In response, Democrats quickly got themselves onto the news, with members of Congress, abortion rights organisations, and the Biden administration accusing Republican Party politicians of being hypocritical in their stance on abortion. The new label they’re trying out is “pro-baby”.
Ooops! Does that mean candidates are only anti-abortion in order to win votes? And are they really pro-baby now instead? That calls for new policies and more funding. But President Biden’s budget proposal to increase childcare options has already been published.
Ooops! Congresswoman Nancy Mace, Republican-South Carolina, said her colleagues are “losing the messaging battle” on abortion because “people no longer believe we are being pro-woman and pro-life”.
Representative Veronica Escobar, Democrat-Texas, argued on social media that Republicans cannot identify as “pro-baby” since all of them recently opposed all the following policies: the expanded child tax credit, paid family leave, high quality childcare, and publicly-funded, pre-kindergarten care and education.
“They are badly on the wrong side of the American public,” Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat-Connecticut, said in an interview. “The only way for them to fix this political problem is for them to stop their efforts to ban abortion nationwide.… Their problem isn’t the terms or the words they use. The problem is that they are fundamentally trying to impact women’s rights and people are furious.”
SOURCES: NBC News, by Julie Tsirkin, Liz Brown-Kaiser, Kate Santaliz, Brennan Leach, 9 September 2023 ; Veronica Escobar: @vgescobar, 8 September 2023 ; VISUAL: Aljazeera, 23 June 2023