Democrat Mark Kelly just made two damning admissions that will haunt him this fall.
First, Kelly said he thinks there should be no age at which a minor child needs parental consent to get an abortion. This is a radical position completely out of step with Arizona voters and has been a damaging line of attack against Democrats in Arizona in the past.
Second, Kelly admitted he did not read or comprehend the extreme "Abortion For All Act" he voted for about a month ago. Kelly revealed this while dodging a question about whether the bill he co-sponsored would invalidate Arizona's popular parental consent law.
"Democrat Mark Kelly just said he thinks minor children should not need parental consent to get an abortion. How young is too young for Mark Kelly? 14 years? 13? Or even younger? Mark Kelly's extremist position is far out of the mainstream and poison with Arizona voters." – RNC Spokesperson Ben Petersen
The Abortion Vote That Could Haunt Democrats in November
National Review
John McCormack
Parental rights have become a major flashpoint in American politics. Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s statement that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” cost him dearly in last year’s Virginia gubernatorial race. But Senate Democrats don’t seem to have learned much of a lesson from McAuliffe’s mistake: They recently voted — almost unanimously — in favor a bill that would strike down laws requiring parental consent or parental notification before a minor has an abortion. And that vote could haunt Democratic candidates in November.
Take, for example, the case of Arizona Democratic senator Mark Kelly, who is up for re-election this year in what will likely be one of the most competitive races in the country. When I recently asked Kelly if the bill he voted for, the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), would invalidate Arizona’s parental-consent law, the Arizona senator told me he didn’t know. “I think that’s something that you could, you know, reach out to the Congressional Research [Service] folks and figure out,” Kelly said. He did, however, express general opposition to parental-consent laws, saying he would not be the “arbiter of an age” at which a minor could choose to have an abortion without her parents’ involvement.
The office of GOP senator Steve Daines, the chairman of the Senate Pro-Life Caucus, tells National Review that it confirmed with the Congressional Research Service that Arizona’s parental-consent law would likely be struck down under the WHPA.
But you don’t need experts’ analysis to figure that out — you just need to read the bill: The version of the WHPA that House Democrats almost unanimously voted for in September 2021 — the same version that received a vote in the Senate on February 28 of this year — explicitly states that “access to abortion services has been obstructed” by “parental involvement laws (notification and consent).”
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Mark Kelly, the endangered Arizona incumbent, was less equivocal. “As a parent myself, somebody who has raised two daughters who are now in their mid 20s, I take this very seriously. But ultimately I feel that young women at a certain age should have the rights to make these kind of decisions with their doctor,” Kelly told National Review in the Capitol. But at what age should a minor be able to make that decision without parental consent? “I’m not going to be the arbiter of an age and a timeline and red line,” Kelly said. “You know, people ask, ‘Is there a red line here?’ No. But, I think it’s important for women to be able to make these decisions on their own, and not a bunch of folks in Washington making them for them.”
