What Republicans Say About Their Risky Balancing Act on Abortion

In the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, one of the country’s most emotionally charged issues has come to be defined by two seemingly contradictory political realities.

In competitive general elections, abortion rights emerged as among the greatest electoral strengths for Democrats and, often, a clear liability for Republicans: Americans say at record levels that they support at least some access to the procedure, and the issue has fueled Democratic victories across the nation.

At the same time, Republican-dominated state legislatures have moved rapidly to sharply limit or ban access to abortion. Activists are demanding that G.O.P. presidential candidates make firm commitments about federal restrictions, and are urging ever-further-reaching legislation in the states.

This headlong rush into risky territory for the national Republican Party — and the extraordinary backlash against some of those measures — represents the enduring political fallout of the Supreme Court decision, which transformed a partisan standoff 50 years in the making.

Anti-abortion activists and some Republican strategists applaud the approach of many state legislatures, arguing that voters expect their lawmakers to deliver on upholding one of the core tenets of the conservative movement.

“If you can, you must,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the major anti-abortion rights group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “To fail to do that would, politically, would be a disaster for pro-life voters who put them in office.”

But as the anniversary of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe arrives on Saturday, interviews with more than a dozen Republican lawmakers, strategists and anti-abortion activists paint a portrait of a party still struggling to find a consensus on abortion policy, and grappling with how to energize core base voters on the issue without alienating swing voters.

Many observers see the wave of new restrictions, which vary in gestational limit and exceptions and have sometimes been held up in court, as a function of several factors: years of promises and pent-up energy on the right; deeply held convictions about when life begins; and gerrymandering that has often left Republican lawmakers more worried about far-right primary challenges than about turning off moderate voters in general elections.

But for a critical slice of Republicans — those who represent competitive districts in state legislatures or in Congress, who support some degree of abortion rights, or, in some cases, presidential candidates — the issue presents a particularly difficult balancing act.

Their decisions and calculations are at the heart of the tensions over the abortion debate within the Republican Party in the post-Roe era.

“I was hearing from both sides strongly,” said State Representative Mike Caruso of Florida, a Republican who opposed a measure — ultimately signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis — that forbids abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, with a few exceptions. “It was pretty much a ban on abortion.”

“I’ve got seven children, been through nine pregnancies,” he added. “I don’t think I ever knew, we ever knew, that we were pregnant prior to six weeks.”

But, demonstrating the vastly different views on the issue within the party, State Representative Mike Beltran of Florida said that while he voted for the measure, “frankly, I don’t think it goes far enough.”

“All these bills were huge compromises,” said Mr. Beltran, who said he personally opposed abortion rights without exception, suggesting that if a mother’s life was in danger, barring ectopic pregnancies, the answer could often be to deliver the fetus, even months prematurely. “We should suffer electoral consequences if we don’t do what we said we would do.”

Anti-abortion activists and lawmakers have vigorously made a version of that argument to Republican candidates, sometimes citing polling to show lawmakers what they believe voters in a particular state will accept. (Some of these surveys are commissioned by abortion opponents, and their findings can be at odds with public polling.)

“It’s a fundamental issue to Republicans to protect life,” said Tami Fitzgerald, the executive director of the North Carolina Values Coalition. She supported the state’s new ban on most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, though she wants restrictions that go much further, calling a six-week ban “step two.”

“A candidate needs the pro-life voters in order to win,” she added.

In an interview this month, Ms. Dannenfelser of Susan B. Anthony urged candidates to be “very clear on what it means to be ambitious for life” while seeking to draw contrasts with Democrats on the issue, warning of the risks of being defined by the other side.

This is not a “theoretical messaging moment,” she said. “This is real life.”

In the presidential contest, though, some of the candidates have tried to skirt questions about what national restrictions they would support. Contenders including former President Donald J. Trump — who helped muscle through Supreme Court justices who made overturning Roe possible — have indicated that they think the issue should be resolved by the states, though Mr. Trump has also been vague on the issue.

“Their hesitancy to communicate has been frustrating,” Ms. Dannenfelser said, referring broadly to the field. But the debate stage, she said, is “going to be where the rubber meets the road, and our bright-red line saying that you must have a 15-week or better limit or we can’t support you.”

Yet when Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina last year proposed a federal ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with some exceptions, he ignited immediate resistance from numerous fellow Republicans, evidence that some in the party see political peril in a national ban.

And polling has shown that most Americans support at least some abortion rights, especially early in pregnancy.

A Gallup survey released last week found that a record-high 69 percent of Americans, including 47 percent of Republicans, believed that abortion should generally be legal in the first three months of pregnancy.

“That just makes me wonder if maybe there is some room for nuance there within the party,” said Lydia Saad, the director of U.S. social research at Gallup. “But nuance isn’t generally very successful in politics.”

In some states, Republican lawmakers have cast bans with some exceptions that begin after 12 weeks, toward the end of the first trimester, as something of a middle ground. And from Nebraska to South Carolina, there have indeed been lawmakers who said they could not back a six-week ban but indicated that they were more comfortable with 12 weeks, even as such proposals have drawn condemnation from some in local business and medical communities.

In North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, vetoed the 12-week ban. He and other abortion rights supporters warned that the measure would interfere with critical medical decisions and create dangerous barriers for women seeking abortions.

But Republicans, who recently gained narrow veto-proof majorities in North Carolina, quickly sought to override Mr. Cooper’s move. The effort forced some of their members into contortions.

State Representative Ted Davis Jr., a Republican, indicated during his campaign last year that he backed the state’s law allowing abortions up to 20 weeks of pregnancy. When the state legislature took up the 12-week measure, he skipped the vote.

But citing factors including loyalty to his caucus, frustration with the other side and constituents who, he said, seemed split on the veto override, he ultimately joined fellow Republicans to override the veto, helping to ensure that the more restrictive measure prevailed.

Still, he tried to draw a distinction between the two votes.

“What concerns me is what’s going to happen in the future as far as access to abortion,” he said. “Are Republicans now going to try to restrict it even further?”

Other lawmakers have sought to punish women who seek abortions, or those who help them. Some Republican lawmakers in South Carolina moved — unsuccessfully — to treat abortion at any stage of pregnancy as homicide, which can carry the death penalty.

That measure would have given “more rights to a rapist than a woman who’s been raped,” said Representative Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican who flipped a seat from a Democrat in 2020. “That’s where the conversation has gone.”

“They listen to some of the extreme voices, and they operate and vote and legislate out of fear,” she said. “They’re not hearing from the rest of the electorate, the 95 percent of the folks who vote in elections. They’re hearing from the 5 percent who say, ‘You’re not Republican if you don’t want to ban abortions with no exceptions.’”

Even in her conservative state, there were pockets of Republican resistance to efforts to pass a near-total abortion ban. A six-week ban passed the legislature but is now tied up in court.

“I probably will draw a primary challenger,” conceded State Senator Katrina Shealy, who opposed that measure, with its many requirements for women seeking abortions. She has already been censured by a local Republican county party.

Some on the far right, she suggested, “don’t want people to wear masks. They don’t want people to get vaccines.”

They believe, she said, that “they should have full rights — but don’t let women make this decision. And that’s not right.”