LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Kentucky Right to Life is endorsing in fewer legislative races this year — 45 candidates for the General Assembly received an endorsement from the anti-abortion group, down from 86 in 2022 and 88 in 2020.
Planned Parenthood’s Tamarra Wieder said the decrease in endorsements is a sign that Kentucky politicians no longer want to take the unpopular stands required to win a Right to Life endorsement.
Wieder, state director of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates Kentucky, said it’s an “incredible indictment on the brand and on the movement.”
“What this shows is that they have become too extreme, even for their followers,” Wieder said. “They are out of step with Kentuckians, and I think it also shows the legislature is afraid of putting their name on anti-abortion policies.”
Addia Wuchner, Kentucky Right to Life executive director, did not respond to a Lantern reporter’s voicemail and an email sent to an address posted on Kentucky Right to Life’s website last week.
In a newsletter sent in response to the story, the organization acknowledged “challenges” facing Kentucky’s anti-abortion movement … “as public opinion evolves.”
“While we respect diverse opinions, it’s crucial to clarify that (Kentucky Right to Life) does not measure its mission by popularity or changing political winds,” the email said. “We remain guided by a steadfast moral compass, prioritizing the protection of life over convenience.”
In order to be considered for an endorsement, the Kentucky Right to Life Victory PAC requires candidates to answer questions about issues important to the group and sign the survey. The organization also considers voting record, a candidate’s involvement in organizations related to abortion, electability and background.
In 2024, about 50 Republican candidates “declined” to answer the survey, according to the endorsement report. Right to Life endorsed 45 legislative candidates and “recommended” others based on their voting history.
All 100 House seats and half of the 38 Senate seats are on the ballot every two years, although many seats go uncontested.
The Lantern used information from VoteSmart to count endorsements from earlier elections; Kentucky Right to Life Victory PAC’s voter guides from prior elections are not posted on its website.
It’s unclear if everyone marked as “declined” this year received the survey.
Although endorsed by Right to Life at times in the past, the top Republicans in both chambers of the legislature are not endorsed this year. Among those listed as declining to answer the group’s questions: Senate President Robert Stivers, House Speaker David Osborne, Senate President Pro Tem David Givens and Speaker Pro Tem David Meade.
Other prominent Republicans listed as declining to respond are House Majority Floor Leader Steven Rudy and Senate budget committee chairman Chris McDaniel.
All of them were still recommended by Right to Life based on their voting records.
A Senate GOP spokesperson said Stivers and Givens “agree that their voting record speaks for itself.”
No Democrats answered the Right to Life survey this year and none were endorsed.
Candidates wary of surveys in general
Political considerations about abortion changed after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federally-guaranteed right to abortion in 2022. The ruling allowed a near-total abortion ban that Republican lawmakers had already put on the books to take effect in Kentucky. It has no exceptions for victims of rape or incest and a narrow exception to protect the life of a pregnant patient.
Morgan Eaves, the executive director of the Kentucky Democratic Party, said the decline in candidates taking the Right to Life survey shows that “Kentucky Republicans know that their extreme anti-choice and zero exceptions policy is unpopular, and that’s why they’re running away from it now.”
Republicans, however, gave little sign of backing off the abortion ban during this year’s legislative session. Although lawmakers of both parties sponsored bills to loosen abortion restrictions, none of the measures made any headway. Bills protecting in vitro fertilization also failed to advance, after the temporary suspension of the fertility treatment in Alabama stirred a political storm.
Republican Trey Grayson, a former Kentucky secretary of state, was reluctant to say if the decline in GOP candidates responding to the Right to Life survey signaled a rift with the organization.
Candidates, he said, have become more wary of surveys in general. Advocacy interest groups are trying to advance an agenda and elect people who are part of their causes, Grayson said. A lawmaker seeking reelection recently complained to him about “gotcha” questions on candidate surveys.
Challengers are more likely to respond to surveys, Grayson said, while incumbents can point to their voting records, floor speeches and websites.
