On Tuesday night, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas) clashed in a heated debate for their nail-biter of a Senate race. (Just one week ago, internal GOP polling put Cruz one tiny point ahead of Allred.) Unsurprisingly, the back-and-forth between the candidates reached a fever pitch when it came to abortion.
Cruz, for his part, acted surprised there were questions about one of the most important issues of the 2024 election cycle. “I’m curious, why do you keep asking me that?” he snapped at a moderator for questioning whether Cruz supports adding rape exceptions to his state’s total abortion ban. Cruz repeatedly declined to answer, which is an answer in itself.
As a refresher, Texas became the first state in the nation to enact a near-total abortion ban in September 2021, months before the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision, only to enact a total one shortly after that ruling in June 2022. Texas’ abortion ban offers zero exceptions for rape and incest (which don’t really work, anyway), and offers only one dangerously ambiguous exception to save the pregnant person’s life. But doctors and patients have said time and time again that medical exceptions don’t work, because health and life-threatening pregnancy complications are time-sensitive, and doctors don’t know when a situation is imminently life-threatening enough to keep them out of prison.
In 2021, when Texas’ six-week ban (which also didn’t have an exception for rape or incest) took effect, Cruz called it “perfectly reasonable.” So, that’s probably why they asked you for your position on exceptions, Ted. Hope this helps!
Cruz, who partnered with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to introduce a federal abortion ban in 2021, also used Tuesday night’s debate to deny that he supports a national ban, specifying that he shares Donald Trump’s position that abortion should be left up to the states. Couple notes: Republicans like Cruz do support a national abortion ban—they’re just calling it a “minimum national standard” or “reasonable federal restriction,” instead. Or they’re endorsing Trump, who could bypass Congress to enact a national ban himself, as detailed in Project 2025. And, of course, Republican senators like Cruz will confirm anti-abortion extremist judges who could then uphold a national ban.
This—the idea that abortion should be “left up to the states” as a humane, reasonable compromise—gave Allred the perfect entryway to read Cruz’s extreme position for filth.
Allred also challenged Cruz to acknowledge the story of Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who almost died from sepsis after being denied timely, emergency abortion care for her nonviable pregnancy. Zurawski survived, but one of her fallopian tubes permanently closed. She and nearly two dozen other women with similar experiences sued Texas over the ambiguity of its medical exception, but the state Supreme Court dismissed the case in May. “Look into the camera and talk to Amanda Zurawski, who’s watching right now, and explain to her why it’s perfectly reasonable that because she had a complication in her pregnancy and was denied care so long that she may never be able to have children of her own, or to the 26,000 Texas women who’ve been forced to give birth to their rapists’ child under this law that you called ‘perfectly reasonable,'” Allred said. “It’s not.”
At different points, Cruz attempted to deflect and paint Allred as the extremist because he previously “voted in favor of striking down Texas’ law that gives parents the right to be notified and consent.” Dare I say, the extreme position is treating literal children as incubators, not protecting their fundamental right to bodily autonomy. Cruz also lied and said that Allred wants “abortion up to and including the eighth and ninth month of pregnancy,” which has become a common refrain among Republicans, even though they can’t point to a single example.
I’ll be honest, it’s still hard for me to picture Cruz losing—”a bad weed never dies,” and all that. But if he does, it would be hard to convince me that abortion and the terror wrought by Texas’ abortion ban weren’t the deciding factor in this race.
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