Dealing with a good race, Ted Cruz goes quiet on abortion

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U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has been a loud anti-abortion crusader all through his political profession.

However as reproductive rights loom over the election season as a key challenge for voters, Cruz is uncharacteristically quiet.

The Texas Republican, working for a 3rd time period within the Senate, is locked in a good race in opposition to U.S. Sen. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, who has made restoring entry to abortion and blaming Cruz for the toppling of Roe v. Wade central to his marketing campaign.

This previous week, Allred’s marketing campaign, boosted by an inflow of money from Senate Democrats, started airing an advert on TV and streaming platforms throughout the state that blasted Cruz for his anti-abortion document.

Texas has banned virtually all abortions — together with in circumstances of rape and incest — since Roe was overturned. Since then, Cruz has been extra cautious about how he engages on the subject. He has repeatedly known as abortion a state challenge, whereas providing extra vocal assist for in vitro fertilization.

Cruz, by means of a spokesperson, declined a request for an interview. The Texas Tribune reached out to his marketing campaign eight occasions over six weeks to ask about his positions, posing 9 preliminary questions by way of e mail and several other observe ups on matters starting from his previous assist for a nationwide abortion ban to how he squares his perception in fetal personhood together with his assist for IVF — a course of which routinely includes the disposal of fertilized embryos.

Cruz’s marketing campaign didn’t reply on to questions, as an alternative offering hyperlinks to earlier statements he had made on the subject in different interviews. These statements didn’t handle a number of particular questions.

Whereas Democrats haven’t gained statewide in Texas in 30 years, the difficulty might pose a threat for Cruz, who squeaked to victory in 2018 in opposition to Beto O’Rourke by lower than three share factors. Although polling exhibits Texans prioritizing points like border safety and the financial system over abortion, extra Texans imagine that the state’s abortion legal guidelines are too strict, and Democrats are banking on the difficulty boosting turnout nationwide in a presidential election 12 months.

Abortion ban

When the U.S. Supreme Court docket reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022, Cruz celebrated the choice as “nothing short of a massive victory for life” that might not outlaw abortion throughout the nation, however leaves “abortion policy up to the states and returns power to the American people.”

“This is a momentous day, and yet the fight for life doesn’t end with the Dobbs decision,” he mentioned in an announcement after the ruling. “It simply begins a new chapter. I’ve been proud to stand for life in the U.S. Senate, and I will continue to do so as we navigate the path ahead.”

Republicans have confronted scrutiny in current months about their previous efforts to move a federal abortion ban, with Democrats warning that former President Donald Trump would press for additional restrictions.

In 2021, earlier than Roe was overturned, Cruz cosponsored a 20-week federal abortion ban, which included exceptions for rape, incest and to save lots of the lifetime of the mom. He cosponsored an analogous ban no less than six occasions over his Senate profession. He didn’t signal onto a 15-week ban when it was launched in September 2022. In 2023, he co-introduced a invoice that might enable states to exclude medical suppliers that carry out abortions from state Medicaid funding. None of these measures superior by means of Congress.

Cruz didn’t reply on to a query about whether or not he nonetheless helps a federal ban. However in a previous interview his marketing campaign offered to the Tribune, he mentioned that abortion coverage is as much as every state.

“Questions of what the rules of abortion are will be made by state officials in Austin, the state legislature, the governor. And the situation we have right now, every state makes different rules,” Cruz mentioned in an August interview with WFAA.

Trump, through the vice presidential debate on Oct. 1, mentioned on social media for the primary time that he would veto a nationwide abortion ban, after backing a sequence of shifting positions over the course of his third marketing campaign for the White Home.

Abortion exemptions

Cruz declined to instantly reply whether or not he thought Texas ought to add carveouts for rape and incest and if he thought the state’s exception to save lots of the lifetime of the mom was working.

Within the WFAA interview, he pointed to laws he has supported with these exceptions, whereas reiterating that the choice could be made on the state stage.

However throughout his 2016 presidential run, Cruz mentioned at a city corridor in Wisconsin that he didn’t assist an exemption for rape.

“When it comes to rape, rape is a horrific crime against the humanity of a person, and needs to be punished and punished severely,” Cruz said. “But at the same time, as horrible as that crime is, I don’t believe it’s the child’s fault.”

Texas legislation permits abortions solely in cases the place the lifetime of the mom is in danger. Critics, together with Allred, say that exemption is unclear and has resulted in ladies — corresponding to Kate Cox, who was denied an emergency abortion by the Texas Supreme Court docket after discovering out her being pregnant was not viable — being unable to entry obligatory medical care.

When requested if he thought the legislation wanted clarifying or altering, Cruz’s marketing campaign pointed to an interview he sat for on CNN. When requested throughout that interview if he agreed with the court docket’s ruling in Cox’s case, he mentioned the Texas Supreme Court docket “was right” to direct the Texas Medical Board to “set the rules.”

“I think there’s a very good argument that she fell under that exception,” he mentioned. “But what the Texas Supreme Court said in its opinion is it asked the Texas Medical Board go in and set clear rules.”

