strategist based in Arizona, said that these increasingly visible tensions may speak to a difficulty that Republicans are having trying to balancing different wings of the party.
“There is a tension between the base of the Republican party and moderate Republicans. The hardcore base wants outright bans on abortion. But the broader electorate, and certainly a substantial amount of right-leaning independents and moderate Republicans, want to keep abortion legal but rare,” said Marson.
Those tensions are certainly becoming clear on the national stage, with growing numbers of Republicans sounding the alarm that the party should not lean too far right on abortion, especially since last year’s midterms showed a string of victories for abortion rights that seem to suggest the party’s stance on the issue is out of sync with the general public.
Recent weeks have also seen a number of Republican presidential hopefuls trying to walk back the party’s stance on abortion. Last week, the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley asked the party for a “humanizing, not demonizing” conversation on abortion. Donald Trump has indicated he thinks a federal abortion ban – touted by Senator Lindsey Graham last year – a losing proposal for 2024.
Following a supreme court decision to keep access to a crucial drug in medication abortions widely available for the time being, the Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace said told ABC she agreed with the ruling.
“I want us to find some middle ground,” Mace said. “I represent a very purple district … As Republicans, we need to read the room on this issue, because the vast majority of folks are not in the extremes,” she said.
Mace criticized a recent decision by the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, to sign a six-week abortion ban in his own state – a bill she said he “signed in the dead of the night”.
“We are going to lose huge if we continue down this path of extremities … [People] want exceptions for rape and incest, they want women to have access to birth control. These are very commonsense positions that we can take and still be pro-life,” Mace said.
Senn’s own decision to join the filibuster in South Carolina, she said, was about principle – but she added that the politics are also compelling.
“As far as in my state, 53% of the Republican voters agree with me. And in my district, 70% agree with me,” she said.
“I don’t want any woman to have an abortion. I hope she doesn’t have to, but I’m not going to judge her. And she has to have a meaningful opportunity to make her decision,” she said.
Senn supports a ban after 12 weeks, with exceptions for people who have been raped, victims of incest, or whose life is threatened by a pregnancy – and said she continues to be shocked by fellow Republican who disagree with that stance.
“The baby is not even a baby at that point. In my state, 19 lawmakers in our house of representatives signed on to a bill that would make a woman guilty of murder if she had an abortion at any stage,” she said, referring to a recent bill. “I just wish we had more people in the middle, with common sense on all issues. And on this issue, why not have some mercy?” she asks.
Marson, the strategist, believes the mixed messaging from the party could end in catastrophe for Republicans in 2024 if they don’t heed those calls.
“We don’t have to guess what will happen. Just a little over six months ago, we saw what the issue of abortion does to the electorate – it pushes them to Democrats,” he said.
“We’ve seen states like Kansas, one of the more conservative states in the country, reject abortion bans. A six-week ban that doesn’t allow for exception of rape and incest and life of the mother – that’s a campaign-ender for a Republican,” he said.
