ICYMI: Republican Candidates Keep Straying Into Dangerous Territory: Abortion [New York Times]

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New York Times: Republican Candidates Keep Straying Into Dangerous Territory: Abortion
By Jonathan Weisman
September 26, 2024

• Republican candidates keep drifting back to abortion rights, an issue that favors Democrats.

• Republicans don’t want to touch abortion, their most troublesome issue since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

• But like a toothache they keep probing with their tongue, they just can’t seem to help it.

• This week, it was Bernie Moreno, the Republican running to unseat Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio, suggesting that abortion rights shouldn’t concern women over the age of 50 — “I don’t think that’s an issue for you,” he said on tape in Warren County, Ohio, over the weekend, as first reported by the NBC affiliate in Columbus.

• In competitive contests, Republicans keep bringing [abortion] up, and in terms that their opponents have argued are disrespectful, if not contemptuous, of women. Even Nikki Haley…felt compelled to weigh in on Mr. Moreno’s comments, posing the question on social media, “Are you trying to lose the election? Asking for a friend.”

• Mr. Moreno, running in a state where Mr. Trump holds a clear lead but he has struggled, was caught on tape…stoking the fire around abortion.

• “Sadly, there’s a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, listen, abortion is it,” Mr. Moreno said at a Warren County, Ohio, town hall. “If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else.”

• He went on, “it’s a little crazy, by the way, especially for women who are, like, past 50. I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.’”

• Last year, 57 percent of Ohio voters cast ballots to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution. 

• It has been difficult for Republican candidates to avoid the issue entirely, in part because legalizing abortion is on the ballot in several states, including Arizona and Nevada…and Montana.

• [Sam] Brown was caught on a recording obtained by The Nevada Independent late last month saying in private what he has been less than clear about in public — that he opposes the Nevada ballot measure to make abortion legal until fetal viability.

• Democrats latched onto the tone…quoting over and over that [Tim Sheehy] also said, “I find abortion to be a terrible, terrible thing. I want it all to end tomorrow.”

See also: GOPonabortion.com; ICYMI: Two years after the end of Roe, abortion is still tripping up Republicans in key races [NBC News]; Senate Republicans AGAIN Block Legislation to Protect Reproductive Freedom; ICYMI: Republicans’ Pasts Haunt Them As They Rush To Support Reproductive Rights They Put In Harm’s Way [Talking Points Memo]; HuffPost: GOP Senate Recruits Back The Same Extreme Abortion Positions That Cost The Party In 2022. 

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