Republican Chuck Grassley Vows to Vote Against a National Abortion ban – The US Senate’s longest-serving Republican has pledged to vote against a national ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, as proposed by a prominent fellow party member and chamber colleague last month, joining a growing chorus of conservative lawmakers opposed to the idea.
Chuck Grassley, an Iowa senator since 1980 who is running for re-election in November, expressed his opposition to such a ban during a televised debate Thursday night with Democratic challenger Mike Franken. “I would vote ‘no,’” the 89-year-old lawmaker said in the verbal faceoff with Franken, a retired Navy admiral who’s thought to be more than 9 percentage points behind Grassley in the polls, according to the website FiveThirtyEight.
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Grassley’s remark during the recent debate is in no way an indication that he is softening his traditional anti-abortion stance. He was one of 43 Republican co-sponsors of a federal ban on abortion after 20 weeks, which Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, proposed last year. Graham introduced a bill last month that would prohibit abortions after 15 weeks with few exceptions, but only nine Republican senators co-sponsored it. Grassley was not one of the nine.
Graham’s fellow Republicans are unlikely to welcome Graham’s bill because polling data show that many voters disapproved of the US Supreme Court’s decision in June to repeal the nationwide abortion rights established by the landmark 1973 case Roe v Wade. In fact, according to one poll, as many as 60% of voters support abortion rights in most cases.
According to The Hill, Grassley may have taken his position on Graham’s more recent proposed ban out of fear of inciting opposition among Democratic voters in Des Moines and Iowa City, which are significantly more liberal than the rest of the state’s strongly conservative.
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The co-sponsors of Graham’s proposed 15-week ban are Steve Daines of Montana, Marco Rubio of Florida, Kevin Cramer and John Hoeven of North Dakota, John Thune of South Dakota, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Roger Marshall of Kansas, and Josh Hawley of Missouri.
