On Sunday, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina likened certain GOP-led states’ restrictions on abortion access to the dystopian book ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’
In an appearance with NBC’s Meet The Press, the rookie senator also cautioned fellow Republicans that adopting a hardline stance on abortion might lead to disaster in the November midterm elections.
It comes after Kansans defied predictions by voting in large numbers against a referendum issue that would have removed from the state constitution the ability to abort a pregnancy up to 22 weeks.
The referendum was the first of its kind since the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in late June.
Mace, who was raped as a teenager, justified her opposition to Roe v. Wade, claiming that Congress now had a responsibility to act on abortion in order to protect it from extremists on both sides.
‘Place guardrails that they are comfortable with, and let’s go.’ And we can do it at the federal level by providing direction to states, or states can do it on their own,’ she added, adding that most Americans were not on the fringe.
Mace said that her worry with the post-Roe crackdowns was with rules other than those limiting gestational periods.
‘You’ve got states that are going to attempt to prohibit women from traveling, that if you’re raped, you have to disclose it to the police,’ Mace said.
‘Well, when I was 16, I was raped, and it took me a week to notify my mother.’ Any proof would have vanished by then.’
She targeted legislation recently filed in South Carolina that would outright outlaw abortion except in cases of emergency where the mother’s life is in risk.
‘In my own state, they want women to be forced to report if they are raped. And I can’t image a society in which your child, a young girl who’s been raped, has to disclose those things,’ Mace added.
‘And, you know, The Handmaid’s Tale wasn’t meant to be a road plan, was it? This is a location where we may be in the middle. We can defend both life and where people are on both sides of the aisle.’
Mace defended herself as “staunchly pro-life,” but urged her Republican colleagues, as well as members on the other side of the aisle, against pandering to the extremes on abortion rights.
‘I do believe that if we do not moderate ourselves, it will be an issue in November, that we add exceptions for women who have been raped, girls who have been victims of incest, and obviously in any circumstance when the life of the mother is at peril,’ Mace stated.
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‘In my state, it is where the great majority of women are. And I’m going to keep fighting for those things. But we can’t get to the far right or far left corners of the room.’
‘On the extreme left, you have those who want abortion for any reason up to birth, and then on the far right, we have states that are fighting to guarantee that no abortion for any reason, including rape and incest victims in girls,’ she added earlier in the interview.
‘Somewhere in the center is where we have to meet, and I do feel that Congress has a responsibility to play, and I want to play a role in defining policy for the future for every American in our nation,’ Mace said.
The Republican legislator just won a primary election against a candidate sponsored by Donald Trump, Katie Arrington.
She was also one of eight Republican members to support the House of Representatives’ Right to Contraception Act, which would have enshrined Roe v. Wade’s rights.
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