The Texas Medical Board adopted steering in June for a way docs ought to interpret the state’s new abortion legal guidelines, however declined to offer a listing of circumstances during which an abortion must be permitted.

IVF

This 12 months, Cruz has change into more and more vocal about his assist for IVF, which he calls a “miracle.”

In February, a ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court docket sparked a nationwide panic about the way forward for entry to IVF. That call mentioned that frozen embryos must be thought-about folks, and that anybody who disposed of them might be responsible for wrongful demise. The Alabama Legislature subsequently handed a legislation to guard fertility therapies.

In Could, Cruz launched a invoice with U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, R-Alabama, that he mentioned would defend IVF on the federal stage by excluding any state that bans the therapy from federal Medicaid {dollars}.

“It simply does what needs to be done: safeguarding the right of couples to grow their family if they choose to use IVF, because this should not be a political issue,” Cruz mentioned on the Senate flooring in September describing his invoice.

The invoice, which Democrats blocked, wouldn’t create a statutory proper to entry fertility therapies. Critics panned it as lip service and “incentivizing far-right, anti-choice policymakers in deep red states to defund health care for low-income Americans” with out barring them from additionally outlawing IVF.

Cruz voted in opposition to Democratic laws that might create a federal proper to entry fertility care, saying the invoice infringes on spiritual freedoms — although the measure doesn’t require medical professionals who could oppose IVF to offer any therapies.

Cruz additionally didn’t reply to a query asking if he supported an concept Trump floated to make IVF free for all Individuals. Trump didn’t clarify how that proposal could be carried out.

Allred mentioned he would assist the Democratic IVF invoice, which was backed by two Senate Republicans, and he cosponsored a associated measure within the Home to federally defend fertility therapies.

Cruz didn’t reply to questions on whether or not he believes an embryo created by means of IVF constitutes an individual.

In 2015, throughout his presidential marketing campaign, Cruz signed a pledge to again a personhood modification to the U.S. Structure that might “guarantee a constitutional right to life for every innocent human being, from earliest biological beginning until natural death.”

He embraced personhood measures in February 2016, earlier than ducking questions concerning the subject a few months later.

Cruz has argued that his assist for IVF isn’t inconsistent with a perception in fetal personhood by pointing to states which have adopted each personhood amendments and IVF protections.

“There are three states — Alabama, Georgia and Missouri — all of which have adopted personhood amendments, and all of which protect IVF,” he mentioned on the Senate flooring in June. “The Democrats maintain that IVF is in jeopardy, and yet the facts are precisely to the contrary.”

After the Alabama Supreme Court docket’s determination, IVF suppliers paused therapies throughout the state. Most resumed providers as soon as the Alabama Legislature handed protections for fertility therapies. However that legislation didn’t handle the query of personhood, and easily offers immunity to IVF suppliers and sufferers.

Filibuster

On the identical time, Cruz has characterised Allred as an extremist on abortion and accused him of supporting “abortion literally up until the moment of birth.”

Allred’s marketing campaign rejected that declare as a scare tactic, offering an announcement he made to the Fort Price Star-Telegram in response to Cruz’s allegations.

“I find it offensive that Ted Cruz would knowingly misstate not only my position but what has been the standard in this country for the last 50 years,” he mentioned, saying a return to Roe would enable states to limit abortions after viability whereas additionally leaving the choice of whether or not to have an abortion to sufferers and their docs.

In the meantime, Allred has tried to pin the tip of Roe and subsequent state abortion bans on Cruz’s assist for anti-abortion state lawmakers and his place on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, which superior three conservative U.S. Supreme Court docket justices.

“He is singularly responsible for what’s happening in our state,” Allred mentioned.

Allred has been a constant abortion rights advocate all through his tenure in Congress.

After he was elected to the U.S. Home in 2018, Allred cosponsored and voted in favor of the Ladies’s Well being Safety Act, which might create a federal safety for abortion entry. The invoice handed the Home in 2021 and 2022 however died within the Senate. Allred has additionally spoken out in opposition to native efforts to ban the usage of roads and highways to acquire an abortion out of state.

“We have to restore freedom to Texas women and Texas families,” he mentioned. “And the way we do that is going to be at the federal level.”

If elected to the Senate, Allred mentioned he would assist altering the filibuster to allow passage of a federal abortion safety legislation. The Senate requires 60 votes to maneuver ahead on any laws — a threshold meant to guard the minority occasion’s energy and foster bipartisanship, however which has stymied Democrats’ efforts to move abortion and voting rights laws over Republican resistance.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, just lately reiterated her assist for carving out an exception to the filibuster for abortion laws — although institutionalists warn that decreasing the brink to a easy majority could be a slippery slope that might result in much less sturdy reforms and sap the minority’s leverage when the opposite occasion comes into energy.

Nonetheless, Allred argued that the Senate now exists in an “ahistorical period in which the filibuster is being abused,” and that the chamber must return to a rule that required any senator blocking a invoice to talk on the Senate flooring at some stage in their filibuster.