GOP Senate candidates disavow national pro-life law

Only three Republicans of the nine in close U.S. Senate races WORLD is watching have expressed support for a federal law protecting babies from abortion, a review of candidates’ public statements found. And only one out of the nine has received an official endorsement from National Right to Life.

That snapshot of this year’s Senate races exposes a larger conundrum facing the pro-life movement this election cycle. Republican candidates—some of whom profess to be pro-life—are disavowing national efforts to protect unborn babies. The trend is frustrating some pro-life voters who want candidates to take a stronger stand against abortion. But because of the more extreme pro-abortion stances of their opponents, these Republicans could still earn the pro-life vote on Nov. 5.

Ohio voter Kathleen Castellanos is a pro-life family practice physician. She said she sometimes donates to out-of-state campaigns if she thinks the candidate is strong. Earlier this year, Castellanos donated to Sam Brown, a Republican candidate for Senate in Nevada, before hearing about his stance on abortion.

On his campaign website, Brown calls himself pro-life but says, “I will not vote to overturn the decision of Nevadans,” referring to state law allowing abortion until 24 weeks of pregnancy with exceptions after that for the woman’s life or health. “I will not support a national abortion ban,” he added.

“It was disheartening,” Castellanos said. After some research, she found that many other Senate candidates were also “hiding from [the abortion issue], dodging it.”

Castellanos said she asked her own state’s Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Ohio’s Bernie Moreno, for his position at a private fundraising luncheon she attended. His answer, she said, “was kind of vague. But he didn’t come out right and say he wouldn’t support a 15-week ban.”

Moreno’s campaign did not respond to WORLD’s inquiries. In a recent interview, he called abortion “mostly an issue for the states,” adding, “I do think that at some point, aspirationally, we can get to the point where after 15 weeks, there’s some commonsense restrictions.”

Moreno is one of the three Republicans in tight Senate races who have verbally supported a 15-week bill. The other two are Montana candidate Tim Sheehy and West Virginia candidate and current Gov. Jim Justice. Both have said they support protections when a baby can feel pain, with Sheehy adding that “further limits must be left to each state” and Justice saying, other than that, “abortion policy should be set closest to the people.”

The language of that limit hints at the title of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) 2022 “Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act,” which would protect unborn babies from abortion after 15 weeks. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America backed the bill as “commonsense legislation” that both Democrats and Republicans support.

“When I first heard about it, I thought, well, that’s not trying very hard,” Castellanos said of the bill. She still supported it, understanding that pro-life lawmakers are trying to settle on an incremental gain that “everybody could reasonably get behind.” But it surprised her to learn that the bill has become what she calls “too scary a position for most of the Republican senatorial candidates”—a perception many Democratic candidates have fueled by painting the pro-life view as extreme and dangerous. Following the recent success of pro-abortion ballot measures in states including Ohio and Michigan, these candidates are gambling that a majority of voters support abortion, hoping it will fuel their own victories.

The six other Republicans in top Senate races have all publicly stated that abortion is an issue for states to decide or that they would oppose a “national abortion ban”—an ambiguous promise, but one that doesn’t attract pro-life voters like Castellanos. Those candidates include Brown in Nevada, Wisconsin candidate Eric Hovde, Arizona candidate Kari Lake, Pennsylvania candidate Dave McCormick, Maryland candidate and former Gov. Larry Hogan (who says he supports federal legislation to wipe out protections for unborn babies nationwide), and Michigan candidate and former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers. WORLD found records of all except for Hogan currently or at one time calling themselves pro-life. The campaigns did not respond to WORLD’s inquiries.

None of those candidates has received endorsements from the National Right to Life Victory Fund, a political action committee of National Right to Life. With 50 state affiliates and more than 3,000 local chapters, that organization’s endorsements help direct pro-life voters throughout the country.

Not even Moreno or Sheehy have earned endorsements from the national organization, although the National Right to Life affiliate in Ohio has endorsed Moreno, and Sheehy is one of the four U.S. Senate candidates Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America has endorsed this year. That pro-life powerhouse endorsed 17 U.S. Senate candidates in 2022, according to an archive of the organization’s endorsements webpage.

The only Republican among WORLD’s top U.S. Senate races that National Right to Life has endorsed is current West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice. He’s one of only two non-incumbent Senate candidates the national pro-life organization has endorsed. The other is U.S. Rep. Jim Banks from Indiana. He said in an October interview with a local news station, “If I ever get a chance to vote on a bill at the federal level to stop abortions of babies who feel pain and have a heartbeat, I will proudly vote for a bill to do that.”

