Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who recently launched a presidential exploratory committee, tripped over himself on Thursday trying to avoid questions about whether he supports a 15-week federal abortion ban.
At one point, he pivoted to a “very important conversation” he had had during a congressional hearing featuring Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
Already in full campaign mode a day after announcing his intent to run for president, the conservative lawmaker was outside a New Hampshire diner when reporters confronted him on where he stood on federal abortion restrictions.
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After hemming and hawing when one reporter asked him about a federal judge’s recent decision to suspend access to an FDA-approved abortion pill, Scott was asked whether he supported fellow South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham’s proposal to ban abortions nationwide.
“Would you support a federal ban on abortions?” Newsmax correspondent Mike Carter wondered, prompting Scott to go into full duck-and-dodge mode.
“I would simply say that the fact of the matter is, when you look at the issue of abortion, one of the challenges that we have, we continue to go through the most restrictive conversations without broadening the scope and taking a look at the fact that…I’m 100 percent pro-life,” the South Carolina lawmaker stumbled.
“I never walk away from that,” he added. “But the truth of the matter is that when you look at the issues on abortion, I start with the very important conversation I had in a banking hearing where I was sitting in my office and listening to Janet Yellen, the secretary of the Treasury, talk about an increase in the labor force participation rate for African-American women who are in poverty by having abortions.”
Continuing to not answer the question, Scott went on to fixate on Yellen while insisting that there needed to be a “serious” national discussion about the issue.
“I think we’re just having the wrong conversation. I ran down to the banking hearing to see if I heard her right,” he said. “Are you actually saying that a mom like mine should have an abortion so that we increase the labor force participation rate? That just seems ridiculous to me. And so I’m going to continue to have a serious conversation about the issues that affect the American people. I want to start by pointing out the absolute hypocrisy of the left on the most one of the more important issues.”
In an attempt to follow up, Carter asked what Scott had to say to a conservative “who wants a clear message on that,” only for the senator to ignore him and move on to another reporter.
This wasn’t the first time Scott had recently stumbled when pressed on his support for national abortion restrictions. During a campaign trip to Iowa on Wednesday, he deflected when asked whether he backed Graham’s 15-week ban. In a Thursday morning interview with a New Hampshire news station, he did say he’d “definitely” get behind a 20-week federal restriction—a proposal he’s supported in the past.
With abortion once again becoming a major political issue at the ballot box after last year’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, and a bevy of new reproductive health restrictions turning out angry voters, Republicans have struggled to address the furious backlash over their anti-abortion stance. Not only do current polls show most Americans believe abortion should be legal in most cases, but Democrats and liberals have flipped recent political races over the issue.
This is probably why you see many GOP lawmakers—whenever they aren’t burying their heads in the sand—saying it’s time to “get off” the abortion issue, or calling for the FDA to simply ignore a right-wing judge’s ruling on an abortion drug.
