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Tags: abortion | gop | 2024 | presidential campaign | issue

GOP Campaigns to Set the Bar on Abortion Law Before '24

By    |   Tuesday, 04 July 2023 03:59 PM EDT

As Democrats seek to "rip the baby out of the womb," as former President Donald Trump famously declared in his past presidential debates, Republicans are plotting a way to rip the abortion issue away from Democrats' campaign messaging used to lure voters.

"That's a great issue," Trump told his Pickens, South Carolina, rally, which aired live on Newsmax. "The Republicans have to understand that issue better; they have to speak about it better."

Notably, presidential candidates Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and former Vice President Mike Pence both support a federal 15-week restriction on abortion after the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade a year ago.

"It's a great issue for us, but more importantly from the standpoint of the heart, from the standpoint of your soul," Trump added in Pickens. "It is what you believe in.

"So you now have a great power to negotiate. Before with Roe v. Wade you had no power at all."

Trump has suggested the 15-week restriction would be a reasonable compromise between "radical" Democrats backing abortions through birth and conservatives vehemently opposed to all abortions.

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a heartbeat abortion bill in his state right before he declared his presidential campaign, ostensibly restricting abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected around six weeks.

"What's interesting is that neither DeSantis or Trump, who are the two — for lack of better term — front-runners, neither one of them are really saying what they're trying to do in terms of federal legislation," Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed said, according to The Hill, during his annual convention, where both DeSantis and Trump spoke.

"So others are going to try to force them, and it will be very fascinating to see how it plays out, and then by the time we get to the convention in Milwaukee, we'll have a platform and there will be a position."

Trump was adamant that the GOP not allow Democrats to control the abortion narrative, because the reality is, he said, their universal access to abortion position is the "radical" position.

"You have to know how to discuss this," Trump said, hailing his conservative Supreme Court "giving pro-lifers a tremendous power to negotiate and moving this issue back to the states where legal scholars and almost all others think it should be."

"But we now have an absolute power to negotiate. We didn't have that power and people that believe in life will be able to stop radical left Democrats from killing babies in their 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th month — and even killing babies after birth.

"Because they are the radical ones. You know they want to sell it differently. They are the radical ones.

"Anyone that wants to take a baby in the fourth month or the fifth month or the ninth month or even after — you remember the former governor of Virginia: the baby is born, and then we decide what to do with it, would kill the baby after birth."

As Trump said there, he supports abortion remaining under the authority of state law.

But, for national campaigns like president, the issue has to be addressed by conservatives.

Polling shows most Americans support some access to abortions, but also show most Americans agree there should be restrictions.

The GOP campaign mission is to find where that line ultimately will be.

"Listen, I won't give any of them advice; they don't ask for my advice," Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told The Hill.

"So they don't care what I think, but I would just say, personally, I think that there is a national consensus on that. That seems to be an easy place for Republicans to stand and say, Let's defend unborn children when they're pain-capable."

National there is "huge support" for that, Hawley said. "So that, to me, seems a great place to land at the national level as a party."

Avoiding the issue that Democrats had effectively used to railroad Republican campaigns in key battleground in 2022 is no longer a viable GOP strategy, according to Reed.

"What will not work is what our candidates and campaigns tried to do in '22, which was never talk it about it, and only talk about inflation and gas prices and think that this would go away," Reed said, according to The Hill.

Eric Mack

Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.

© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

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Politics
As Democrats seek to "rip the baby out of the womb," as former President Donald Trump famously declared in his past presidential debates, Republicans are plotting a way to rip the abortion issue away from Democrats' campaign messaging used to lure voters.
abortion, gop, 2024, presidential campaign, issue
718
2023-59-04
Tuesday, 04 July 2023 03:59 PM
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