WASHINGTON (AP) — In the race for the U.S. House majority, many Republican candidates are speaking out in new and surprising ways about women’s rights to abortion and reproductive care, a deliberate shift in policy by Republicans who have been blindsided by some of the political fallout from the Roe v. Wade case.
By looking directly into the camera for their ads or writing personal opinion pieces in local newspapers, Republicans are trying to distance themselves from some of the more aggressive anti-abortion ideas of their party and its allies. Instead, Republican candidates are working quickly to make their own views clear, independent of a GOP that has worked to restrict reproductive care for decades.
In New York, at-risk Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, sitting at a kitchen table with his wife, said in an ad: “There must be no place for extremism in women’s health care.”
In California, Republican Representative Michelle Steel explains her own path to motherhood with the support of artificial insemination and vows: “I have always supported women’s access to artificial insemination and will fight to defend it.”
And in Arizona, Republican Congressman Juan Ciscomani stands in front of the camera and says: “I want you to hear it directly from me: I trust women. I value new life. And I reject the extremes on the abortion issue.”
It’s a remarkable new approach as the Republican Party tries to avoid losses in November that could wipe out its majority in the House. It comes in a fast-moving election season filled with spectacular and gripping stories of how women’s lives are upended and endangered by abortion restrictions.
The new strategy is endorsed and promoted by the Republican campaign team in the House of Representatives, acknowledging the Republicans’ failure to grasp the political importance of women’s reproductive care as an issue that can mobilize voters.
“Republicans always knew they were actually on the wrong side of this issue,” said Ilyse Hogue, former president of the group formerly known as NARAL Pro-Choice America and now a senior fellow at New America, a Washington think tank. She said the party’s change of course “would not surprise me.”
With less than 50 days to go before the election, Republican candidates for House of Representatives are testing in real time how to talk about women’s access to reproductive care – at a time when youthful women are more liberal than they have been in decades.
At the national level, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, but has stressed that it is best to leave it up to states to decide whether to allow abortion and has distanced himself from the far-right’s long-standing goal of banning abortion nationwide.
After Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the party ticket, Democrats are capitalizing on the vice president’s ability to mobilize women and others, promising to restore reproductive health care in a campaign whose participants are cheering, “We are not going back.”
The election campaign for the majority in the US House of Representatives is as tough as ever. With so few seats left, it will be a question of which party has the majority in the House of Representatives and whether Congress will side with the White House or whether it will act as a possible opposition party to a new government.
Republicans admit they did not expect abortion access to become such a crucial issue when the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs in 2022, overturning Roe v. Wade and ending abortion rights that had been enshrined in law for nearly 50 years.
Voters did not always cite abortion access as a top issue in the 2022 election, Republicans said, but for candidates portrayed as too extreme, it became disqualifying. The anti-abortion movement’s push for a national abortion ban and proposed rollbacks on fertility treatments sparked a new focus. The “red wave” of Republican electoral victories promised in November failed to materialize, and the party narrowly won a majority in the House of Representatives.
In the summer of 2024, polls from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that a solid majority of Americans oppose a federal abortion ban and a growing number support access to abortion for any reason, up from 2021, a year before the Supreme Court’s decision.
In a competitive race for a House seat in the San Diego area, Republican challenger Matt Gunderson speaks directly to the camera and declares: “I am for free choice.”
Jack Pandol, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Democrats spent hundreds of millions of dollars in 2022 “lying about the Republican candidates’ positions on this sensitive and delicate issue.”
“Republicans can no longer allow Democrats to lie – they must be clear and direct and forcefully push back against these false attacks.”
Yet House Democrats are redoubling their efforts to gain control of the chamber by focusing on Republican candidates in the House and their views on abortion – past and present.
“Republicans are trying to manipulate voters,” said CJ Warnke, communications director for House Majority PAC, the outside group that supports House Democrats.
House Majority PAC is bombarding Republicans with multimillion-dollar campaign ads warning against Republicans’ extreme views on abortion and reproductive care. The PAC has compiled voting records, legislative initiatives and past comments from incumbents and freshmen, and is pledging to spend at least $100 million on the issue in the race for House seats this election cycle.
Democrats are also now speaking out more openly and vigorously in favor of reproductive care, in many ways following Harris’ example.
Representative Suzan DelBene, chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, vowed: “We will make sure the American people know exactly how Republicans voted on restricting reproductive rights.”
Congress has been a central battleground for efforts to advance the anti-abortion agenda for decades, with Republicans repeatedly proposing legislation aimed at restricting various types of abortion services, including late-term abortions.
Trump, along with Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, orchestrated the confirmation of three justices to the nine-member Supreme Court during the former president’s term – a historic achievement – fulfilling a longstanding party goal of giving the court a conservative majority.
Initially, the Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade was celebrated as a victory for conservatives, but the consequences of the Dobbs decision soon became a political liability for Republicans as states began to introduce abortion bans.
One of the country’s leading anti-abortion groups, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, encourages candidates in a policy paper to recommit to abolishing abortion and portrays Democrats as extremist forces seeking nationwide access to abortion.
But Republican Rep. Lawler said it was vital that he address the issue directly because Democrats are attacking him as extreme on the issue. “Voters have a right to know where I stand,” Lawler said.
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Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.
