The Increasing Anti-Abortion Radicalism of Republican Candidates 

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Republican abortion policies show shift in attitude

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Abortion in the United States is set to become the social issue of the presidential race, with six of the leading Republican candidates banning it in all circumstances.

Anti-abortion protesters celebrate the US Supreme Court\'s ruling striking down a Massachusetts law that mandated a protective buffer zone around abortion clinics in 2014.

The ongoing circus of Donald Trump\'s candidacy has served to distract from what could prove to be an even more significant shift within the Republican Party – its candidates\' increasingly radical stance against abortion.

Some members of the Republican Party\'s Congressional wing appear to be determined to shut down the entire federal government should the Obama administration not cave in to demands to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, the national non-profit organisation that provides reproductive health services – including pap smears, contraception counselling and abortion – to lower-income women.

Last week many observers were shocked when the former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee defended the decision in Paraguay to deny an abortion to a 10-year-old girl who had been raped by her stepfather.

Pro-abortion activists march towards Peru\'s Congress to support a proposal to change abortion laws.

program last Sunday, Huckabee said it was terrible the girl had been raped. "But does it solve the problem by taking the life of an innocent child?"

CNN\'s host Dana Bash pushed Huckabee further, asking if he could look a 10-year-old in the eye and tell her, "You had a horrible thing happen to you, and you\'re going to have to carry it out for the next nine months."

It would not be an easy thing to say, Huckabee said "But let\'s not compound the tragedy by taking yet another life."

Anyone who had closely watched the first Republican debate would not have been surprised by the stance.

During the debate at the beginning of the month, Scott Walker, a leading candidate and the governor of Wisconsin, made it clear he would ban abortion in all circumstances.

When the debate moderator asked Walker if he would "really let a mother die rather than have an abortion," he responded: "I\'ve got a position that\'s consistent with many Americans out there in that I believe that that is an unborn child that\'s in need of protection out there. And I\'ve said many times that that unborn child can be protected and there are many alternatives that would protect the life of the mother."

When Marco Rubio, the Senator from Florida who is running a campaign as the fresh face of a modern Republican Party, was asked if he would make exceptions for victims of rape or incest or medical emergency, he said no. "What I have advocated is that we pass law in this country that says all human life at every stage of its development is worthy of protection."

For his part Huckabee called for the landmark Supreme Court decision of Roe v Wade (which enshrined the right to abortion) to be overturned and for the legal rights of US citizens to be bestowed upon embryos.

"This notion that we just continue to ignore the personhood of the individual is a violation of that unborn child\'s Fifth and 14th Amendment rights for due process and equal protection under the law," he says. "It\'s time that we recognise the Supreme Court is not the supreme being, and we change the policy to be pro-life and protect children instead of rip up their body parts and sell them like they\'re parts to a Buick."

Since then he has elaborated on the point, declaring he would outlaw all abortion, prosecute those who provide them, he suggests, and use federal troops to enforce his new laws.

It now appears six of the 17 leading Republican candidates support banning abortion in all circumstances, with another five advocating banning it even for victims of rape and incest, though allowing for a medical emergency.

This hard line stance puts the candidates at odds with the majority of Americans, and at odds with a strategy document drafted after the Republican Party lost the 2012 election in part because women – particularly unmarried women – favoured Democrats.

Republican US presidential candidate and Ohio Governor John Kasich.

A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll found 83 per cent of Americans say abortion should remain legal in cases when the woman\'s life is endangered or when the pregnancy is caused by rape. Just 14 per cent say it should be illegal in all cases.

A 2014 General Social Survey found 75 per cent believed abortion should be legal in cases of rape, going up to 85 per cent when a woman\'s health was seriously endangered.

Some believe that with the debate over gay marriage so comprehensively won, abortion is the only issue that Republican candidates can use to signal their support to the party\'s Christian base.

Others suggest that while the economy dominated in 2012 there is more room for social issues to be debated in this race.

In truth the abortion debate has never been settled in the United States.

Ever since the 1973 Roe v Wade decision, which found a right to abortion tethered to an implied right to privacy in the Constitution, Americans have remained ambivalent about the procedure.

Long-term Gallop polling shows that about 51 per cent of Americans support legal abortion in most circumstances, 29 per cent in some circumstances and 19 per cent believe it should be banned outright.

Carly Fiorina, former chairman and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard.

And one major poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found 43 per cent of Americans identify as both pro-choice and pro-life.

Perhaps Bill Clinton captured the public\'s discomfiture best a generation ago, when he said abortion should be "safe, legal and rare."

This ambivalence can be stirred from time to time into opposition.

The communications director of the Susan B Anthony List, a non-profit activist group that seeks to help pro-life women get elected, is Mallory Quigley. She says that she believes the revelations of the practices of the Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell, who in 2013 was convicted of murdering three infants who were born alive during attempted abortions, have focused attention on abortion, and appalled observers, since the last election.

But another scandal has supplanted the Gosnell trial in recent weeks.

Last month an anti-abortion group called calling itself the Centre for Medical Progress began releasing a series of videos which it claims show Planned Parenthood staff discussing the illegal sale of fetal tissue.

Republican US presidential candidate and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

The group\'s seventh video – as with the others recorded on hidden cameras by volunteers posing as biotech employees seeking fetal tissue for research purposes – was released on Wednesday.

"Today\'s video contains heartrending admissions about the absolute barbarism of Planned Parenthood\'s abortion practice and baby parts sales in which fetuses are sometimes delivered intact and alive," the group\'s leader, 26-year-old activist Daniel Daleiden, said in a statement. "Planned Parenthood is a criminal organisation from the top down and should be immediately stripped of taxpayer funding and prosecuted for their atrocities against humanity."

