Republicans choose deception in face of abortion stance’s unpopularity

Don’t be fooled by Republican political candidates like Donald Trump and Sam Brown tying themselves in knots as they try to find a middle ground on women’s health care and access to abortion.

In a span of less than 48 hours, Trump went from saying that Florida’s six-week abortion ban was too strict and bragging about how “great” his administration would be “for women and their reproductive rights,” to saying that he supported Florida’s six-week ban and would vote no on a referendum to protect abortion access in the Sunshine State. Even more deceptively, he has said he wouldn’t sign a national abortion ban but has refused to answer questions about whether he would allow such a ban to become law without his signature. Meanwhile, he brags nonstop about his personal accomplishment: overturning Roe v. Wade.

Here in Nevada, Brown, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, has engaged in similar linguistic gymnastics. In a 2022 debate, Brown said he was open to a national abortion ban but hedged by saying he would want to see the “specific language” of such a ban.

Now, he claims he does not support a national abortion ban at all, yet he continues to attend galas and events sponsored by extreme anti-abortion organizations.

If your head is spinning, you’re not alone.

Republican candidates across the country are flip-flopping like fish out of water over the issue of abortion. But these are instances in which tired clichés about actions speaking louder than words and measuring character by the company we keep offer some clarity.

Take Brown, for example. In 2018, he actively recruited an extremist anti-abortion candidate to run for a congressional seat in Texas and served as the campaign chair. Just a few years later, Brown accepted a position as chairman of the Nevada chapter of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, an extremist group that openly advocates for passing federal and state antichoice legislation and identifies the issue as one of its top priorities.

In states like Nevada, where voters and lawmakers don’t support restricting a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions, the Faith & Freedom Coalition has advocated for conservative governors to take executive action that ignores the will of the people.

Trump’s actions are similarly disturbing. His continued grandstanding over his role in overturning Roe v. Wade is well deserved. He appointed three of six Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe and packed the federal judiciary with hundreds of conservative anti-abortion judges. Those judges have since supported everything from banning abortion medication and restricting women’s access to telehealth services to incentivizing abusive partners, estranged relatives and even complete strangers to act as bounty hunters targeting neighbors and community members who help women seek abortions in other states.

Of course, Trump goes even further and has told interviewers he believes women who get abortions should be criminally prosecuted, saying they must be “punished.”

Perhaps most visibly however, Trump selected a vice presidential running mate who has blatantly stated that he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.”

These aren’t the words, actions or company of people who simply wanted to return the issue of abortion to the states, as suggested by Republicans across the country. These are the actions of people seeking to impose their will on others.

Voters in Michigan, Ohio, Kansas, Montana and South Dakota have already decisively rejected abortion bans or have voted to enshrine abortion rights, yet Republican lawmakers continue to push for tighter restrictions, increased hurdles and even outright bans. In Ohio, Florida, Missouri, Arkansas and South Dakota, GOP lawmakers have also taken steps to restrict the ability of voters to place abortion-related initiatives on the ballot — eliminating the rights of the people to express their opinion at the ballot box or direct their elected leaders.

Just two weeks ago, at the behest of Arkansas Republican Secretary of State John Thurston and Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the conservative Arkansas Supreme Court thwarted efforts to bring a measure expanding access to abortion to the ballot by changing standards for submitting signatures and inventing an entirely new meaning for the word “a.” In the process, they threw out tens of thousands of otherwise valid signatures provided by Arkansans in support of the ballot initiative.

It should be noted that Arkansas bans all abortions except to save the life of the mother. The legal definition of what is required to say that the mother’s life is at risk is so nebulous that doctors are afraid to act. As a result, mothers in Arkansas die at a rate 68% higher than the U.S. national average. A review committee recently found that 92% of maternal deaths in the state were preventable.

Like Arkansas, countless other states are facing health care crises caused by draconian abortion laws championed by the GOP, including our own neighbor to the north, Idaho, which has lost nearly a quarter of its practicing OBGYNs since its total abortion ban took effect.

Don’t believe the lies. The GOP and its candidates, including Trump, Brown, Mark Robertson, Drew Johnson and Mark Amodei, will lie to you about their positions, but they have a simple goal: policing and controlling women’s bodies and imposing their personal religious views on the rest of us.