‘Safe, legal and rare’: A California Republican’s Clintonian approach to abortion

A Republican running to flip a competitive California House seat has an unusual strategy on abortion: Talk like a Clinton-era Democrat.

“I’m a pro-choice Republican that believes abortion should be safe, legal and rare,” said Matt Gunderson, the car dealership owner challenging Democratic Rep. Mike Levin in Southern California.

That position, a throwback to Democrats’ framing on abortion in the nineties, puts Gunderson in a vanishingly small club of Republicans who espouse support for abortion rights — and sets him apart from most GOP candidates who try to avoid the topic altogether.

By voicing support for abortion — with limits — Gunderson seeks to put distance between himself and the more vehement anti-abortion policies advanced by some in his party, hoping to neutralize an issue that has cost the GOP electorally ever since Roe v. Wade was overturned two years ago. The outcome of the race, and its potential to determine control of the House, could influence how Republicans approach abortion in future elections.

But Democrats, loath to give up their advantage on a galvanizing electoral issue, are quick to poke holes in Gunderson’s self-proclaimed support for abortion rights.

“The difference is Bill Clinton was actually pro-choice,” said Levin, contrasting Gunderson with the president who popularized the “safe, legal and rare” rhetoric — a phrase that has since been jettisoned by abortion rights advocates who see it as stigmatizing the procedure. “Bill Clinton was actually supported by Planned Parenthood. Unfortunately, ‘pro-choice Republican’ is an oxymoron.”

Republicans in California find themselves in an ungainly dance between their party’s anti-abortion position and their state’s overwhelming support for access. Before the Dobbs ruling, seven GOP members from California — including swing-seat occupants like Reps. Mike Garcia, Michelle Steel and David Valadao — backed a national abortion ban that declared life began at conception. Now, just two Californians (and none in competitive races) co-sponsor a similar bill. Vulnerable Republicans largely sidestep the question of a national abortion ban by emphasizing the issue is now up to the states, aligning with the needle-threading posture of former President Donald Trump.

The squabble over Gunderson’s stance reflects how rapidly the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision shifted the boundaries of the abortion debate. While red-state Republicans seized on the ruling to press sweeping restrictions, Democrats have tacked in the opposite direction, putting their support for abortion more front-and-center than ever before and backing state and national protections that go beyond Roe. Now, abortion rights advocates say the old-school “safe, legal and rare” formulation doesn’t pass muster.

“That isn’t enough, and it never was enough,” said Jodi Hicks, president of Planned Parenthood California. “Roe v. Wade was always supposed to be the floor, not the ceiling of what we should be striving for.”

While the national GOP has largely tried to downplay the issue of abortion, few in the party have gone so far to affirmatively state their support, as Gunderson does. GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine are notable outliers on the Hill, where the vast majority of Republicans are anti-abortion. But it may become a political necessity for some in deep-blue territory; former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, for example, has called himself “pro-choice” as he runs for Senate as a Republican, a notable tack leftward after he had vetoed a bill to expand abortion access two years ago.

In California, some GOP activists pushed to strip opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage from the state party platform last fall, arguing those positions hamstring Republican candidates in purple districts. But the effort was sunk by social conservatives, a sign of how fervent the anti-abortion cause remains among the GOP base.

Still, bucking the party faithful on abortion has political upside for a candidate like Gunderson, who is running in a blue-tinged district that crawls along the coastline of south Orange and north San Diego counties. While Democrats have only a narrow three-point registration advantage, the district voted for President Joe Biden by 11 points.

Levin, who was first elected during the Democratic wave of 2018, won reelection last year by five points. He relied heavily on abortion as a campaign message, hammering his then-opponent, Republican Brian Maryott, for cheering the Dobbs decision.

Gunderson, trying to avoid a similar fate, has argued that he and Levin are practically on equal footing on the issue, downplaying their differences as “nuances.”

