RALEIGH, NC — Republican candidate for North Carolina governor Mark Robinson has been criticized for months by his Democratic rival and other opponents for seeking additional restrictions on abortion that go beyond current state law and for past comments lecturing women on the issue.
“Abortion in this country is not about protecting the lives of mothers. It’s about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down,” Robinson said in a Facebook video in 2019, the year before he was elected lieutenant governor in his first bid for public office. Democratic candidate Josh Stein, the current attorney general and an abortion rights advocate, has shown the footage in advertisements since June.
Now Robinson is trying to change the wider electorate’s opinion of him on this issue by showing empathy with a new commercial from Friday, describing the abortion his wife had decades ago, and giving the impression that he is pleased with the state’s current 12-week ban on most abortions.
The policy shift would be significant for Robinson, whose campaign said earlier this year that he supported banning abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, with some exceptions. Many women don’t even know they’re pregnant after six weeks. Robinson has previously suggested he would support something even stricter, saying in 2020, for example, that “there is no compromise on abortion.”
For decades, the GOP campaigned to restrict abortion across the country. But as abortion rights driven turnout for Democrats and was seen as a vulnerability for Republicans, Robinson’s approach reflects the persistent efforts of conservative politicians to appear moderate on abortion rights or avoid the issue altogether during the campaign — or risk losing at the ballot box in a post-Roe v. Wade world.
The stakes are high in North Carolina, where elections for state office are typically close and the winner of this closely watched gubernatorial campaign could have a lot to say in November about whether the Republican-controlled General Assembly can pass its conservative agenda without resistance.
The campaign ad on television and digital platforms shows Robinson and his wife Yolanda Hill holding hands. They publicly discussed her abortion in a 2022 video, but the potential audience is now much larger.
“Thirty years ago, my wife and I made a very difficult decision. We had an abortion,” Robinson says in the ad. “It was like a silent pain between us that we never talked about.”
Hill added: “It’s something that will stay with me forever.”
“That’s why I stand by our current law,” Robinson continues, pointing to what he calls “common sense exceptions” for pregnancies resulting from incest and rape and when the mother’s life is in danger.
When asked Friday whether Robinson would change his position on abortion, campaign spokesman Mike Lonergan said “the legislature has already spoken out on this issue.”
In May 2023, the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed legislation over Democratic Governor Roy Cooper’s veto, which rolled back the state’s ban on most abortions from 20 weeks of pregnancy up to 12 weeks.
If elected governor, Robinson “will strive to make North Carolina a lifetime destination by creating a culture that does more to support women and families, including encouraging adoption as well as foster care and child care,” he added.
Stein’s campaign said later Friday that the Robinson ad was the “latest example of him walking away from his extreme and toxic stance on abortion.” They have argued that Robinson, if elected, would seek a ban on abortion with no exceptions.
“If the people of North Carolina want to know where Mark Robinson really stands on abortion, they should listen to every other comment he has made on this issue to date,” said Morgan Hopkins, a spokesperson for the Stein campaign.
Former President Donald Trump attempted to more cautious attitude on abortion rights during this election by dodging questions and leaning on his standard answer that he brought abortion back to the states when he helped form the majority that overturned the constitutional right to abortion.
The abortion policy has been praised for reversing an expected red wave last year and delivering victories for Democrats in the Kentucky gubernatorial race and in the Virginia state legislature after Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin failed to mobilize voters behind a proposal to ban abortions after 15 weeks, with exceptions.
Cooper was barred from running for a third consecutive term because of term limits, effectively passing the Democratic baton to Stein, a former state senator who had once worked under Cooper when the politician was the state’s attorney general.
Hopkins said in June that Stein “supports the Roe v. Wade framework of the past 50 years, which protects women’s reproductive freedoms and restricts abortion later in pregnancy unless a woman’s life or health is in danger.”
Such a framework generally allows abortions in most cases up to the point of viability, which is usually between the 24th and 26th weeks of pregnancy. Robinson’s campaign has claimed that Stein’s views are extreme, saying he supports abortion later in pregnancy, in the third trimester.
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Christine Fernando, an Associated Press editor in Chicago, contributed to this report.