Last week, a proposed 20-week abortion ban didn’t get a vote in the House after a group of Republican women expressed concerns about its narrow exception for rape victims. And days later, the political conflict — which amounted to an embarrassing setback for Republicans on the same day that thousands of abortion opponents flooded the nation’s capital for the annual March for Life — is still simmering.
On Tuesday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) lamented the fact that “Republican females” sent “entirely the wrong message” by raising objections about the legislation, which ultimately resulted in its removal from consideration in the House on the 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
On a conference call with E.W. Jackson — a pastor and conservative activist who ran for lieutenant governor of Virginia two years ago — the Texas congressman encouraged pro-life groups to keep pushing the Republican Party to bring anti-abortion bills to a vote. He also suggested that the group of Republican women who had issues with the 20-week ban should have spoken with GOP leadership before the bill came to the House floor.
“Before it had even gone through committee, our leadership was so anxious to show people, ‘Look, we are standing firm on these issues you care about,’” Gohmert said on the conference call, in comments that were first reported by Raw Story. “I’m told that they’re still going to bring it back, but because there was such division among our Republican females, they pulled the bill that day. And that was extremely unfortunate, and it sent the entirely wrong message.”
According to multiple news reports, the GOP congresswomen who derailed the legislation were working behind the scenes for weeks to get the language changed on the bill’s rape exception. They say the leaders of the House did not take those concerns seriously. “Why leadership did not initially listen to the women still baffles members of the conference,” the National Journal reported.
Nonetheless, Gohmert is hardly the only conservative man who’s frustrated with Republican women right now. The lead sponsor of the 20-week abortion ban, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), said the decision to withdraw the legislation last Thursday was “one of the most disappointing moments of my life.” Rick Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania and a potential presidential contender in 2016, also called the move “a disappointment.” And Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who’s spearheaded a companion bill on the Senate side, implored pro-life activists to help “find a way out of this definitional problem with rape” so the party can advance a national abortion ban.
Abortion opponents outside of Congress have had even stronger words about the last-minute decision to drop the bill. “I am disgusted by this act of moral cowardice,” Russell Moore, the president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said in a statement. Right-wing blogger Erick Erickson has referred to Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC), the lawmaker at the center of the dispute over the rape exception, as “two-faced” and a “liar.” Pro-life activists protested outside of Ellmers’ office on Thursday.
Despite the controversy over the 20-week abortion ban, the GOP-controlled House has still advanced plenty of abortion restrictions during its first weeks in session. In place of the proposed ban, the House instead passed the so-called “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” an arguably equally far-reaching piece of legislation that seeks to prevent women from using their insurance coverage for abortion care. Other bills have been filed to defund Planned Parenthood, allow health care professionals to refuse to provide an abortion, and impose unnecessary and burdensome regulations on abortion clinics.
It remains to be seen whether gender divides will influence future fights over proposed anti-abortion bills. At the end of last week, a group of 11 male Republicans introduced a bill that would require women to review a mandatory ultrasound before being allowed to proceed with an abortion. “When you can’t find a single woman to support a bill that affects only women, that bill is probably a terrible idea,” Jess McIntosh, a spokeswoman for EMILY’s List, pointed out in an interview with the Huffington Post.