Abortion debate: American Republicans are divided

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, during a press conference to discuss the introduction of the Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children from Late-Term Abortions Act, September 13, 2022 in Washington.

AP - Mariam Zuhaib

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

The issue of abortion has been a recurring issue in political debate for decades in the United States, and even more so less than two months before the midterm elections this year.

And the Republicans are struggling to find the right tone.

Advertising

Read more

With our correspondent in Washington,

It was at the end of June and they had won.

Republicans were celebrating the Supreme Court's overturning of the constitutional right to abortion.

They had won legally, but perhaps less politically.

Because the question of the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy continues to work the opinion and the decision seems to have remobilized the democratic electorate.

This can be seen in the polls, but also at the ballot box.

In Kansas, a very conservative state, voters rejected by referendum an amendment to the Constitution that would have made it possible to reverse this right.

Republicans therefore talk about it as little as possible in their campaign arguments.

Except that they are divided.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham has just tabled a bill to ban abortion nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The text has very little chance of getting through;

the leader of the Republican minority in the Senate Mitch McConnel dissociates himself from his colleague.

He explains that as the Supreme Court has decided, this should be left to the jurisdiction of the states.

West Virginia has just adopted an almost total ban, much stricter than Lindsey Graham's proposal.

But the absence of a common Republican position allows the Democrats to denounce the outbidding of their adversaries to mobilize their voters even more before November 8.

►Read also: Abortion in the United States: American women betrayed by their smartphones, Washington files a complaint

Newsletter

Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

• United States

• Health and medicine

• Womens rights