Speaking one year since the US supreme court removed the federal right to abortion, Mike Pence said candidates for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination should stand firm on the electorally unpopular issue and take a hard line on bringing in national limits.
“For me, for our campaign, we’re going to stand where we’ve always stood, and that is without apology for the right to life,” the former congressman, Indiana governor and vice-president to Donald Trump told Politico.
Later, addressing the Faith & Freedom conference in Washington, Pence said every Republican candidate “should support a ban on abortions before 15 weeks, as a minimum nationwide standard”.
Claiming this was a “reasonable and mainstream standard”, Pence said: “American abortion policy has more in common with China and North Korea than it does with the nations of Europe – and it is time for that to change.”
In response, Shwetika Baijal, spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Votes, a political group associated with the women’s health provider, accused the former vice-president of “spew[ing] harmful anti-abortion rights rhetoric”.
The ruling which removed the right to abortion, Dobbs v Jackson, was released on 24 June 2022.
Since then, Democrats have enjoyed electoral success through painting Republicans as threats to women’s right to control their own bodies. Polling consistently returns majorities in favour of abortion rights. On Friday, Navigator, a progressive firm, said 60% of voters now identify as pro-choice.
Other candidates for the Republican nomination have struggled to define their stances on the issue. Many observers suggest the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, the closest challenger to the frontrunner, Trump, would face problems in a general election given his signing of a six-week ban.
DeSantis has avoided the subject, but, speaking to Politico, Pence was far from coy. Abortion, he said, would help decide “whether or not we’re going to continue to be a party grounded in conservative principles … or whether our party is going to shy away from those core traditional principles”.
Pence also claimed recent Republican reverses had a “common denominator [that] has not to do with the issue of abortion. Rather, where candidates were focused on … re-litigating the past[,] we did not fare well.”
Politico called that a “veiled reference” to Trump’s lies about electoral fraud in his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, culminating in the January 6 attack.
“Pence brought up Trump several times unprompted,” the site said, “though never by name – arguing that Trump’s suggestion that the Dobbs ruling undercut the GOP in 2022 was ‘wrong’ and hitting back at Trump for criticizing DeSantis’s six-week ban as ‘too harsh’.”
In contrast to the evangelical Pence, Trump is a known womaniser who in 2016 dodged a question about whether he had ever been “involved with anyone who had an abortion”.
“Such an interesting question,’” Trump told the New York Times. “So what’s your next question?’
Trump still dominates the 2024 race, even while under state and federal indictments, the former over a payoff to a porn star, the latter over his retention of classified records. He was also found liable for sexual assault, against the writer E Jean Carroll.
“In my announcement speech,” Pence told Politico, “I articulated my concern that my former running mate and other candidates … are backing away from an unwavering commitment to the right to life.
“It’s not consistent with the kind of principled leadership I believe Republicans are looking for in the cause of life.”
Politico said Pence dodged questions on whether DeSantis’s ban was too harsh and whether House Republicans should pass a nationwide ban of the sort he called for on Friday.
Claiming he stood for “compassion”, Pence told the site he would fund “crisis pregnancy centres” and make adoption more affordable.
Asked what he would say to women who believe conservatives want to control their bodies, Pence said he hoped they “hear my heart”.
In her statement, Baijal of Planned Parenthood Votes said: “Public opinion will not change. The overwhelming majority of Americans support abortion rights and do not want politicians in their doctor’s office.
“[Pence’s] GOP primary rivals seem to understand this and are desperately trying to avoid talking or answering questions about abortion. But Pence keeps boastfully sharing his extreme anti-abortion agenda out loud.”