The rest of the 11 Senate candidates who received National Right to Life endorsements—according to WORLD’s review of the group’s endorsement page—are all incumbent senators.

Laura Echevarria, director of communications for National Right to Life, said the organization prioritizes endorsements of pro-life incumbents for federal positions, although it will sometimes also give top priority to candidates who have held office at the state or federal level and have shown themselves to be solidly pro-life.

WORLD’s review of archived National Right to Life webpages found that the organization has also historically endorsed U.S. Senate candidates who have never been elected to public office before—including 2022 candidates Herschel Walker, Blake Masters, and now-Sen. Katie Britt. The group also endorsed about a half dozen candidates in 2020 who had not held elected offices.

National Right to Life did not answer WORLD’s request for a specific reason why the group did not endorse candidates including Sam Brown, Tim Sheehy, and Bernie Moreno in this year’s Senate race. But Echevarria said National Right to Life determines which endorsements to make based on voting records as well as candidates’ responses to a private questionnaire—if they filled one out at all. Candidates who do not fill out a questionnaire, she said, do not receive endorsements, even if one of the group’s state affiliates endorses them. She added that National Right to Life has, in the past, been active in campaigns of pro-life candidates whom they have not endorsed.

Among National Right to Life’s endorsed incumbent candidates, stances vary on the question of a national pro-life law. Sen. Ted Cruz, the historically vocal pro-life Texas incumbent running for reelection, has avoided directly answering a question about whether he would support national protections for babies. Cruz’s office and campaign did not respond to WORLD’s voicemails and emails.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, also running for reelection, said in an emailed statement to WORLD that she does not support “federal government overreach” that would interfere with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. She said Dobbs “rightfully returned the authority on abortion back to individual states and their citizens to decide.” She added, “I am not supportive of a federal ban on abortion.”

Cruz and Blackburn co-sponsored a 2019 bill to protect babies from abortion after 20 weeks of gestation but did not sign on to Graham’s 15-week bill in 2022.

Other pro-life incumbents running for reelection vocally support that 15-week bill but use different language to do so.

Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota told WORLD in an interview that he believes the federal government should have a role in protecting unborn children. He noted that he supported Graham’s 15-week bill in 2022—which he said could accurately be considered a ban—and would support it again in the future.

The reelection campaign for Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said in a statement to PolitiFact that “Scott opposes a national abortion ban and supports the consensus at 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother.” Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said in a recent debate that he doesn’t support “a nationwide ban” but does support “reasonable federal restrictions—limits on abortion … like when the baby is capable of feeling pain.”

At least two of National Right to Life’s state affiliates have extended endorsements to non-incumbent candidates who don’t have the national organization’s official backing: Moreno in Ohio and McCormick in Pennsylvania. Rather than endorsing a candidate for the U.S. Senate race in Ohio, the National Right to Life election website offers a comparison of Moreno’s and Brown’s positions on the abortion issue. Instead of an endorsement in the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania, the website urges voters to “get the facts” on current Democratic Sen. Bob Casey’s “Record on Life,” which includes a zero percent pro-life rating from the national organization. The webpage does not mention McCormick at all.

Echevarria with National Right to Life noted state affiliates’ qualifications for endorsements often differ from the national group. “National issues are different from state-related issues,” she said.

Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation executive director Maria Gallagher said her group would normally follow National Right to Life’s lead in offering endorsements. In the race between Casey and McCormick, “even though they have not endorsed him, I think National Right to Life has made it very clear that a vote for Bob Casey would be a vote for unlimited abortion,” Gallagher said. Casey in 2022 voted in favor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill with support from many of this year’s Democratic candidates that would wipe out protections for unborn babies nationwide. “So I think it is pretty clear that the candidate who would protect pregnant women and their babies from harm would be Dave McCormick,” Gallagher said.

While Castellanos in Ohio said she would not donate to an out-of-state candidate who opposed national protections for unborn babies, she agreed with Gallagher’s approach when it comes to casting a vote. If she were in Nevada, for instance, Castellanos said she would vote for candidate Sam Brown. “I think he’s going to be more pro-life than his opponent, for sure,” she said. That opponent, Democratic incumbent Sen. Jacky Rosen, helped reintroduce the Women’s Health Protection Act in 2023.

But Castellanos still believes lawmakers and candidates like Brown could do more to change the narrative about abortion laws. “The truth is on our side,” she said. “Abortion does hurt women. It kills babies, but it hurts women, and it hurts our culture.” She wants to see politicians talk about that instead of appealing “to the lowest common denominator of what people think they want around abortion.”