Mike Pence says he'd force women to carry nonviable pregnancies to term

2024 presidential candidate and former Vice President Mike Pence said in an interview that he wants to ban abortion even in cases in which doctors have determined that the fetus would not survive outside the uterus, saying his position stems from his unapologetic “pro-life” stance.

“I just have heard so many stories over the years of courageous women and families who were told that their unborn child would not go to term or would not survive. And then they had a healthy pregnancy and a healthy delivery,” Pence told the Associated Press in an interview.

While Pence supports banning abortion at as early as six weeks’ gestation, the type of abortion he said he also wants to ban is rare. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, just 1% of abortions take place after 21 weeks’ gestation, when doctors find fetal abnormalities that are not compatible with life.

“As part of routine care, a fetal anatomy scan is performed around 20 weeks, which entails ultrasound imaging of all the developing organs. Many structural anomalies are discovered at this time that would not have been apparent previously,” according to KFF. “A proportion of these are lethal fetal anomalies, meaning that the fetus will almost certainly die before or shortly after birth.”

As states across the country have moved to ban abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2022 that they have the right to ban the procedure before fetal viability, pregnant women whose fetuses have been given fatal diagnoses have been blocked from getting the procedure.

In Texas, where abortions are banned after fetal cardiac activity can be detected at around six weeks’ gestation, women whose fetuses were given fatal diagnoses joined a lawsuit against the state challenging the ban.

One of the women, Samantha Casiano, learned at her 20-week appointment that her fetus had anencephaly, which according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is “a serious birth defect in which a baby is born without parts of the brain and skull.” Casiano was unable to obtain an abortion, and her daughter lived for only four hours after birth.

“I was so full of heartbreak and sadness, all at the same time,” Casiano told the Associated Press in May, when the lawsuit was filed.

Nancy Davis, a Louisiana woman whose fetus was diagnosed with a fatal defect due to which its brain did not form, is suing her state over its strict abortion ban. The ban forced Davis to travel out of state to have the procedure.

“Basically, they [doctors] said I had to carry my baby to bury my baby,” Davis said at a news conference in August 2022 when she filed her suit. “They seemed confused about the law and afraid of what would happen to them.”

Aside from wanting to ban abortions in cases of nonviable pregnancies, Pence also supports a federal abortion ban at six weeks’ gestation, before many even know they are pregnant. He also supports an ongoing lawsuit seeking to make mifepristone illegal. Mifepristone is an FDA-approved drug that can be used in self-managed medication abortions in early pregnancy.

Even as he seeks the Republican nomination for president, and eventually, the presidency itself, Pence’s position on abortion is out of step with those of voters writ large, 64% of whom believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a new AP/NORC poll released Wednesday.

Observers say anti-abortion stances like Pence’s and abortion bans passed by Republican-dominated legislatures are hurting the party at the ballot box.

GOP candidates underperformed in the 2022 midterms, which took place a few months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and paved the way for abortion bans across the country.

And in Wisconsin, a liberal judge in April overwhelmingly defeated an anti-abortion conservative to win a seat on the Supreme Court. The victory will flip control of the court from conservative to liberal when Judge Janet Protasiewicz takes her seat on Aug. 1.

GOP operatives and leaders worry that the issue could once again be a problem for the party in 2024.

“Any conversation about banning abortion or limiting it nationwide is an electoral disaster for the Republicans,” New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu told the AP in April.

Meanwhile, Democrats and abortion-rights groups say they will continue to hammer Republicans on the issue.

“The DCCC will continue to highlight the contrast between Democrats who fight to protect reproductive freedoms while Republicans work to strip them away,” the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said in a memo ahead of the first anniversary of the court’s reversal of Roe.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.