Abortion has been a losing issue for GOP since end of federal right but Pence, Scott and Hutchinson urged tightening restrictions

Ava SasaniThu 24 Aug 2023 10.00 EDT

• https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/24/republicans-abortion-stances-gop-debate

Eight Republican presidential hopefuls clashed over the future of abortion access on Wednesday night in the first debate of the 2024 election cycle.

Without the specter of Roe v Wade looming overhead, the candidates faced a new litmus test on abortion: whether or not they support a nationwide ban on the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The former vice-president Mike Pence, the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott all pledged to support a federal 15-week ban.

The question from the moderator Martha MacCallum had noted that abortion had consistently been a losing issue for Republicans in state ballots since the Dobbs decision.

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Nevertheless just one candidate, the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, decisively rejected the idea that Congress ought to regulate abortion access.

Burgum, who signed North Dakota’s six-week abortion ban in April, said the conservative mission to overturn Roe was predicated on the belief that states should be allowed to set their own rules on the procedure.

“What is going to work in New York will never work in North Dakota and vice versa,” Burgum said.

For decades, Roe v Wade offered Republican candidates a convenient boogeyman. The supreme court ruling was not just about abortion – swing state conservatives like Burgum could point to Roe as an example of federal overreach.

But Wednesday’s debate signaled a schism in the GOP’s position on abortion.

In a post-Roe landscape, one year after Senator Lindsey Graham first introduced a federal 15-week ban bill in Congress, Republicans were forced to choose between their purported support for states’ rights and their opposition to abortion access.

Burgum was the lone voice that chose states’ rights.

Pence and Scott, both evangelical Christians, said they support a 15-week ban because abortion is a “moral” question that necessitates federal intervention.

Scott said states like “California, New York and Illinois” should not be allowed to offer broad access to the procedure.

Pence said abortion was “not a states only issue, it’s a moral issue”.

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The former vice-president, who has centered abortion in his bid to court socially conservative voters, condemned his opponents for refusing to back a federal ban.

“I’m not new to this cause,” Pence said on Wednesday night. “Can’t we have a minimum standard in every state in the nation?”

In his opening remarks, Pence lauded the work of the Trump administration, which placed three conservative justices on the US supreme court and “gave the people a new beginning for the right to life”.

Pence also criticized the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who suggested that it would be difficult to gain the requisite congressional support to pass a federal abortion ban.

Haley, the only woman on Wednesday’s debate stage, said Republicans should instead pursue pragmatic legislative goals that could garner bipartisan support in Congress.

“Let’s find consensus, can’t we all agree that we should ban late-term abortions? Can’t we all agree that we should encourage adoptions?” she said.

In his response, Pence directly addressed Haley: “Consensus is the opposite of leadership.”

Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, a powerful anti-abortion lobbying group, praised Pence, Hutchinson and Scott for offering “a clear, bold case for national protections for the unborn at least by 15 weeks”.

“The position taken by candidates like Doug Burgum, that life is solely a matter for the states, is unacceptable for a nation founded on unalienable rights and for a presidential contender,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the group’s president, in a statement on Wednesday night.

Last month, Dannenfelser issued a similar condemnation of the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, for his reluctance to back a federal ban.

DeSantis has supported bills restricting access to abortion – including a six-week ban in his own state of Florida, but has stopped short of saying he would support a federal ban.

Dannenfelser said the Republican presidential candidate should “work to gather the votes necessary in Congress” to pass a national ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, adding that DeSantis’s failure to support the ban was “unacceptable”.

“There are many pressing legislative issues for which Congress does not have the votes at the moment, but that is not a reason for a strong leader to back away from the fight,” she said in a statement last month.

On Wednesday night, Fox News moderators twice asked DeSantis to clarify his position on federal abortion restrictions, but the Florida governor refused to provide a direct answer.

“I’m going to stand on the side of life,” DeSantis said. “I understand Wisconsin is going to do it different than Texas, I understand Iowa and New Hampshire are going to be different, but I will support the cause of life as governor and as president.”

Notably, Donald Trump – the presumed GOP frontrunner – skipped Wednesday night’s debate.

Earlier this year, Trump criticized DeSantis’s position on abortion, calling Florida’s six-week ban “too harsh”.

But the former president appears to share DeSantis’s hesitations about the federal 15-week ban, dodging questions about the proposed restrictions since launching his re-election campaign in March.

The Guardian reported in April that Trump considers a federal abortion ban a losing proposition for Republicans, though his exact vision for the future of US abortion access remains unclear.

Wednesday, August 23rd 2023 – 08:49 UTC

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https://en.mercopress.com/2023/08/23/sea-lions-in-necochea-died-of-avian-flu

Argentine authorities are investigating whether the death of around 40 sea lions inside the port terminal of Necochea / Quequén was due to an outbreak of avian flu, it was reported Tuesday. A colony of about 400 sea lions is usually to be found there.

 Experts from the National Service of Agrifood Health and Quality (Senasa) will be carrying out tests in the next few hours to determine the cause of death after Prefectura Naval Argentina (Coast Guard) forces closed the area. Also deployed to the area were specialists from the Marine and Coastal Research Institute of the National University of Mar del Plata and the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (Conicet).

Last week, a sea lion was analyzed in Mar del Plata, due to a series of symptoms noticed by professionals of the local Aquarium compatible with bird flu but the results were negative. On the other hand, the death of at least seven of these mammals was positively linked to this disease in the coastal reserve of the Fuegian city of Río Grande.

All dead animals were male with a bleeding nose quite unusual when death is not due to natural causes but rather common in avian influenza, according to marine animal rescuer Carlos Leo quoted by Infobae.

“I asked for a necropsy to be performed on the bodies because it could be a case of avian influenza. There was a case of this in a sea lion settlement in Río Negro. And taking into account that in their migratory stage they can arrive in a few days to Necochea, it is possible that if there is an infected one, a contagion could be generated in other colonies,” Leo said.

The number of deaths in the last three days was fivefold the number of deaths recorded during the whole of last winter when only eight died. Last month there were also at least 10 deaths of this species. “It is very strange, we have never seen anything like it. It is more than 50 deaths against eight in the same period in 2022,″ the specialist warned.

Leo insists an influenza infection can kill within 48 hours. Avian influenza causes the animals to have a pressure problem in their brain that gives them a headache, changes their eye color to red, causes nose bleeds, and makes them tremble.

”It’s like this until they are out of breath. I heard about this situation from neighbors who alerted me and when I arrived I saw some of these wolves trembling and with these characteristics. I asked for an investigation. A group of biologists from the University of Mar del Plata and Senasa are working on it,“ he added.

Regarding avian flu being transmitted from sea lions to humans, Leo pointed out that ”there are few cases of transmission to people.“

This does not mean that it cannot exist, but the possibilities are low. It may happen that if you are with your dog and it sniffs near the infected animal, maybe it licks the mucus and can bring some contagion,” he went on.

Most of the sea lions found on the beaches were buried in the sand to prevent the gases released during decomposition from remaining in the air and becoming a risk.