More GOP Candidates Are Sharing Personal Abortion-Related Stories to Distract From Their Anti-Abortion Records

Kelly Ayotte, the GOP nominee for governor in New Hampshire, and Dave Reichert, the GOP nominee for governor in Washington, both shared new, personal ads amid scrutiny over their past support for national abortion bans.

By Kylie Cheung | October 22, 2024 | 1:44pm

Photos: Getty Images Abortion Politics 2024 Election

More GOP Candidates Are Sharing Personal Abortion-Related Stories to Distract From Their Anti-Abortion Records

Across the country, GOP candidates have been working overtime to conceal or embellish their anti-abortion records. But they’re not changing their positions—they’re just trying to run from them. And in the final stretch before Election Day, two Republican candidates for governor—Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, and Dave Reichert in Washington state—are the latest GOP’ers to spotlight their personal connection with abortion as they face growing scrutiny over their past support for national abortion bans.

In New Hampshire, Ayotte, a former U.S. senator who’s performatively flip-flopped on both where she stands on reproductive rights and on sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump, faces one of the tightest gubernatorial races in the country against Democrat Joyce Craig, who has a solid record of supporting abortion rights. Polls from earlier this month put Ayotte between one and three points ahead of Craig, while a poll from September put Craig one point ahead of Ayotte. In Ayotte’s new ad, released Friday, Ayotte recounts the time she “was three months along in my pregnancy, and the doctor couldn’t find the heartbeat” of her fetus. “To me, it’s very personal. I know what that feeling is like, when you have your dreams shattered, and you think, ‘Wow, what if I can’t have a baby?’ So I would never deny any woman or family of treatment like IVF.”

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Except… Ayotte has legislated against IVF. While she served in the Senate from 2011 to 2017, Ayotte backed two different policies—the Blunt amendment and the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act—to allow insurance companies and employers to deny coverage of birth control and IVF. Ayotte also quite literally spearheaded legislation for a national abortion ban at 20 weeks. Bans on later abortion target patients facing particularly desperate circumstances—including conditions like what Ayotte recalled facing in her ad.

Also, also, Ayotte worked closely with Trump (months after calling him a sexual predator who she couldn’t endorse out of respect for her young daughter) to serve as a personal liaison, or the official “sherpa,” for then-Supreme Court Justice nominee Neil Gorsuch, who went on to overturn Roe v. Wade. As sherpa, Ayotte not only guided Gorsuch between meetings with different senators ahead of his confirmation but also personally coached him on how to give non-answers on Roe.

New Hampshire Democrats have—rightfully—hammered Ayotte on her anti-abortion record, prompting her to release a series of ads obfuscating and claiming that she won’t legislate on abortion in the state. But whoever the future governor of New Hampshire is, they should be legislating on abortion: It’s the last state in New England that hasn’t codified a right to abortion in the state Constitution, falling just short of the necessary support earlier this year. Ayotte clearly won’t be taking that effort across the finish line.

Similarly, in Washington, Reichert is running on a promise of not touching abortion rights. On Friday, he, too, released an ad detailing a personal story about supporting his sister through her abortion. In the ad, his sister recounts her decision, and Reichert says, “I’m disappointed when people feel that they have to be the judge and the jury on personal decisions like that.” His sister says, “Dave was one of the ones that stood by my side, and he is that type of guy that is just there for everyone.” Reichert then says, “She had to make a tough decision and, and I just felt like I needed to be there to support her.”

First, it’s just a bad ad because of all the jumping around. Second, we know how Reichert would legislate on abortion because of his own Congressional record—he voted three times for a national 20-week abortion ban while he served in Congress from 2005 to 2019. He also voted against amendments to add exceptions for medical emergencies to these bans, and repeatedly attacked access to contraception, voting against bills to protect employees from discrimination for using birth control.

Polling from the last several weeks puts Reichert’s Democratic opponent, current Washington attorney general Bob Ferguson, between four and 16 points ahead of Reichert. Reichert, who knows he can’t win on an anti-abortion record in a state like Washington, has attempted to spin his record, framing his support for a 20-week ban as “providing women with abortion options up to 20 weeks,” and even comparing abortion bans to driver’s licenses and hunting regulations.

This is a growing trend among Republican candidates up and down the ballot, whether it’s JD Vance denying he supports a national abortion ban and merely supports a “national minimum standard,” or self-identified “Black Nazi” Mark Robison rolling out an ad sharing his wife’s abortion story. Robinson, who has a history of slut-shaming abortion patients and calling abortion “Black genocide,” used his August ad to pretend he supports a “reasonable” abortion ban (there’s no such thing) at around 12 weeks. Elsewhere, in Nevada, GOP Senate nominee Sam Brown—who recently lied that Dobbs strengthened abortion access in Nevada, even as it did the opposite—also shared his wife’s abortion story earlier this year.

It’s frustrating and predictable, but the solution is simple: Look at their actions and records, not their words and manipulative political ads.