GOP rep in vulnerable seat erases vow to 'fight to defend the right to life': report
A Republican congressman fighting to keep his vulnerable seat in Nebraska quietly deleted a portion of his website that bragged about his anti-abortion bonafides — signaling just how potentially harmful the GOP's current stance on abortion can be to its own party, a report stated Friday.
The section on Don Bacon's website declared that he “will always fight to defend the right to life.” Also deleted from the website were the perfect ratings he received from anti-abortion organizations like the Susan B. Anthony List, National Right to Life, and the Faith and Freedom Coalition.
As Rolling Stone points out, Bacon is running for reelection in Nebraska’s competitive second district — which Joe Biden won in the 2020 election.
Bacon's opponent, Democratic state Sen. Tony Vargas, is drawing attention to Bacon's stance on abortion, previously saying that he “supports a nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions, not even for the life of the mother" — prompting Bacon to reply that Vargas' accusation was a "lie."
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“I’ve always defended the life of the mother," Bacon claimed.
But according to Rolling Stone, Bacon is the one who's lying. "The congressman has previously signed on as co-sponsor of the Life at Conception Act, not once but twice — in 2019 and 2021," the magazine reported.
"The 2021 version declared that the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution 'is vested in each human being … including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.'"
The report also points out that Bacon was the "only vulnerable" Republican House member to urge the Supreme Court to allow states to ban hospitals from providing emergency abortions.
Bacon also reportedly deleted language from his website suggesting that he was willing to find "a bipartisan solution for those currently in our country under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program (DACA).”
In its place are now bullet points highlighting his desire “to resume construction of the border wall, reinstate the Remain in Mexico Policy, hire more border patrol agents, and stop the flow of fentanyl that is poisoning our kids.”