Kari Lake and the GOP’s Clumsy Messaging About Abortion
Earlier this month, Kari Lakeâthe right-wing candidate running for the United States Senate in Arizonaâtried to distance herself from the Civil War-era abortion ban the stateâs high court upheld. âIt is abundantly clear,â the MAGA candidate said in a statement at the time, âthat this pre-statehood law is out of step with Arizonans.â But in a recent interview, Lake sounded a different noteâexpressing frustration that the 1864 law has yet to be enforced by state leaders: “The Arizona Supreme Court said this is the law of Arizona, but unfortunately, the people running our state have said weâre not going to enforce it.â
âWe donât have that law as many of us wish we did,â she said during the visit to Idaho, which is at the center of the first major abortion case before the U.S. Supreme Court since its conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Lakeâs remarks came as Arizona Democrats mounted a third push to repeal the 1864 ban after previous efforts were thwarted by state Republicansâunderscoring the deceitfulness of the GOPâs efforts to clean up the abortion mess they made.
But Lake isnât the only conservative trying to have it both ways on reproductive rights or to muddy the issue ahead of the November election. The Republican Party has tried to fix its âbrand problemâ on reproductive rights by discussing the issue with more âcommon senseâ and empathy, as the Wall Street Journal reported last month, as its leader, Donald Trump, has sought to frame abortion as a matter of statesâ rights. âItâs tailor-made,â Trump said of differing state abortion laws in an interview with Philadelphiaâs Action News on Tuesday, during a break in his Manhattan criminal trial. âItâs really working out well for people,â Trump said. âAnd theyâre very, very happy.â In reality, the state of reproductive healthcare in America has weighed down Republicans in post-Dobbs elections, in which votersâwho overwhelmingly support abortion protectionsâhave rejected both draconian restrictions and anti-choice extremists, which is why Trump and his fellow Republicans are so desperate to obfuscate their position.
âDonald Trump is worried voters are going to hold him accountable,â President Joe Biden said during a campaign stop Tuesday in Florida, where the six-week abortion ban Governor Ron DeSantis signed last year is set to take effect May 1. âLook, I donât think weâre going to let them get away with it.â Holding Trump and the GOP accountable in November will require Biden and the Democrats to continue hammering on the issue: Though Democrats mobilized voters on abortion in the midterms and off-year elections, the dynamics of the presidential election could be different, as Rachel M. Cohen pointed out in Vox last month. Where midterms and special elections tend to draw highly-engaged voters, presidential elections also bring out less-engaged voters, who may not view Trump as the threat to abortion rights he isâeven though he has rightfully claimed credit for the fall of Roe.
Thatâs precisely the kind of confusion Trump and Republicans are trying to foster with their misleading, inconsistent rhetoric on abortion. The task ahead for Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and their surrogates is to break through the noise. âThereâs one person responsible for this nightmare, and heâs acknowledged, and he brags about it,â Biden said in Tampa on Tuesday. âDonald Trump.â
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