Abortion rights have remained undefeated at the ballot box ever since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and Republicans have been running away from the issue as a result, hoping voters will overlook their anti-choice records in November. Donald Trump himself, who has openly bragged about “being able to kill Roe,” has recently been pretending he’s a moderate on the issue, as has his running mate, J.D. Vance, who previously said he didn’t support any abortion exceptions. Now, the latest example comes from North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson, the GOP gubernatorial candidate who previously said women terminate their pregnancies because they can’t keep their “skirt down.”
In a campaign ad released on Friday, Robinson and his wife, Yolanda, describe the abortion she got and he supported 30 years ago. He talks about how emotionally difficult the decision was for the couple, calling it a “silent pain between us that we never spoke of.” He adds that’s the reason he “stands by” the state’s current 12-week ban as well as “commonsense exceptions,” pulling a page from Trump’s playbook.
It’s a very different tone for the Republican to strike. Robinson has long opposed the right to choose, spoken at anti-abortion rallies, and favored extreme abortion restrictions without exceptions even in cases of rape and incest. (He also has a history of downplaying sexual-assault allegations.) As recently as February, Robinson implied at a campaign event that he favored a total abortion ban in the state. “We’ve got it down to 12 weeks. The next goal is to get it down to six and then just keep moving from there,” he said. At the North Carolina GOP convention in 2021, he suggested that people lose their bodily autonomy once they become pregnant. “Once you make a baby, it’s not your body anymore — it’s y’all’s body,” he said. “And yes, that includes the daddy.” In a Facebook Live post in 2019, he said, “Abortion in this country is not about protecting the lives of mothers. It’s about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down.” Robinson has also referred to abortion as “genocide” and “murder” in his social-media posts.
Robinson’s Democratic opponent, North Carolina attorney general Josh Stein, compiled some of these comments in a campaign ad that has been running since June.
Since the state’s law went into effect last year, clinics have been struggling to meet demand as patients from across the South who have lost access to abortion seek care in North Carolina. The state’s onerous waiting period requires patients to make two in-person clinic visits 72 hours apart. And the law’s exceptions for cases of of rape, incest, danger to the pregnant person’s life, and fatal fetal abnormalities don’t work in practice. Fatal fetal abnormalities must be “uniformly diagnosable” before a patient can terminate the pregnancy, a standard that physicians warn is nearly impossible to meet because of how complicated these medical cases are. Meanwhile, rape and incest victims must disclose their assault to their providers, even though research shows about 80 percent of sexual-violence survivors do not come forward to report their experience. The law also mandates that abortions that qualify under these exceptions and that take place after 12 weeks of pregnancy happen in hospital settings, which places an additional financial burden on patients.
Robinson’s pivot shouldn’t come as a surprise given how abortion ranks as one of voters’ top issues in this election. The lieutenant governor, who is involved in his own share of scandals, isn’t the only Republican disingenuously massaging his abortion stance. Sam Brown, who is running to represent Nevada in the U.S. Senate, recently shared his wife’s abortion story and said he would not support a federal ban. But Brown had previously managed the political campaign of a candidate who didn’t support any exceptions for abortion care and led the Nevada chapter of a conservative Christian organization that supports some of the nation’s strictest abortion restrictions. There’s also Kari Lake, who, as a gubernatorial candidate in Arizona, backed her state’s Civil War–era abortion ban as a “great law,” only to pivot this year as a U.S. Senate candidate and say she opposes it. Two other Republican gubernatorial candidates — former senator Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire and former representative Dave Reichert in Washington State — have said they won’t touch their state’s current abortion protections despite their anti-choice track records suggesting otherwise.
Every one of these candidates has transparently shown voters who they are through their anti-abortion records and past remarks. Whatever sleight of hand they are attempting now isn’t “softening” or “moderating” at all, and voters shouldn’t buy the cynical rebrand.
The Cut offers an online tool that allows you to search by Zip Code for professional providers, including clinics, hospitals, and independent OB/GYNs, as well as abortion funds, transportation options, and information for remote resources like receiving the abortion pill by mail. For legal guidance, contact Repro Legal Helpline at 844-868-2812 or the Abortion Defense Network.