So far the videos have shown nothing more than Planned Parenthood discussing the cost of retrieving the fetal material, which it is permitted to pass on.

Planned Parenthood responded furiously. "The group behind these videos has close ties with organisations and individuals who have been linked to the firebombing of abortion clinics and threats to the physical safety of doctors who provide abortion," Eric Ferrero, vice president of Communication, Planned Parenthood Federation of America told CNN.

"The real agenda of these baseless attacks has become totally clear: to ban abortion and limit women\'s access to reproductive health care at Planned Parenthood. The vast majority of the public rejects this extreme political agenda and rejects the fraudulent campaign behind it."

The Planned Parenthood denials have not stopped Republican attacks. So far a dozen states have started or completed investigations into Planned Parenthood, as has the federal Department of Health and Human Services. All have found no wrongdoing on the organisation\'s behalf. Nevertheless four conservative states (Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Utah) have all announced plans to terminate Medicaid contracts with Planned Parenthood. The federal government has warned states this might be illegal. That tactic is not new and has been successfully challenged in court by Planned Parenthood in the past.

Senator Ted Cruz won massive online support by vowing to force a government shutdown by having Congressional Republicans block funding bills unless the administration pulled $500 million in federal funding to Planned Parenthood. Rand Paul, another GOP candidate, backed a similar bill.

The call proved so popular that candidate Ben Carson – a former neurosurgeon who has actually used fetal tissue in his own research – followed suit. He later claimed his own use of the tissue was somehow less complicit in abortion than that of other researchers.

The impact of the cuts in funding will be broad, since the organisation provides a range of reproductive health services and could even serve to increase the number of abortions, as Planned Parenthood provides contraception and counselling services to poorer women.

The nonprofit Guttmacher Institute estimates that contraceptives given to low-income women prevented 345,000 abortions in 2013 alone and, as the biggest provider of contraception to low-income women, Planned Parenthood\'s contributions probably cannot be replaced easily or soon. Forty per cent of unplanned pregnancies end in abortion and access to birth control dramatically reduces unplanned pregnancies.

Planned Parenthood Action Fund executive vice president Dawn Laguens said defunding its clinics will "block millions from getting basic healthcare," adding it is unrealistic to expect other healthcare providers could make up for that loss. The

has come to the defence of Planned Parenthood, writing that "its physicians, and the researchers who do this work, should be praised, not damned." Fetal tissue research, the Journal argues, "has benefited millions of people worldwide."

Hillary Clinton, the overwhelmingly dominant Democratic contender, clearly sees the Republican race to the right on abortion as a gift and has already targeted Marco Rubio\'s statements.

"When one of their major candidates – a much younger man, the Senator from Florida – says there should be no exceptions for rape and incest, that is as offensive and as troubling a comment as you can hear from a major candidate running for the presidency," she told reporters in New Hampshire.

She is casting the attack on abortion as a broader assault on women\'s rights, much as the Democrats cast the Republican Party as engaging in a "war on women" during the 2012 election.

Traditionally Republicans have been forced to run to the right to win support from the party\'s conservative base in the primaries before running back to the centre to win general support in the election, and this could explain their apparent radicalisation on abortion.

The first state to hold its primary is Iowa, where winners traditionally have to woo white evangelical Christians, the very voters who most support a hard line against abortion.

To win that race candidates need to outshout Donald Trump, who is soaking up all the media airtime, and outplay Jeb Bush, who is dominating the race for donations. To do that, says Erika West, the political director of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the nation\'s leading pro-choice group, the candidates are having to adopt increasingly radical positions.

She says the current Republican orthodoxy is the most extreme she has seen in the US.

If previous elections are anything to go by, she says, the successful candidate will seek to backtrack having won the primary, saying that while he or she personally oppose abortion they would not interfere with a woman\'s right to choose.

This, says West, is the strategy Scott Walker used to win the 2014 Wisconsin gubernatorial race – hard right in the primary, then centrist in the general election, before winning office and passing some of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in American history.

Opposes abortion in all circumstances, including in cases of rape or incest or to save the life of a mother.

Opposes abortion except in cases of rape, incest or danger to the life of the mother.

He previously declared himself to be "the most pro-life governor of modern times."

Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor, pastor

Opposes abortion in all circumstances, would extend legal rights to fetuses and has suggested he might use federal troops to block access to abortion clinics as president.

When asked for clarification on August 9, 2015, on whether or not he supported some exceptions to abortion restriction, he responded: "I\'ll support any legislation that reduces the number of abortions. And there are those that have that exception in it. What I\'ve never done is said, \'I require that it must have or not have exceptions\'."

Donald Trump, reality TV star, real estate mogul

Was formerly pro-choice, now would ban abortion with exceptions for medical emergency, rape and incest. Would defund Planned Parenthood.

Opposes abortion, not clear if he would allow any exceptions.

Formerly pro-choice, now opposes abortion but with exceptions in cases of rape or incest or to save the life of a mother.

Opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest, would allow an exception to save the life of a mother, according to the

Carly Fiorina, former Hewlett Packard chief executive

Opposes abortion "with exceptions" though it is not clear which exceptions.

Opposes abortion, would ban the procedure after 20 weeks with exceptions for medical emergency, rape and incest.

Opposes abortion with exceptions for medical emergency. Has stripped funding from Planned Parenthood in Louisiana.

John Kasich, governor of Ohio, former Congressman

in 2009, Paul believed "abortions should be illegal, even in cases of rape, incest or where the life of the pregnant woman is at stake."

In July 2013, Rick Perry signed into law banning abortions at 20 weeks of pregnancy and increasing the medical operating standards at abortion clinics in Texas. According to

, only five of the state\'s 42 abortion clinics met those standards.

Opposes abortion without exception and has called for Planned Parenthood to be both defunded and prosecuted.

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