If Eric Murphy loses his primary election on June 9, he believes he now knows one reason why.
Republican representative for North Dakota tried to develop the window of pregnancy during which women could get abortion next year. The state government had banned it for almost everyone from the moment of conception.
The restrictions had not yet come into effect, and was tied up in court. But Murphy wanted to lock in a less stringent rules, making abortion available up to 15 months and even afterwards for women whose doctors deemed it a medical necessity.
In order to persuade his own lawmakers, he read two ProPublica stories about Texas women who passed away without receiving life-saving treatment. ” Physicians felt compelled to follow the law”, he said in a hear,” and both women died so that an inane rules may be followed”.
Murphy told ProPublica, recalling the boy’s warning from a traditional partner to not report the bill,” I can no longer protect you from who’s going to come after you.”
There was some truth to that attitude.
According to ProPublica, at least four Democratic state lawmakers who opposed stringent abortion limits lost support from anti-abortion organizations and essential party allies, going on to reduce primary elections.
The framework in those tribes was extremely similar. Detractors either embraced stricter abortion laws or completely avoided the issue. Anti-abortion businesses campaigned against the incumbent, group endorsements shifted to their competitors and campaigners worked to change out voters in low-participation primary elections.
In some of the tribes ProPublica examined, the candidates for the abortion-ban elites continued to support even stricter abortion laws. In South Carolina, for example, two new lawmakers supported a costs to remove nearly all exclusions to the state’s abortion restrictions. One clause of the bill would put people who were found guilty of fraudulently terminating their pregnancies in prison.
Murphy is one of at least two Democratic position lawmakers now facing a disputed major after trying to improve their states ‘ abortion restrictions. State lawmaker from Tennessee Richard Briggs is also vying to preserve his chair. In 2019, Briggs voted for the government’s so-called trigger law — a ban that may jump into position if the national right to abortion was always overturned.
But after that, he had second thoughts. A cardiac doctor, Briggs realized the just activated law didn’t provide enough protections for patients having health complications. In an interview, he said,” As a medical doctor, I drew the line.” He introduced bills for a clearer health exceptions and shelter for physicians who intervened in cases where a fatal fetal anomaly risked the family’s health.
The challenger’s campaign for his seat in the state’s Aug. 6 primary now has ammunition for the latter bill. ” My opponent consistently works to weaken Tennessee’s pro life laws”, Kent Morrell says on his campaign website, noting that Tennessee Right to Life had revoked its endorsement of Briggs.
Murphy, who teaches biomedical sciences at the University of North Dakota’s medical school, ultimately failed to reform the state’s ban. His bill failed 87-6, and the state Supreme Court later reinstated the original ban, which forbids abortion from conception, with exceptions for rape and incest up to six weeks and to save the life of the mother.
His county’s Republican Party had supported him the first time he ran for office. Not this time. Instead, the party supported his two rivals, including Jill Chandler, the executive director of a” crisis pregnancy center,” who thinks abortion should be prohibited from conception.
She told ProPublica she happened to be present in the committee room when Murphy made the case for his bill. She said it was eye-opening to learn that he had been endorsed as a Republican candidate in my district and that I had voted for as a result of that endorsement. ” I remember thinking,’ This can never happen again.'”
In legislatures that have taken sharp turns to the right, neither Briggs or Murphy have taken positions that aggravated members of their parties before. Murphy voted against book bans and private school vouchers. Briggs had urged people to get COVID-19 shots and has argued that medical expertise should outweigh politics in decisions involving public health.
Briggs expressed confidence in his election chances, he feels that voters agree with the decisions he’s made and noted that his Republican colleague, Sen. Becky Duncan Massey, survived a primary challenge over her support for abortion-ban exceptions.
Murphy thinks the” silent majority” of voters back the abortion bill’s intentions, but primary races have historically had low turnout. It could come down to a handful of votes, he said.
Murphy said,” I might lose an election because of this, but I might prefer to win it if I don’t do the right thing.”
The Fallen Reformers
Mary DuBuisson, a former state Republican representative in a suburb outside of New Orleans, considers herself passionately “pro-life”. She voted for her state’s nearly-total abortion ban in 2019 along with Briggs. Three years later, just before Louisiana’s trigger law was implemented, it came before the legislature again.
DuBuisson wanted to make sure victims of rape and incest could stop having children because they would now have to live under the restriction. When her colleagues refused to include those exceptions, she became the only Republican to vote against the ban.
She created a stir a year later when she introduced a bill that would have permissibled women’s pregnancies if they had not been possible to end them. ” To force a woman to carry to term with zero chance of survival is heartless and cruel”, she said at the time.
She didn’t think it would cause a stir. Other Republican women in the House told her she was doing the right thing. However, another female Republican state lawmaker made a motion when it was time to vote that was ultimately able to kill the bill in committee. ” I mean, I just couldn’t understand”, she said of all her colleagues. What if this was your granddaughter or your daughter?
