Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that she believes abortion exceptions like rape, incest and the life of the mother should be legislated federally, potentially including “gestational limits.”
Anchor Chuck Todd said, “It seems like you think Congress has stepped in here. Fifteen states right now want to criminalize the doctor, want to make basically if there is a crime committed here, it’s not the woman, it would be the doctor. As you know, you already talked about the problem of getting OB-GYNs into practicing in rural South Carolina. A lot of these OB-GYNs don’t want to practice in states with restrictive laws because they have to sit here and wait to declare an emergency to intervene medically. So they figure, you know what? I’m going to practice medicine in a state that makes the abortion law safe. How do you do this? How do you fix this federally?”
Mace said, “It is going to be an issue. I do think that Congress, because Roe v. Wade was overturned, that we do have an opportunity here to work together to ensure that those things don’t take place. And you can do that at the federal level with legislation. But in this particular issue, it’s going to take Republicans and Democrats working together to get it in a place where you can do it in a bipartisan fashion and passioned legislation. I think you can look at gestational limits most reasonable for most Americans.”
She added, “One of my concerns you got states that are going to try to ban women from traveling that if you’re raped that you got to report it to the police. I was raped when I was 16, and it took me a week to tell my mother. By that time, any evidence would have been gone. And the violation of a woman’s privacy. I can’t tell you how traumatic that event was in my life. My own home state, they want women to be required and mandated to report when they are raped. I just can’t even imagine a world where you’re a teenage girl and raped. You have to report those things. “Handmaid’s Tale” was not supposed to be a road map, right? This is a place we can be in the center, we can protect life, and we can protect where people are on both sides of the aisle. And so it’s important to take that perspective, and that is the perspective that Congress should have on everything that we do, but as you know, we are so divided.”
She added, “I do think it will be an issue in November if we are not moderating ourselves and including exceptions for women who are raped and girls victims of incest and in every instance where the life of a mother is at stake. That is a position I have staked out and important to me personally.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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