STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – Beto O’Rourke refused to rule out abortion after six months of pregnancy.
Asked by the Washington Examiner about his position on third-trimester abortion, O’Rourke, who is running against a crowded field of Democrats vying for a chance to unseat President Trump in 2020, said it’s a woman’s decision after consulting with her doctor. .
“Look, I think these decisions are best left to the woman and her doctor,” he said. “I know not to assume anything about a woman’s decision, an extremely difficult decision, when it comes to her reproductive rights.”
He added: “Roe v. Wade, while being reviewed differently than ever before, is still the law of the land. It must be respected and we must make sure that when we talk about universal health care, we also talk about women’s health care, and when we talk about women’s health care, we talk about women making their own decisions about their own bodies.”
O’Rourke was asked to explain comments he had made the previous evening in Cleveland in response to a woman’s question about whether she supported third-trimester abortion. The woman noted that in such cases, the fetus can live outside the uterus, and in emergency cases, doctors may perform a cesarean section.
He quickly responded to the woman’s question, not addressing the substance of the investigation, but simply saying that he supported a woman’s right to an abortion.
He told her: “So the question is about abortion and reproductive rights. My answer is that it should be a decision made by the woman. I trust her.”
While 6 in 10 Americans generally support the right to abortion in the first trimester, a Gallup poll from last June found that number drops to 13 percent in the last three months of pregnancy.
O’Rourke, 46, a former Texas congressman who announced his presidential bid on March 14, said it was significant from the start to visit Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, an implicit criticism of the defeated Democratic candidate in 2016, Hillary Clinton, who neglected the Rust Belt and lost all four states.
“The places I visited are really important to me. “I want to make sure we’re not writing anyone off and, just as importantly, I want to make sure we’re not taking anyone for granted,” he said. “When we don’t show up, we get what we deserve. When we don’t show up, we won’t learn from those we don’t serve.”
Clinton was widely criticized for ignoring Wisconsin and Michigan for the rest of the campaign.
“If we have any hope of winning and if we have any chance of succeeding, we must first be humble and admit it,” O’Rourke said as he walked along Pollock Road with 20 members of the Penn State College Democrats.
O’Rourke spent a half-hour with student activists at the Nittany Lion monument, asking questions about college tuition and taking photos with the group.
Donning his white Penn State hat, O’Rourke learned even the smallest details of the iconic “We are…Penn State!” a chant that usually echoes through Beaver Stadium during football season.
O’Rourke represented El Paso, Texas, for six years in the House of Representatives before challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz for a Senate seat in 2018. Despite the long odds, the last Democrat to win a U.S. Senate seat in Texas was Democratic Sen. Lloyd Bentsen in 1988, when he won re-election to a fourth term, he made it a close race by closing in on Cruz by 2.6 percentage points.
Of the candidates who have announced or are considering running, O’Rourke is the youngest. On March 18, he announced that his campaign raised $6.1 million in the first 24 hours, surpassing all participants, including Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who raised $6 million in the first 24 hours.
He broke fundraising records in Texas last year, raising more than $80 million, more than twice Cruz’s total.
Charlie Gerow, a Republican media consultant from Pennsylvania, said O’Rourke was less quixotic than his Democratic critics say and his Republican rivals would like. Gerow said, “Look, he’s charismatic in the presidential field, trying to show his presidential character.”
O’Rourke wisely placed Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania between the conventional early states of Iowa and New Hampshire, Gerow said: “The Rust Belt will decide who the next president will be, and this is ground zero. “He is the talk of the town right now and he has pushed the remaining Democrats off the headlines.”
But he added that the only candidate who has ever knocked everyone off the headlines and stayed there for four years is Trump: “Whether O’Rourke will be able to go toe-to-toe with Donald Trump is another story.”
