Michigan Republican candidates are suddenly chill about abortion this election

Opinion: Michigan Republican candidates are suddenly chill about abortion this election

Nancy Kaffer
Detroit Free Press


One thing I never expected to encounter in this year's election: A lock-step cadre of Republican Congressional candidates who just aren't that fussed about abortion.

As a member of the Detroit Free Press Editorial Board, I've participated in hundreds of interviews with candidates seeking the newspaper's endorsement. Over the last 12 years, support for abortion rights and the autonomy of women to make decisions about our own bodies has been the distinguishing issue between Democrats and Republicans. Yes, yes, there's a lot of other stuff the parties disagree on, but this one was a bright line.

This year, every Republican candidate for U.S. Congress we've interviewed has insisted that abortion simply isn't a concern. That his previous staunch anti-abortion advocacy and/or voting record isn't a factor anymore, and that all he ever really wanted was for the question of abortion to be returned to the states — you know, even some Democrats thought that Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court's 1974 decision that made state laws banning abortion unconstitutional, was wrongly decided — and now, two years after Michigan voters sent a clear message to candidates that opposition to abortion rights loses elections, it's just not an issue.

Maybe this seems a little suspicious to you? Yeah, me too.

....(snip)....

Your choices, my friends, are these: To believe that each candidate has undergone a dizzying ethical reversal, coming to the conclusion that problem with abortion was not moral, but procedural — which itself ought to merit interrogation — or to suspect that each is conducting an exercise in prevarication, intended to get himself elected. ..............(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/nancy-kaffer/2024/10/21/abortion-gop-candidates-change-election-michigan/75630949007/