Source: NBC News
Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has once again reiterated his long-held position that he is opposed to abortion in all circumstances, according to audio released last week from a Sept. 3 campaign event.
It’s only been a few weeks since Robinson and his wife, Yolanda Hill, released a campaign ad talking about the difficult decision they made 30 years ago to get an abortion and how that informed his decision to support the state’s current 12-week ban. Many North Carolina political observers found Robinson’s new position to be disingenuous and hypocritical – and it appears they were correct to view it that way.
NBC News is reporting that Robinson told a crowd at an event in Troy that he wants to get abortion restrictions down to “zero” weeks.
According to the audio, a woman at the event asked Robinson why he changed his position on abortion to support the state’s 12-week ban.
Robinson replied, “That 12 weeks, exceptions for rape and incest … I’m not going to say it’s reasonable. But my faith allows me to live with that because that’s where the consensus is. Do I want to continue to lower it? You better know it,” he said. “I would love to get down to six weeks. And I’d like to get down to zero. I would like to push it back as far as we could and eliminate as many abortions as we can. We can’t do it all at once.”
That statement lines up with what he has previously said about the procedure.
“We’ve got it down to 12 weeks, the next goal is to get it down to six, and then just keep moving from there,” he told supporters at an event in February.
At the recent event in Troy, he also told the woman that he hasn’t changed his stance “at all” and that “there’s no reason why an abortion should happen ever.”
“I’m 100% for life, and that’s how I think it should be. If I’m a pastor in the pulpit, that’s what I’m preaching. If I’m counseling someone, a young lady, a couple, that’s what I’m telling them. I’m telling them, ‘Choose life for your child,’” he said.
Dating back to 2018, Robinson has called abortion “murder” and “genocide” and said women who undergo the procedure, even if they are only “24 hours pregnant” are still murderers.
“For me, there is no compromise on abortion. It makes no difference to me why or how that child ended up in that womb,” he said in July 2020.
“If I had all the power right now, let’s say I was the governor and had a willing legislature, we could pass a bill saying you can’t have an abortion in North Carolina for any reason,” Robinson claimed in a February 2023 radio interview with state Rep. Jeff McNeely.
In January of this year, Robinson had the gall to say that he “doesn’t recall” his past statements on abortion.
Undecided voters who value women being allowed to make their own reproductive health decisions will have to determine whether they believe Robinson’s one ad or his years of speeches denouncing abortion and calling for bans.
Recent polling shows that at least some voters are taking his previous statements into account when considering who to vote for.
An ad by Attorney General Josh Stein, Robinson’s Democratic gubernatorial opponent, has likely contributed to the lieutenant governor’s plummeting poll numbers, according to analysis by polling operations. The ad featured a video of Robinson saying “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.”
Polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight show that the ad had “a near-immediate impact on Robinson’s campaign,” according to Axios. Stein and Robinson were neck-and-neck until July – after Stein’s “skirt” ad was released. Some recent polls show Stein up as much as 14 points on Robinson, although other polls have Stein leading by around five to 10 points.
