March 16, 2024
By Jon Levine
Rep. Elise Stefanik is urging her colleagues not to shy away from the issue of abortion.
The upstate Republican congresswoman and chair of the House GOP conference told members in tough races they should lean in on the deeply divisive issue.
“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,” Stefanik told members at a retreat in West Virginia this week, adding Democrats “are the radicals on this.”
She cited Democrats’ support for late term abortion, and for repealing laws prohibiting federal funding for the procedure as two issues unpopular with voters, USA Today reported.
“Democrats are radically out of touch with the American people on the issue of abortion. The Democrat Party platform that once said abortions should be “safe, legal, and rare,” now fully support taxpayer funded late term abortions up until the moment of birth,” Stefanik told The Post. “I am pro life with the exceptions of rape, incest, and life of the mother. This is a position supported by a majority of Americans. As Republicans, we must speak loudly and clearly in support of families, women, and children on this moral issue and not allow Democrats and their stenographers in the mainstream media to lie about our positions.”
This year is the first presidential election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Vs. Wade in 2022, ending the federal right to abortion and returning the issue to the states.
For many Democrats, however, abortion is an ace-in-the-hole, with polls showing more than 60% of voters oppose the abortion bans many Americans states have sought to impose.
Last year voters in deep red Ohio voted to enshrined abortion rights in their state constitution.
A year earlier, voters in Kansas, a GOP bastion, overwhelmingly defeated a ballot measure that would have codified abortion restrictions in their state constitution.
And Montana voters rejected a bill that would have required medical workers to provide care to infants “born alive” in botched abortions.
GOP insiders said the issue would be extremely perilous in 2024.
