Senate GOP Campaign Chief Says Candidates Need To Tailor Abortion Messages To States

The senator in charge of making sure Republicans win back control of the Senate said Thursday that GOP candidates need to adapt their abortion messages to their states this fall but also include widely supported exceptions to abortion bans.

“It is important. I think that’s a lesson learned from ’22 to get the messaging right and also for our candidates to state where they stand on the issue,” said Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate GOP.

“We’re advising our candidates to take a position on abortion that best matches the state they represent. That’s what we’re telling our candidates, and we’ll let them decide where they stand on it,” Daines said.

He made the remarks at a breakfast with reporters in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision threw the abortion issue back to states, many of which enacted bans of varying durations and restrictiveness, Republicans have been struggling to blunt the political fallout.

In March, House Republicans at their annual retreat grappled with supporting in vitro fertilization , which often includes discarding unsuccessful fertilized eggs, and the idea held by many anti-abortion party members that life begins at conception.

In the Senate, Republicans currently hold 49 seats and need to flip two — or only one, if presumptive GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump wins — to take back control. They are the odds-on favorite to return to power, given the number and particular seats Democrats are defending this year.

Daines said Republicans were aware, through what he called extensive polling and focus group efforts, that voters wanted