Mark Robinson addresses supporters during a campaign event at Pelican's Perch Bar & Grill in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina on February 17, 2024. (Photo by Madeline Gray for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
September 17, 2024
Access to healthcare and reproductive rights are core moral issues Mark Robinson has outright flip-flopped about, one way or the other, within months of the election. North Carolinians deserve to know the earnestly held positions of the candidates seeking to represent them.
[Editor’s Note: The following is written by Rep. Julie von Haefen, a Democrat who represents Wake County in the NC General Assembly.]
Anti-abortion politicians know their policies are unpopular and hurting women. They also know that continuing to center their campaigns on extremist positions will cause them to lose elections.
They haven’t reflected on the overwhelming political will of the people as a reason to reconsider their positions and reevaluate their viewpoints.
Instead, anti-choice extremists like Mark Robinson have seemingly chosen to return to the classic anti-choice extremist strategy of saying one thing and doing another by claiming that they do not want to restrict reproductive rights further. Some, including Robinson, have even implied they’ve felt this way for decades.
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Twenty-four years ago, Joyce Arthur summarized the rationalization anti-abortion extremists use when obtaining abortions before immediately resuming their anti-abortion activism into a simple mantra, “The only moral abortion is my abortion.”
Though Arthur focused on the phenomenon of female anti-choice activists using the same abortion services they try to destroy, Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson recently proved that Arthur’s timeless words apply to the hypocrisy of anti-choice extremists of any gender.
Robinson and his wife shared the story of their decision to obtain abortion services 30 years ago, claiming that their lived experience meant he “stands by” North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban.
If his experience 30 years ago is why he supports a 12-week ban, why did he say he supports bills that would outlaw abortion in all cases and ensure people “can’t have an abortion for any reason” in both 2022 and 2023 or that abortion is “about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down” during the run-up to his campaign for Lt. Governor in 2019?
Robinson’s recent ad implies he has felt a 12-week abortion ban was the right policy for at least the majority of the last 30 years.
If that’s true, it’s difficult to reconcile with his 2018 statement that abortion is “genocide” driven by “satanic madness.” I find it hard to imagine anyone could compromise on their policy positions when they believe Satan is pushing the “nation closer to total spiritual damnation.”
I do not think Mark Robinson and his fellow anti-choice extremists are sincere when they suddenly reverse course from the RNC’s July 2024 adoption of a fetal personhood policy that would effectively prohibit “abortion at all stages of pregnancy.”
Robinson either misled his supporters about his values when he promised to support a total abortion ban during his 2020 lieutenant gubernatorial campaign and this year’s Republican gubernatorial primary, or he is misleading everyone in North Carolina now.
Either way, this isn’t a politician walking back a campaign promise about a spending program they couldn’t get off the ground or a reform that proved too complex to be practicable.
Access to healthcare and protecting reproductive rights are core moral issues he has outright flip-flopped about, one way or the other, within months of the election. North Carolinians deserve to know the earnestly held positions—be those beliefs based on science and basic human empathy, or junk science, stigma, and disinformation –of the candidates seeking to represent them.
But we’ve seen this strategy before from anti-choice advocates. It is the strategy they used to overturn Roe v Wade: retreat when the public recoils at the extremism of their position and slowly chip away at our rights through any means possible.
Robinson himself knows this strategy; he helpfully explained it to one of his supporters earlier this year when discussing how he “absolutely” intends to pursue banning abortion from the moment of conception: “We’ve got to do it the same way with rolling it back. We’ve got it down to 12 weeks. The next goal is to get it down to 6, and then just keep moving from there.”
North Carolina voters will make their choice for Governor this year, and they deserve to know – in no uncertain terms – the candidates’ plans to protect or further restrict abortion access in our state.
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CATEGORIES: REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
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