Amid a public backlash to the Supreme Court docket’s June resolution overturning Roe v. Wade, some Republican congressional candidates have tried to stroll again, downplay or conceal their hardline stances in opposition to abortion rights.
However George Santos, the Republican nominee in a Lengthy Island Home seat that President Joe Biden gained, is one contender sticking to his staunch anti-abortion views — and remarks evaluating abortion to, amongst different issues, slavery.
As a candidate difficult Rep. Tom Suozzi (D) in New York’s third Congressional District in 2020, Santos declared his opposition to the 1973 Supreme Court docket resolution recognizing a Constitutional proper to an abortion. He stated he would vote to ban abortion nationwide if elected to Congress. He even helps legal expenses for docs who carry out abortions, in response to native information outlet The Island Now.
Following the Supreme Court docket’s resolution, Santos issued a press release clarifying that he would all the time help exceptions for abortion in circumstances of rape, incest, or hazard to the mom’s life.
However Santos has additionally stated he desires strict vetting of rape claims. In a 2020 interview, he stated he helps permitting rape survivors to hunt abortion solely in an “excessive circumstance with confirmed police documentation.”
“These days… you sleep along with your associate you don’t like, you recognize you had a foul day, and also you get up pregnant, and like, ‘I used to be raped,’” he informed the conservative speak present, ”Indivisible with John Stubbins.” “That’s a bit of too unfastened.”
Lastly, simply this previous August, Santos informed an viewers of Republicans in Queens that “we're going to be remembered as essentially the most barbaric era to ever stay” due to abortion’s legality. He argued that future generations would frown upon abortion simply as we now look down upon slavery.
“All of us on this room can agree that once we take a look at slavery, it was barbaric,” Santos stated in remarks to the Whitestone Republican Membership, first reported by the New York Every day Information. “Fifty years from now, we’re going to look again at what we’re doing on this nation, and we're going to say, ‘We killed infants out of the womb? We aborted our personal? That's barbaric.’”
Santos, a financier, is competing with Democratic nominee Robert Zimmerman, a small enterprise proprietor, to succeed Suozzi, who introduced plans to retire in January.
Santos and Zimmerman are overtly homosexual and could be Lengthy Island’s first LGBTQ members of Congress. Santos, whose father is Afro-Brazilian, is additionally biracial.
When provided a chance to make clear Santos’ stance on abortion rights or stroll again a few of his feedback, Santos’ marketing campaign supervisor, Charley Lovett, didn't present a direct reply.
As a substitute, Lovett insisted that the query is irrelevant as a result of New York has enshrined abortion rights in state legislation.
“Democrats know that abortion is just not below any risk within the state of New York, however they proceed to say something to distract from their disastrous insurance policies which have unleashed a wave of inflation and crime that's crippling New York households,” Lovett stated in a press release. “Liberal politicians like Robert Zimmerman could also be fools, however voters actually aren’t.”
Zimmerman, who doesn't help any authorized restrictions on abortion, has made his help for abortion rights a core a part of his marketing campaign within the district.
“George Santos represents the best risk to girls and our democracy of any candidate working for Congress in New York state,” Zimmerman stated in a press release to HuffPost. “His personal document makes his place clear: describing authorized abortion as ‘barbaric,’ evaluating abortion to slavery, urging the arrest of docs, claiming that ladies will use rape as an excuse to acquire an abortion, and supporting a nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. Any such vile extremism and disrespect for girls has no place in our nation.”
Santos’ anti-abortion views are possible a legal responsibility in New York’s third, which features a swath of Lengthy Island’s North Shore and a small nook of northeast Queens in New York Metropolis.
Biden carried New York’s third by greater than eight share factors.
What’s extra, 76% of Lengthy Island voters help abortion rights, together with 42% who say the problem may decide their vote, in response to a latest Newsday ballot.
The race between Santos and Zimmerman is nonetheless neck-and-neck. Zimmerman led Santos by one level amongst possible voters, with 14% undecided, in response to a late August and early September ballot commissioned by the advocacy group U.S. Time period Limits.
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