Voters “can rest easy that fundamentally we have a similar position on this issue,” he said. Instead, he suggested voters base their decision on other issues such as border security, typically better political territory for Republicans.

Rob Stutzman, a veteran GOP strategist based in Sacramento, said Gunderson’s position is smart politics in the highly-educated, suburban district.

“For a Republican who is coming from behind anyway in a district like that, it makes sense to want to try to mitigate the abortion issue,” he said.

But Democrats and abortion-rights activists say Gunderson has undercut his “pro-choice” bona fides several ways. They question his stated opposition to national bans. And they say Gunderson showed his true colors by refusing to support a 2022 ballot measure which enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution. The initiative passed overwhelmingly with 70 percent of the vote statewide.

“Even in the district that he’s running in for Congress, 61 percent of the voters approved to solidify access to abortion in the state constitution,” said Robert Armenta, senior vice president of public affairs at Planned Parenthood of Orange County and San Bernardino. “He doesn’t reflect the wishes of his voters.”

Gunderson said Democrats are reaching by bringing up his opposition to the initiative, Proposition 1.

“They want to nitpick the issue over Prop 1 two years ago,” Gunderson said, adding that he supported California’s existing abortion law at the time. He called the initiative “an unnecessary proposition that opened up a Pandora’s box to late-term abortion and abortion demand. That is an extreme position that most people are not comfortable with.” (Legal experts have disputed that interpretation.)

Gunderson’s support for abortion with some restrictions tracks with many who consider themselves “pro-choice.” A plurality of voters nationwide — 38 percent — say abortion should be legal in most cases, while 31 percent believe it should always be legal, according to polling done by KFF, a health policy research and news organization.

Polling around the issue illustrates why Gunderson and Levin are jockeying to claim the pro-abortion rights mantle. The post-Dobbs political landscape has galvanized voters around abortion. Voters describing themselves as “pro-choice” have been at record highs since the decision. And the issue has shown to be a potent motivator.

“The more dramatic shift is who the abortion voter is and who cares about abortion as a voting issue,” said Audrey Kearney, a survey analyst with KFF. Citing Gallup data from 20 years ago, she said, “pro-life voters were three times as likely to describe themselves as single-issue abortion voters. Whereas now we're finding that the abortion voter is young, Democratic, pro-choice.”

In California, however, Democrats have not consistently been able to capitalize on pro-abortion votes for their down ballot candidates. Even when Prop 1 passed with historic levels of support in 2022, Democrats did not unseat Republicans in swing congressional districts — a sign that some voters voted simultaneously for abortion rights and GOP candidates in the House.

Democrats are trying once again to center abortion as part of their 2024 campaign strategy, arguing the issue is far from settled. They say Republicans, if they control Congress and the White House, could impose a nationwide ban, block access to medication abortion or even restrict certain types of contraception.

Gunderson downplays that abortion could be under threat in California, stating the issue is now decided in the state.

“Hopefully it allows us to focus on some other issues that really matter on a day-to-day basis, where we can have some impact,” Gunderson said.

Gunderson declines to weigh in on pending legislation in Congress, such as a pro-contraception bill championed by Democrats. He says he is against national restrictions on abortion. But Democrats counter he has waffled on that commitment, pointing to a Q&A at a GOP donor meeting in January, where, asked about federal ban, Gunderson said “it depends on where you’re looking at the timeline.” (He told POLITICO he did not recall those comments but reiterated his position that he would not vote for a ban.)

He also ruled out voting to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law, ensuring there are some protections for abortion nationwide.

“If you’re a believer in states rights, I think you have to be consistent,” Gunderson said, arguing that what works in California doesn’t necessarily work in other states, like his native Wisconsin. “We have to accept the Supreme Court has ruled it’s a state’s rights issue.”

Abortion rights advocates say these answers show Gunderson’s “pro-choice” branding is nothing but false advertising.

“You either believe in freedoms and rights or you don’t,” said Hicks, of Planned Parenthood. “And freedoms and rights should not stop at your ZIP code.”