Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) said the Republican Party under President-elect Donald Trump successfully neutralized abortion as a major issue with an “effective” states rights argument that left Pennsylvania voters convinced they would not prioritize a nationwide abortion ban.
Fetterman made the remarks about abortion to German-owned Politico in a wide-ranging interview published Thursday, when he suggested the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade ultimately did not hurt Republicans on Election Day.
“I’m straight up, 100 percent Roe, Roe, Roe. It should have never changed. It should stand. But now it’s created a situation where states are able to select [abortion policies],” Fetterman told the outlet. Despite his support for the precedent set under Roe, Fetterman said Republicans “did as effective as they possibly could” to “frame” the issue around states rights.
“It’s like, ‘Well, hey, where it exists, we’re no problem with that,'” Fetterman reportedly said to explain how voters perceived the Republican Party’s stance on abortion.
On the campaign trail, Trump touted the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the abortion case for the resulting return over abortion legislation to state legislatures, and it is true that measures to expand or enshrine abortion access passed in multiple states that Trump nonetheless carried on November 5, including Arizona, Nevada, Montana, and Missouri.
Pro-abortion measures also passed in New York and Maryland, which are both considered Democratic strongholds, while they failed in the Republican strongholds of Nebraska, South Dakota, and Florida.
“It’s kind of an equilibrium where we have pro- states and we have restricted states,” Fetterman told Politico. “I think enough Americans thought that’s kind of where we are on those things.”
The Democrat described Republicans still seeking a national abortion ban as “lunatics,” and suggested, “anyone on the Republican side knows that ‘we’ve kind of won’ in that sense.”
Exit polls published by Reuters may support Fetterman’s analysis in Pennsylvania, as the pollsters found only 15 percent of the commonwealth’s voters ranked abortion as their top issue, less than half of the 31 percent who told pollsters the economy was their most important issue.
Another 31 percent of respondents told pollsters the state of democracy was their top issue, while 12 percent cited immigration and 3 percent said foreign policy.
It could also be backed up by polling released as early as May by the Cook Political Report, which found voters were more concerned about inflation and the southern border under the Biden-Harris administration than the possibility that Republicans could pursue nationwide abortion legislation under Trump.
Fetterman also broke with Vice President Kamala Harris when speaking to Politico, declaring Trump supporters are not “fascists” and suggesting Trump’s victory in Pennsylvania became nearly inevitable after he survived an assassination attempt in Butler on July 13.
He told the German-owned outlet, “It’s like, ‘They tried everything. They impeached this man, they put him on trial. You know, the media. And now they tried to kill him, and he survived.’ And he had the presence of mind to even respond, and created that [viral image]. What if that was [Barack] Obama? Can you imagine what that would have meant to Democrats?”
Fetterman ultimately predicted he will find common ground with the Trump administration on the president-elect’s efforts to protect the American steel industry, defend Israel, and be “very, very muscular against China.”
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “John Fetterman” by John Fetterman.
