GOP Leaders Like Elise Stefanik Are Encouraging Anti-Choice Candidates To Commit Political Suicide

Republicans Never Learn Voters Want Them To Butt Out Of Women's Healthcare

How many abortions did Trump pay for personally?

House Republican Conference chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY), a very close Trump ally, and NRCC chair Richard Hudson (R-NC), were urging the Republican members who bothered showing up for the GOP conference’s annual retreat— most didn’t— that the battle over abortion can be turned into a winning issue for them, despite the fact that two-thirds of Americans support a woman’s right to choice, including 67% of swing voters. The Republican base is anti-Choice but they will have a hard time winning any new districts or even holding onto swing districts with an anti-Choice message.

Jamie McLeod-Skinner is running in one of those districts— south of Portland— where a knee-jerk Republican, Lori Chavez DeRemer, represents a district where Biden beat Trump by 9 points and where the partisan lean is D+3. “In OR-5,” McLeod-Skinner told me yesterday, “there’s a strongly bi-partisan belief that women have the right to reproductive and abortion healthcare. In front of some voters, Lori claims to respect this, but her votes are consistently anti-choice MAGA extremist. I will work to codify our right to abortion healthcare into law.”

Shamaine Daniels is running for the Pennsylvania seat held by anti-Choice fanatic Scott Perry, a full-throated right-wing extremist in a moderate district. Trump won the district 4 points and there’s an R+9 partisan lean. She’s positive that. If voters have Choice on their minds when they fill out their ballots, Perry will lose. She that me that “If anything, the Republican posture on IVF and abortion, highlights why legislators need to stay out of making healthcare decisions.”

Writing for USA Today, Riley Beggin and Ken Tran reported that “Republican leaders are encouraging Congressional candidates not to shy away from discussing abortion and in vitro fertilization during the election this fall. The guidance comes as Democrats prepare to hammer Republicans over reproductive rights in the first presidential election cycle since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. It also comes after a court ruling in Alabama threatened IVF in the state and showcased new ways the viewpoint that life begins at conception can complicate public policy and politics around family planning. ‘We believe it's important for our members to engage on this issue and not stick their heads in the sand, which I think some potential candidates had done in the past,’ said Rep. Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican Conference, at the group’s annual retreat in West Virginia this week.

Stefanik tries making the case that Democrats are the extremists because they support late term abortion— Republicans even say abortion after birth— and because they want Medicare to pay for abortions. Beggin and Tran wrote that “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 98.9% of abortions took place before the 20th week of pregnancy. And experts say no abortions take place ‘up to the moment of birth,’ as Republicans often describe." 

Even worse for Republicans, “when asked to provide unanimous support for federal IVF protections, Republicans in the Senate said it should be left up to states to protect the procedure— a sentiment Stefanik echoed Thursday. Recent polling indicates IVF is immensely popular with voters: 86% of people polled say IVF should be legal and 14% say it should be illegal, according to a CBS News and YouGov poll conducted two weeks ago.” 

But South Dakota is just one of many red states trying to stop their citizens from voting on abortion rights. So Republicans whining that it should be “left up to the states,” know perfectly well that their states’ legislators and governors will work tirelessly to prevent and kind of democratic interference with their mania for banning Choice (and banning IVF).

Diane Young is also running in a swing district— MI-10, which has an R+6 partisan lean— and where the GOP incumbent, John James, won by 1,600 votes (48.8% to 48.3%) against a weak, damaged Democratic candidate in 2022. This cycle, Young will give him a much more robust run for his money. “My opponent John James, a MAGA Republican, who once called abortion ‘genocide,’ now tries to distance himself from those remarks because this district voted by a wide margin to protect reproductive rights in our Michigan Constitution,” she told us. “It isn't a winning issue for Republicans at all but if they have both the White House and the House of Representatives, they will jump at the chance to implement a radical National Abortion Ban. The people have spoken, yet John James continues to ignore them.”

Yesterday, NPR reported that the new self-inflicted IVF controversy is making it even harder for Republicans to dig out from under their own mess. No matter what kind of tap-dancing they’re doing now that the issue has taken front and center, over 160 Republicans in Congress “co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, a bill that would have granted constitutional protection to embryos at ‘the moment of fertilization,’ without any carve outs for IVF. If enacted, that legislation could have threatened access to IVF, during which embryos are often discarded or stored for years… Congresswoman Michelle Steel faced criticism for signing onto the Life at Conception Act after publicly discussing her experience using IVF. She has been an active supporter for IVF treatment access. She recently became the first lawmaker to take her name off the bill since Alabama's court ruling, citing ‘confusion’ about her stance.

Democrats in Congress have introduced legislation to protect IVF nationally. Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA) and Sens. Tammy Duckworth, (D-IL) and Patty Murray (D-WA) have introduced the Access to Family Building Act, which would codify the right to "assisted reproductive technology" without overly burdensome regulation. President Biden called on Congress to pass those protections during his State of the Union address.

…The Heritage Foundation and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America came out against both of those efforts. SBA said in a statement that the Access to Family Building act is a "sweeping anything goes" bill that would violate religious freedoms. Waters said the bill would "open the floodgates to a host of really concerning practices," such as cloning and genetic editing.

So far, New York Rep. Marc Molinaro is the only Republican to sign onto the legislation. Molinaro has taken a softer stance on abortion than many of his Republican colleagues; while he says he is "personally pro-life," he does not support a national ban, and supports exceptions for rape and incest.

…But any legislation is unlikely to advance in the House: Republican Speaker Mike Johnson has said he supports IVF access, but that it is “a states issue” that Congress will not take up.

That doesn't mean, though, that it won't be an issue on the campaign trail. Michigan Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin is running for Senate. And she says Republican messages of support are meaningless unless they sign on and support legislative action.

“I’m running against someone who came out loud and proud, 'I support IVF,' except he co-led four bills that would do the exact same thing as the Alabama ruling,” Slotkin said. “It's not what these guys say. It's what they do.”