The Republican Party has kept an unusually quiet silence after the abortion pill was suspended in the United States, aware that too extreme positions cost them dearly at the polls. This silence comes at a time when the forecasts are not good for the Republicans, as polls indicate that at least 60% of Americans want to protect access to voluntary termination of pregnancy. The decision by the very conservative US Supreme Court to reverse abortion rights in June brought the issue back to the center of the political debate.
When a Texas judge decided to suspend the abortion pill in the United States, the Republican Party’s top brass chose to keep quiet for the first time. Only the very conservative Mike Pence, a favorite of evangelicals, came out to welcome a decision that “repairs a 20-year mistake” when the pill was authorized by the health authorities. On the other hand, the Democrats did not waste a minute to criticize the judicial decision and denounce it as a dangerous decision for women’s rights.
Some Republican voices are calling for an urgent change of course, such as moderate Republican Nancy Mace, who said that if we show people that we care about them, we would be in a better position to convince them that our ideas are better. However, these calls clash with the set of laws banning abortion altogether, even in the case of rape or incest, adopted these months in local assemblies controlled by the hard right.
In Iowa, a Midwestern state that will weigh heavily in the 2024 Republican primary, a conservative attorney general last week suspended reimbursement for morning-after pills for victims of sexual assault. And in South Carolina, Nancy Mace’s home state, a dozen Republicans are defending a text that seeks to condemn to death women who resort to abortion. In this context, the silence of the Republican Party after the suspension of the abortion pill in the United States suggests that they are caught in their own trap and that they need to find a new approach to attract moderate voters.