TED WENT TOO FAR: The Bulwark Reports “Ted Cruz Has Suddenly Gotten Quiet on Abortion”
AUSTIN, Texas – With nearly 50 days to go until the election, Ted Cruz, who just hit 500 podcast episodes and isn't known for shying away from a comment, is refusing to talk about his role in the Texas abortion ban.
Cruz always takes things too far – and his record on abortion is no exception:
The Bulwark’s Joe Perticone reports “Cruz scurried away from reporters peppering him with questions about Kate Cox, the Texas woman who fled the state to seek emergency medical care and an abortion… Cruz has declined interview requests with local media on abortion policy and ignored written questionnaires”
Even though “banning abortion has been a major political priority for him.”
Read the full report below.
The Bulwark: Ted Cruz Has Suddenly Gotten Quiet on Abortion
By Joe Perticone
For the entirety of his Senate career, Ted Cruz has been a warrior for the pro-life/anti-abortion movement. Banning abortion has been a major political priority for him. But now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned and some states are instituting abortion bans, Cruz—christened “The Absolutist” in a New Yorker profile ten years ago—is approaching the issue quite differently.
When Cruz first ran for Senate in 2012, he opposed abortion in all cases except those where the life of the mother was at risk. He maintained this stance as his profile grew following his election.
The Supreme Court fulfilled a major wish of Cruz and other anti-abortion politicians when it overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Since Dobbs v. Jackson was handed down, states like Texas have begun implementing sweeping abortion bans. These have become something of a political liability for Republicans—so much of a liability that even Cruz, “the absolutist,” has decided to push the issue to the backseat of his policy agenda, if not avoid it entirely.
I witnessed this firsthand in December when Cruz scurried away from reporters peppering him with questions about Kate Cox, the Texas woman who fled the state to seek emergency medical care and an abortion. The San Antonio Express News reported that Cruz has declined interview requests with local media on abortion policy and ignored written questionnaires about his current stance on the issue.
[When asked about abortion] Cruz listed off the areas where his campaign is on offense (border security, support for the oil industry) and completely skipped over the actual meat of my question.
The senator’s campaign issues page titled “Defending Life” includes a long list of his accomplishments for the pro-life movement. But it’s quite lacking in another respect: Cruz does not offer a current, post-Dobbs position on the issue or any sense for what he plans to do—or not do—about abortion in the future.
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