(LifeSiteNews) – Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake has come out against a federal ban on abortion, echoing the current stance of her close ally former President Donald Trump and reported advice from establishment Republican politicos on avoiding the perceived political challenges of a strong pro-life stance.
Lake, a former Phoenix news anchor who ran unsuccessfully for governor of Arizona last year in a race she maintains was stolen, confirmed earlier this month she intends to run for the state’s U.S. Senate seat currently held by Independent ex-Democrat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. In the Republican primary she faces Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb; the winner will move on to a three-way contest against Sinema and the presumed Democrat nominee, U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego.
Widely regarded as a firebrand who closely aligned herself with Trump and against the GOP’s more moderate factions, Lake campaigned for governor calling abortion the “ultimate sin,” prohibition of which “should fall into the state.”
On her Senate campaign website, however, she strikes a more conciliatory tone, calling life “priceless” and promising that as a senator her “focus will be on ensuring that young women facing the challenges of motherhood have all the support they need to choose life, including quality pre-natal care, parenting classes, and financial support where necessary,” without committing to vote for any specific abortion restrictions.
Touting Lake’s status as “the only mother in this race,” the site says that she “also recognizes that a majority of people in this country and in the State of Arizona hold the view that abortion should be legal with restrictions against late-term and partial-birth abortions. Arizona’s law currently allows abortions up to 15 weeks, and Kari does not support a federal ban on abortion. Abortion is, as the courts decided, an issue for states to decide, not the federal government.”
According to the Arizona Department of Health Services, in 2020, 91.2% of all Arizona abortions took place before 14 weeks of pregnancy.
“Republicans allowed Democrats to define them on abortion,” Lake added in a statement to The New York Times, which added, “just like President Trump, I believe this issue of abortion should be left to the states.”
While a generally pro-life president, Trump angered former pro-life allies earlier this year by coming out against further federal action to ban abortion, then more recently calling heartbeat-based state bans “terrible” and calling for Republicans and Democrats to negotiate a mutually agreeable cutoff point for legal abortion, after which America could put the issue “behind us.”
Trump and Lake both cite the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and restored states’ ability to pass abortion bans. However, conservative Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs concluded only that “authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives,” without distinguishing between the federal and state levels. In his concurring opinion, moderate conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, wrote that the Constitution “leaves the issue for the people and their elected representatives to resolve through the democratic process in the States or Congress” (emphasis added).
The Times reports that Lake’s stance lines up with “coaching” Republican candidates have received from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which reportedly advises distancing themselves from a potential national ban, while instead embracing “reasonable limits” with exceptions for rape, incest, and medical emergencies.
“Kari Lake has repeatedly said she is a pro-life candidate,” Cathi Herrod, president of the socially-conservative Center for Arizona Policy, told the Times. “I think the advice to oppose a federal ban is misguided.”
Public fears over the ramifications of losing Roe, and the alleged mishandling of the issue by some Republicans, were seized on by many as explanations for the GOP’s disappointing performance in last year’s midterm elections, in which Republicans only narrowly reclaimed the House of Representatives and failed to retake the Senate, when President Joe Biden’s job performance was widely expected to produce a “red wave.”
The evidence, however, suggests that while abortion may have been a marginal boon to Democrat voter turnout, it was neither a major nor insurmountable factor in the midterms. Exit polls varied significantly in how much voters prioritized the issue; five abortion-related ballot initiatives all resulted in pro-abortion outcomes, but most incumbents won re-election regardless of party, and no state that had enacted a near-total abortion ban ousted the governor or legislature responsible.
Other factors to which the midterms results have been attributed include Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell withdrawing financial support for certain candidates; Trump redirecting midterm donations to his own organization instead of midterm races and elevating questionable candidates in GOP primaries; Democrats themselves funding some of those candidates in primaries; potential election fraud and Democrats’ effective harvesting of early votes and mail ballots; Big Tech manipulating online information seen by swing voters; Republicans failing to offer a compelling contrast to Democrats over the previous two years; and the long-term results of left-wing bias in media and education.
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