The Republican presidential debate Wednesday highlighted how a 15-week federal ban on abortions has become a key marker in the party’s struggle to coalesce around a position on the crucial issue.
Candidates are trying to walk a tightrope by staking out a “pro-life” position that won’t turn off a majority of voters in a general election, while also trying not to alienate the anti-abortion movement.
Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, as the only woman on stage, pushed for a “consensus” solution that included banning late-term abortions. Even though she has endorsed a 15-week federal ban, she sounded the alarm that pushing for an extreme position could alienate women voters.
Haley said she was “unapologetically pro-life” but insisted that a federal abortion ban is a hypothetical situation that won’t happen due to political reality.
“Don’t make women feel like they have to decide on this issue, when you know we don’t have 60 Senate votes,” she said.
Former Vice President Mike Pence hit back at Haley, saying “consensus is the opposite of leadership” and calling for “a minimum standard in every state.”
Rather than discussing their own positions, some candidates were eager to try to flip the script and highlight what they said was Democratic extremism.
“What the Democrats are trying to do on this issue is wrong, to allow abortion all the way up to the moment of birth,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said.
However, DeSantis dodged questions about whether he would support a six-week abortion ban at the federal level, like the one he signed earlier this year in Florida.
Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) has been among the most consistent supporters of a 15-week ban in the GOP field. “We cannot let states like California, New York and Illinois have abortions on demand up until the day of birth,” he said Wednesday. “That is immoral. It is unethical. It is wrong.”
Those statements earned applause, which abortion rights experts said was the point. Reframing the issue as an attack on Democrats makes it easier to defend 15 weeks as a reasonable middle ground.
Greer Donley, associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, said focusing on late-term abortions has historically been successful for the anti-abortion movement, especially since Democrats have seemed reluctant to engage in any pushback.
“Their focus on later abortions, I think, has historically served them very well. But I think it’s an old script, and I’m just not sure it’s going to be as effective as it used to be,” Donley said.
In the post-Roe era, people are seeing the harms that can happen to women in states with strict abortion bans at any point in pregnancies, she added.
Even though support for later-trimester abortions doesn’t poll as well as support for earlier abortion, a June Gallup poll showed record-high support for second and even third trimester abortions.
“We’re in this kind of paradigm-shifting moment. People’s opinions on abortion are shifting quickly, way quicker than they ever have before,” Donley said.
Still, GOP leaders and anti-abortion groups are pushing hard for candidates to unite around the notion that abortions after 15 weeks shouldn’t happen.
In an interview with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News after the debates, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel alluded to the candidates’ differences, but suggested there was agreement on a larger issue.
“They were different on the federal,” McDaniel acknowledged. “But I think they all had a consensus that as a country, when a baby feels pain at 15 weeks, we should all agree that this is a bridge too far and we should not be having abortions.”
While some activists want candidates to go even further than 15 weeks, there’s a growing frustration at those who try to dodge the issue completely.
“Tonight’s Republican presidential debate made it clear who is and is not prepared to be a National Defender of Life. Some were bold in sharing the plight of the unborn in half the country where brutal late-term abortions continue at any point in pregnancy for any reason,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement.
“The position taken by candidates like [North Dakota Gov.] Doug Burgum, that life is solely a matter for the states, is unacceptable,” she added.
The push to coalesce behind a 15-week ban is relatively new. In the states, it gained traction in 2018 when Mississippi passed the law that would ultimately be used to challenge Roe v. Wade.
Prior to last year, the leading anti-abortion bills in the Senate would have banned the procedure after 20 weeks. The most recent 20-week bill, sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), was defeated in a procedural vote in 2018.
Then last year, Graham introduced a bill banning abortion nationally after 15 weeks, which he painted as an easy political compromise that every Republican should be able to support.
But the bill was introduced just ahead of the midterm elections and divided Senate Republican leadership. It gave Democrats an easy campaign message, because it brought into stark relief the differences between Democrats who wanted to preserve abortion access and Republicans who wanted to restrict it.
The idea behind 15 weeks seemed “kind of random originally,” said Mary Ziegler, a legal historian and law professor at the University of California, Davis.
“A lot of the leading anti-abortion groups started with 20 weeks because that was when you could make a plausible, but not super plausible, claim that fetal pain was possible. Then Mississippi, in a bid to be the most pro-life state in the nation, went to 15 weeks, and other Republicans rallied around it,” Ziegler said.
Still, Ziegler said it doesn’t make sense to continue asking the candidates about a 15-week federal ban because it’s not something a president can control.
Yet there are other levers available to the White House. A Republican president could roll back current administration policies aimed at easing abortion access, issue executive orders that recognize fetal personhood or impose financial penalties on progressive states and state institutions or universities that receive federal funding and have liberal abortion laws.
But because of the party’s desire to coalesce around something, Ziegler said she expects more attacks on Democrats.
“It’s much easier to talk about what Democrats think and say is bad than it is to actually take a position, especially when the position is almost certainly going to anger one of the constituencies the GOP needs to win,” she said.
