During the debate Tuesday night, Vance admitted the GOP has lost the trust of American women on abortion. He said “[the Republican Party] has to do a better job in earning the American people's trust back [on abortion] where they frankly, just don't trust us.” He also flat out lied that he never supported a national abortion ban. He voted for Lindsey Graham’s national abortion ban and… well, you can interpret this anyway you want to but it’s on his official campaign website:
The Republicans know how the read polls and they see this issue has turned around and is ready to rip them to shreds next month. And it isn’t just Trump and Vance; almost none of them in swing districts and battleground states are embracing the ole anti-Choice rhetoric that once motivated the party base like nothing else. They’re leaving that base to fend for itself now— pissed off they were dragged into this by them— and are instead tap dancing around the issue. House Republicans in tough races are claiming they support Choice, despite votes against abortion whenever it came up. The Republican, Matt Gunde, running against Mike Levin in the San Diego area is running a TV ad that says “A woman's right to choose. I'm pro choice.” Can you imagine Trump or Vance going that far? I wonder how many— if any— votes he lost from Republicans for that. Rob Mercuri, the asshole running against Pennsylvania progressive Chris Leluzio, sounds like he’s attacking Trump, Vance and the majority of his party’s leaders in his new ad: “Politicians spend their time dividing us. It's all politics, nothing gets done… I oppose criminalizing abortion because demonizing women over health care choices isn't right.”
Juan Ciscomani, an anti-Choice Republican hack from Arizona is running an ad that “I trust women.” Funny, he never had before, at least not when it came to decisions about abortion. Many say they will oppose a national abortion ban, code for “I’m still anti-Choice” but I need to win. New York Republican incumbents Marc Molinaro, Mike Lawler and Brandon Williams are all running from their own records and their own party.
Wednesday, Kylie Cheung wrote about how the Republicans keep trying to rebrand their paty’s abortion ban. She started by noting as so many debate watchers did that when Vance was confronted about his anti-abortion record, he “lied that he ‘never supported a national abortion ban’ and only supported ‘some minimum national standard.’ These are the exact same thing. Whether it’s a six-week, 15-week, or 20-week ‘minimum national standard,’ that’s a ban on whether and when people can access a medical service… It’s also the same line Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) used during the Missouri Senate debate in September: ‘I don’t support a nationwide ban. I do support reasonable federal restrictions— limits on abortion, like partial-birth abortion, like when the baby is capable of feeling pain.’ Of course, there’s no science on any of the stigmatizing, inaccurate spin Hawley provides, and what he’s describing— ‘reasonable federal restrictions’— is an abortion ban. Period. Similarly, Trump has insisted that he’s a moderate on abortion because he supports leaving abortion up to the states— the position that’s allowed about half of the country to ban abortion and upend the medical system.”
Republicans know abortion bans are unpopular. And they know abortion bans have become accurately associated with causing horrific medical emergencies. In September, the first confirmed maternal deaths, both due to Georgia’s six-week ban, were confirmed by the state’s maternal mortality committee. So, Vance, Hawley, former President Trump, and all the other Republicans trying to distance themselves from their anti-abortion records in order to win back voters are now simply renaming their policies.
So, rebranding is officially the GOP’s new abortion strategy. And, as Abortion, Every Day’s Jessica Valenti observed on Twitter Wednesday morning, mainstream media outlets are enabling that strategy.
During the debate, after Vance answered the question about his abortion record, Trump posted to Truth Social that “EVERYONE KNOWS I WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND WOULD, IN FACT, VETO IT.” Valenti shared a screenshot of headlines from Politico, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and CBS News, all taking Trump at his word that he’d veto a national abortion ban. Maybe he would veto something labeled a “national abortion ban,” but he didn’t say he’d veto anything labeled a “minimum national standard” or “reasonable federal restriction.” He’d sign either of those. Additionally, as his advisers’ Project 2025 has detailed, he could easily bypass Congress to ban abortion through the archaic Comstock Act. This irresponsible, uncritical media coverage is similar to what we saw in July, when the Republican Party released their official 2024 platform and didn’t explicitly call for a national ban— but called for fetal personhood. These same outlets framed that omission as the GOP “softening” its extreme position on abortion.
The devastating impact of abortion bans is the same no matter what you call them.
None of this is complicated— least of all for Vance, who’s spoken pretty unambiguously about where he stands on abortion bans for years: In 2022, while running for U.S. Senate, Vance said on the far-right Very Fine People podcast that he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.” In 2021, Vance argued that if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, “Black women” in Ohio would be able to travel to California for abortions, and a national ban would be necessary to stop this interstate abortion travel. That same year, he rejected rape and incest exceptions for abortion bans, telling Spectrum News, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” As recently as 2023, he signed a letter asserting that law enforcement has a right to access traveling abortion patients’ medical data to enforce abortion bans, trapping them under their states’ laws and effectively enforcing a federal ban.
For the 2d straight cycle, reproductive rights are the 1 issue that donkey can clearly use to distinguish itself from elephant. Had Roberts persuaded the Fab 5 to uphold the MS abortion law at issue in Dobbs without expressly overturning the Roe/Casey line of cases, Dems would've faced visibly tougher political sledding.
With that being said, Harris enthusiastically accepting Liz Cheney's endorsement at the GOP's birthplace studiously ignored Cheney's "A" rating from "Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America":
https://sbaprolife.org/representative/liz-cheney
I'm still trying to figure out the emphasis on getting the support of an ex-MOC who voted with Trump 93% of the time and with Biden 27% of the time, but then, I'm not making seven figures as a political consultant.