How Republicans in Key Senate Races Are Flip-Flopping on Abortion

Republican candidates in all eight of the country’s most competitive Senate races have changed their approach on the issue of abortion, softening their rhetoric, shifting their positions and, in at least one case, embracing policies championed by Democrats.

From Michigan to Maryland, Republicans are trying to repackage their views to defang an issue that has hurt their party at the ballot box since the Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights. While the pivot is endemic across races in swing states, the most striking shifts have come from candidates who unsuccessfully ran for the Senate just two years ago in their home states, with abortion views that sounded very different.

When Bernie Moreno, a Republican businessman, ran for a Senate seat in Ohio in 2022, he described his views as “absolute pro-life, no exceptions.”

“Life begins at conception” and “abortion is the murder of an innocent baby,” he said on social media.

He has since softened his position. In March, he said he supported a 15-week national abortion ban. But his spokeswoman also says it’s an issue that “should be primarily decided at the state level” and that he backs “reasonable exceptions.”

In 2022, David McCormick, a Republican businessman running for Senate in Pennsylvania, touted his staunch commitment to opposing abortion. Asked at a Republican primary debate that April if he would support exceptions to abortion bans if Roe v. Wade was overturned, he said he believed in exceptions in the “very rare instances” when a woman’s life was at risk.