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After Sen. Ted Cruz delivered remarks at a campaign event this week, a CNN reporter asked the Texas Republican why he didn’t mention abortion rights. “I understand that’s what Democrats want to talk all day long about,” the senator replied.
Reminded that reproductive rights are important for many Texans, Cruz was unimpressed. “I recognize it’s what the press is obsessed with,” the GOP incumbent said. When the CNN reporter tried to shift the focus back to voters, the senator added, “I know that the press thinks that voters are what they’re obsessed with.”
This is a surprisingly common refrain from prominent Republicans, who seem awfully eager to tell the public how unimportant abortion rights are outside newsrooms. Donald Trump wrote online last week, for example, “Abortion has dropped way down as an issue.” The former president added in a recent interview that abortion is “not that big of an issue.”
There’s some compelling evidence to the contrary. The New York Times reported in late August:
Although the economy remains the No. 1 issue for voters, a growing share of voters in swing states now say abortion is central to their decision this fall, according to New York Times/Siena College polls earlier this month. This represents an increase since May, when President Joe Biden was still the Democratic presidential nominee.
When GOP officials and candidates assert without evidence that only journalists care about the issue, it’s more wishful thinking than serious analysis.
But for Cruz to act like abortion rights is of limited relevance is especially offensive given what’s happening to women in his own home state — people he’s ostensibly supposed to be fighting for.
ProPublica reported this week, for example, on the tragedy surrounding Josseli Barnica, “one of at least two Texas women who ProPublica found lost their lives after doctors delayed treating miscarriages, which fall into a gray area under the state’s strict abortion laws that prohibit doctors from ending the heartbeat of a fetus.”
Tragically, the list of women who’ve suffered as a result of GOP-imposed health care restrictions has too many additional names. If Cruz has forgotten their names, I’d encourage him to familiarize himself with Kate Cox and Amanda Zurawski, among others.
The question isn’t whether “the press is obsessed with” this issue; the question is why the senator in a tough re-election race isn’t obsessed with protecting these women’s interests.