“He won’t commit to protecting abortion access for Marylanders, let alone the rest of the country”
In case you missed it, the Baltimore Sun blasted Republican Larry Hogan’s well-documented, extensive anti-abortion record in Maryland. Throughout his administration, Hogan repeatedly took action to oppose reproductive rights in the Free State. And as a Senate candidate, Hogan repeatedly refused to support legislation protecting Roe v. Wade and IVF while saying he will caucus with Republicans and give them the majority they need to pass a national abortion ban.
Baltimore Sun: Larry Hogan’s commitment to abortion choice: convenient, but not convincing
May 17, 2024
By Baltimore Sun Editorial Board
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If there’s one thing we’ve come to count on from Lawrence Joseph Hogan Jr., the state’s 62nd governor, it’s that he won’t commit to protecting abortion access for Marylanders, let alone the rest of the country.
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So you’ll forgive our shock when, after securing the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Ben Cardin, he suddenly said he supports codifying abortion access into federal law. Not only that, he intends to personally cast a vote in favor of the state’s November ballot question that will add that same reproductive health care right into Maryland’s constitution — a measure the former governor had previously deemed unnecessary.
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Of course, his actual behavior was quite the contrary. As Sun reporter Hannah Gaskill noted, in 2022 he vetoed legislation expanding abortion access. And when the Maryland General Assembly overrode the veto, Hogan withheld funding to train abortion providers — even after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
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If the 67-year-old politician has learned anything, he’s figured out how to read a poll. It’s one thing to hem and haw to keep your core Republican base from rising up against you while trying to navigate some middle ground on abortion, it’s quite another to win statewide office in a post-Roe Maryland where polls show about two-thirds of adults believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
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The math for a GOP nominee in one of the nation’s most Democratic-leaning states just doesn’t work no matter how personally popular you might have been as governor. Especially not when your opponent is Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, whose pro-abortion rights position is clear and consistent and voter turnout in the fall will likely be huge.
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When a 35-year-old Larry Hogan was running to be a delegate in the Republican National Convention, he claimed to favor allowing states to restrict abortion access, including a 24-hour waiting period, parental notification for minors and “professional counseling from the doctor about available alternatives.” When his father served as Prince George’s County executive, he supported a ban on abortion in county hospitals. And more recently, Hogan campaigned a few years back for high-profile Georgia Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, apparently not caring about their strongly anti-choice views.
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Marylanders who believe in reproductive health care rights might not have cared all that much about where Larry Hogan stood on this issue when they elected him as governor in 2014 and 2018. But since the Supreme Court’s decision two years ago in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe, the circumstances are markedly different. The candidate knows that, and so he’s taken a new tack.
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