Republican Candidate for Governor of North Carolina Mark Robinson has been criticized for months by his Democratic rival and other opponents for pursuing additional restrictions on abortion that go beyond current state law and for past comments lecturing women on the issue.
“Abortion in this country is not about protecting the lives of mothers. It’s about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down,” Robinson said in a Facebook video in 2019, the year before he was elected lieutenant governor in his first attempt at public office. Democratic candidate Josh Steinthe current attorney general and an abortion rights advocate, has been running the images in ads since June.
Now Robinson is trying to change the public's opinion of him by showing empathy with a new commercial that debuts Friday. The ad details his wife's abortion decades ago and suggests he's happy with the state's current 12-week ban on most abortions.
READ ALSO: RNC Night 2: Nikki Haley Officially Endorses Trump
The policy shift would be significant for Robinson, whose campaign said earlier this year that he supported banning abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, with some exceptions. Many women don't even know they're pregnant after six weeks. Robinson has previously suggested he would support something even stricter, saying in 2020, for example, that “there is no compromise for me on abortion.”
For decades, the GOP campaigned on restricting abortion nationwide. But as abortion rights have fueled the rise of Democrats and appeared a vulnerability for Republicans, Robinson’s approach reflects an ongoing effort by conservative politicians to appear moderate on abortion rights or avoid the issue altogether on the campaign trail — or risk losing at the ballot box in a post-Roe v. Wade world.
The stakes are high in North Carolina, where state elections are typically close. The winner of this closely watched November gubernatorial campaign could have a lot to say about whether the Republican-controlled General Assembly can push through its conservative agenda unopposed.
RELATED: Dimple Ajmera 'humiliated' by request to become mayor
The campaign ad on television and digital platforms shows Robinson and his wife Yolanda Hill holding hands. They publicly discussed her abortion in a 2022 video, but the potential audience is now much larger.
“Thirty years ago, my wife and I made a very difficult decision. We had an abortion,” Robinson says in the ad, adding that it was like a “silent pain between us that we never talked about.”
Hill added: “It's something that will stay with me forever.”
“That's why I stand by our current law,” Robinson continues, pointing to what he calls “common sense exceptions” for pregnancies resulting from incest and rape and when the mother's life is in danger.
When asked Friday whether Robinson would change his position on abortion, campaign spokesman Mike Lonergan said “the legislature has already spoken out on this issue.”
In May 2023, the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed legislation over the veto of Democratic Governor Roy Cooper that would have reduced the state's ban on most abortions from after 20 weeks of pregnancy to 12 weeks.
If elected governor, Robinson “will strive to make North Carolina a lifetime destination by creating a culture that does more to support women and families, including encouraging adoption as well as foster care and child care,” Lonergan added.
RELATED: Could Charlotte Host the 2040 Olympics? One City Councilman Thinks So.
Stein's campaign team said later Friday that Robinson's ad was “the latest example of him moving away from his extreme and toxic stance on abortion.” Stein's team argued that Robinson, if elected, would seek a ban on abortion with no exceptions.
“If the people of North Carolina want to know where Mark Robinson really stands on abortion, they should listen to every other comment he has made on this issue to date,” said Morgan Hopkins, a spokesperson for the Stein campaign.
Former President Donald Trump has taken a more cautious stance on abortion rights in this election, dodging questions and sticking to his standard answer that he brought abortion back to the United States when he helped form the majority that overturned the constitutional right to abortion.
The abortion policy has been praised for reversing an expected red wave last year and delivering victories for Democrats in the Kentucky gubernatorial race and in the Virginia state legislature after Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin failed to mobilize voters behind a proposal to ban abortions after 15 weeks, with exceptions.
Cooper was barred from running for a third consecutive term because of term limits, effectively passing the Democratic baton to Stein, a former state senator who had once worked under Cooper when the politician was the state's attorney general.
Hopkins said in June that Stein “supports the Roe v. Wade framework of the past 50 years, which protects women's reproductive freedoms and restricts abortion later in pregnancy unless a woman's life or health is in danger.”
Such a framework generally allows abortions in most cases up to the point of viability, which is usually between the 24th and 26th weeks of pregnancy. Robinson's campaign has claimed that Stein's views are extreme, saying he supports abortion later in pregnancy, in the third trimester.
(WATCH BELOW: New aviation rules come into effect this fall)
