Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) is a rape survivor who has spoken out about her party’s egregious and restrictive stances on abortion before, specifically when red states pass legislation banning abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest.
As it becomes increasingly clear that extreme Republicans positioning on abortion is, in actuality, helping Democrats win elections, Mace is begging her party to figure out how to position itself in a way that looks, at the very least, like cosplaying as compassionate toward women. Make no mistake, Mace is supportive of some restrictions on the procedure, but she tends to not get specific — like the rest of her party — beyond cautioning her colleagues away from “extremes.”
During an interview on CNN Wednesday, she made similarly vague remarks, but knocked her party for not reading the writing on the wall — that voter frustration with Republicans’ abortion bans is not just pushing independents to vote Dem, but also increasing Democratic turnout in off-year elections — as they head into 2024.
“We suffered in 2022 and I do believe we’ll suffer in 2024 if we don’t have a message that shows compassion to women, both for women’s rights and the right to life,” Mace told CNN Jake Tapper Wednesday. “You can balance the two.”
Mace added that even in her home state of South Carolina, “the majority of voters would not be supportive of a six-week ban that allowed very few exceptions for a very short period of time and required women to have their rapes reported to police.”
“That’s really not going to fly with most people, whether they’re men or women,” she said.
As my colleague Josh Marshall discusses here, the last several elections have shown that abortion continues to be a driving issue in helping Democrats win, even in races where the topic is not the focal point of a campaign.
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