A Republican Senate hopeful in Virginia has turned the tables on his Democratic competition, claiming that his political foe is waging a war on women — by supporting abortion.
Shak Hill, who’s running for the U.S. Senate seat for Virginia, blasted his incumbent Democratic counterpart, Mark Warner, for waging a “war on girls” by easing the path for late-term abortion, in a statement and accompanying YouTube video put out by the company Political Media.
“Mark Warner is waging a war on girls, and it’s killing them,” Mr. Hill said in the statement. “Warner claims he personally opposes abortion, yet he demands that the government give women a license to abort their unborn babies as a matter of personal convenience.”
The mantra is notable in that Democrats have long held that Republicans have been waging a war on women — and have used that message to hit the GOP at the polls. For instance, a few weeks ago, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz spoke at the March for Life event on the National Mall to accuse her counterpart, Reince Priebus of the Republican National Committee, of campaigning “against women’s rights,” she said in widely published comments.
She also said at this same event that Republicans really spend “more time fighting to restrict the rights of women to make their own health care choices” than they do on more important policy and political matters.
The GOP has started to strike back. Prior to Mr. Hill’s comments, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington — who’s the top-ranking Republican woman in the House — accused Democrats of making up the whole war-on-women debate, The New York Times reported.
And former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has recently raised the issue, too, questioning why Republicans don’t fight harder to overturn that negative label.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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