‘ … not that much more to give’
Last year Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear used the abortion ban to his advantage against Republican challenger Daniel Cameron. Cameron had been endorsed by Right to Life but waffled on abortion after Beshear aired ads attacking him as extreme for opposing rape and incest exceptions. (Kentuckian Hadley Duvall, who spoke in a Beshear ad about being impregnated by her stepfather when she was 12, is now playing a prominent role in the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president.)
The year before, in November 2022, Kentuckians had defeated an anti-abortion constitutional amendment that Republicans put on the ballot before Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Republican strategist Tres Watson, a former spokesperson for the Republican Party of Kentucky, said it’s not Republican politicians who have changed but Right to Life. Having gained its long-time goal of outlawing abortion in Kentucky, the organization is “continuing to ask for more when there’s just not that much more to give.”
“I think that the leadership over there needs to reconsider their relationship with candidates and with the legislature if they want to continue to be an influencer in Frankfort,” Watson said of the group.
Weider of Planned Parenthood said the Right to Life questionnaire “is more extreme than ever.”
Watson said he thinks Republican lawmakers support adding exceptions for rape and incest to the abortion ban. “I think that if you were to remove elections from the equation, I think that an exceptions bill would pass easily among Republicans,” Watson said. “But I think that the threat of Kentucky Right to Life coming out and attempting to make pro-life legislators appear to be pro-abortion liberals is preventing that from passing.”
Watson said when he worked for the state Republican Party candidates were advised not to respond to a survey from Northern Kentucky Right to Life “because it asked you to take extreme positions that didn’t sit well with independent voters and center right Republicans.”
IVF among the questions
Kentucky Right to Life’s 2024 questionnaire asks candidates about their support for maintaining a ban on assisted suicide, banning mail-in abortion pills, adding a “Human Life” amendment to the U.S. Constitution to include “all human beings, born and unborn” and more. It highlights issues surrounding in vitro fertilization in which unused frozen embryos are discarded.
Questions included:
- If you are in a position to do so, would you advocate, support, sign into law and/or defend against legislation that would permit the cloning of human embryos or laboratory-created life for the purpose of the harvesting their stem cells for research or therapeutic cloning? (procedures requiring the creation and destruction of human lives)
- Do you believe that embryos created through IVF (in vitro fertilization) should be protected as all other lives?
- Do you believe medical schools and nursing programs operating in conjunction with universities in the Commonwealth of Kentucky that receive state funding should have mechanisms in place such as conscience exceptions that permit students to be excused from participating in specific curricular activities and training, i.e. abortion procedures that violate the student’s religious or ethical beliefs?
- Are you morally and/or medically opposed to chemical abortions, such as RU-486, the abortion pill, and other drugs known to prevent the newly created human being from attaching (implantation) to his/her mother’s womb or medications that cause the woman’s body to expel her developing child in the early stages of her pregnancy?
- Do you agree that the personal protection afforded to every member of the human race under the Fourteenth Amendment should be extended equally to the preborn?
Eaves, the Kentucky Democratic Party chief, said most Kentuckians and Americans “believe in some form of pro-choice policy.”
In May, the Pew Research Center reported that 63% of Americans “say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 36% say it should be illegal in all or most cases.”
Gallup polling also shows the majority of Americans think abortion should be legal in certain cases.
Additionally, 54% of those surveyed by Gallup in May considered themselves “pro choice” and 41% considered themselves “pro life,” the largest gap since 1995.
Weider of Planned Parenthood said the effects of the abortion ban on health care, especially for people who are experiencing miscarriages or nonviable pregnancies, will continue to push politicians away from Right to Life.
“You are starting to see pushback on what was once, I would say, a badge of honor for the majority of conservative politicians in Kentucky,” she said. “And I think it is an indictment on what has happened to Kentucky and health care. And we are seeing the daily fallout.”
This story was updated with response from Kentucky Right to Life.
This article is republished under a Creative Commons license from Kentucky Lantern, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on Facebook and Twitter.
Sarah Ladd is a Louisville-based journalist and Kentuckian. She has covered everything from crime to higher education. In 2020, she started reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic and has covered health ever since.
McKenna Horsley covers state politics for the Kentucky Lantern. She previously worked for newspapers in Huntington, West Virginia, and Frankfort, Kentucky. She is from northeastern Kentucky.
