In a rebuke to her own party, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., said Thursday that Republicans have “buried their heads in the sand” when it comes to state abortion laws and have left the GOP with no plan to appeal to the majority of Americans who support abortion in most cases, particularly Independent women voters.
"If we’re going to say women can’t travel out of state, if we’re going to say women should be executed for having an abortion — these are not messages that we can stand behind, and we have to stand up to the extremism and show some balance,” Mace said in an interview on Meet the Press NOW. "There are many things that we agree on, but my party is silent on these issues and I refuse to be silent."
After voting in favor for the Right to Contraception Act following the overturning of Roe v. Wade over the summer, Mace introduced a bill on Thursday that would expand access to over-the-counter birth control products by speeding up the FDA approval period.
“We don’t have a plan," she said of Republicans. "We’re not working together. We’re not showing compassion for women, especially women who’ve been raped, especially for girls who are victims of incest, especially for women and for rural areas that don’t have access to birth control,” Mace said.
Mace pointed to what she characterized as growing extremism within the Republican Party following the January 6 insurrection. The congresswoman also said she disagreed with House Leader Kevin McCarthy’s move to share unreleased footage with Fox News Host Tucker Carlson, saying the footage should not have been filtered through one source.
No stranger to bucking her own party, Mace says she has received death threats for wanting to certify the 2020 election results and now carries a gun everywhere she goes.
“We can learn from this. We can work on ensuring it doesn’t happen again and that we are being honest with the American people and heal our nation. We’ve got to heal,” Mace said, “if we want to be serious about winning the White House in ‘24, then we’ve got to be serious when we’re talking about this issue.”
Mace says she has had “encouraging conversations” on the issue of abortion and extremism with presidential hopeful and former South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, but stopped short of a formal endorsement.