When she came up for reelection, her primary opponent latched onto her record. In 2018, she had a handily defeated attorney, Brian Glorioso. He called her proposed legislation a leftist attempt to circumvent the state’s abortion ban and said any “pro-abortion” doctor would falsely deem a pregnancy nonviable in records just to perform the procedure.
In the primary on October 14, 2023, she defeated him by 384 votes, which is not enough to prevent a runoff.
Then, he got some extra support.
Louisiana Right to Life’s followers were informed that the outcome of the election was crucial on October 16. Glorioso was expected to have a 100 % “pro-life” voting record, while DuBuisson’s was 77 %.
Republican Jeff Landry, the state’s new governor-elect, endorsed him on October 27. He wouldn’t comment on DuBuisson’s record on it or whether it was a factor. But Landry, who had defended the state’s ban as attorney general, made clear during his campaign that he was” an unwavering defender of life, especially in the face of adversity”, citing his 100 % rating from a national anti-abortion group.
DuBuisson compared her efforts to reform the ban to saying,” I think it partially cost me my election.
History repeated itself the following year, this time in South Carolina.
Three state senators worked across party lines to defeat a bill that essentially outlawed the procedure from conception and outlawed rape and incest exceptions. All three Republicans who consider themselves “pro-life” are now working across party lines. At the time, the state allowed abortion up to 20 weeks.
Sens. Sandy Senn and Penry Gustafson spoke out against limitations on abortion access for victims of rape and incest. Sen. Katrina Shealy pushed for an abortion exception in cases involving rape, incest, and fatal fetal anomalies, as well as the longest tenure for a woman in the state legislature. Ultimately, a six-week window with rape, incest and fatal fetal exceptions became law.
They were given the nickname” Sister Senators” after the Statehouse showdown. All lost their county GOP’s endorsement to their male opponents.
The bigger repercussions were, however, those against abortion organizations that launched a multifront grassroots campaign against them. Students for Life Action announced that it generated” 37, 000 pieces of mail, almost 130, 000 personal text messages, more than 51, 000 phone calls and thousands of doors knocked” to unseat the trio.
Every single one of the three of them lost out in the vote, according to Dr. Matthew Clark, the executive director of Personhood South Carolina, which argues that women who have abortions should be held accountable for murder.
Clark, an allergist and Presbyterian pastor, said his group’s desired legislation has a better chance to advance now that the Sister Senators have been replaced.
Prior to joining Senn in sponsoring a bill as a member of the state House that would make abortion an equivalent of homicide, Matt Leber co-sponsored it. It failed to advance, and Leber withdrew his name as a co-sponsor amid a controversy surrounding it in 2023.
Leber and Carlisle Kennedy, who defeated Shealy in the previous legislative session, backed a bill that imposes misdemeanor criminal penalties for women who want to have abortions and sentences up to two years in prison. Senate Bill 1095 passed with supermajority support out of a committee Leber sits on.
Before the session, the bill passed, but pro-choice advocates noticed that it had expanded even further than any other similar repressive legislation ever has.
A Fateful Disconnect
The outcomes don’t exactly resemble public opinion polls. Surveys in states such as South Carolina and Louisiana have found that many Republican voters support at least some exceptions to abortion bans, including in cases of rape or threats to a woman’s health.
However, primary elections typically only elect a small percentage of eligible voters, limiting the influence of highly engaged activists and organized interest groups.
DuBuisson’s runoff drew about one-third of registered voters. Participation in the South Carolina primary elections was even lower. Some races were decided on tiny margins, Senn lost hers by 33 votes.
In recent years, the North Dakota GOP has shifted more to the right in regards to abortion, despite polls suggesting Republican voters were lessening support for the state’s restrictions. At its 2026 convention, the party passed a resolution rejecting any policies that “normalize” abortion.
One of the few states in North Dakota with a multimember system allows one senator and two representatives to co-lead the same district. District 43, which Murphy currently represents, is one of the only purple districts in an otherwise deeply red state. The University of North Dakota’s growing college town, Grand Forks, is a part of it.
Murphy’s fellow representative, Democrat Zac Ista, told ProPublica he hadn’t been able to make a dent in this legislature. He made it known that he wouldn’t be running for reelection, giving the chance for a Republican takeover of the district.
Ista said the lack of support rallying around Murphy is due to his position on abortion, as well as culture-war legislation he refused to support. ” I think it’s illustrative of that schism, where Republicans are really trying to sort of press the most extreme conservative opinions,” Ista said.
Richard Glynn, the GOP county chair in Murphy’s district, had previously supported Murphy’s abortion bill. When he was a freshman at the University of South Dakota in 1966, Glynn described his experience hearing about young women having illegal abortions in written testimony. Four young women who were in sororities died from using metal hangers to terminate their pregnancies, he wrote.
If these girls had received competent care, these deaths were thought to be preventable. Unfortunately, North Dakota is going down the same path with limited access to obstetric care that negatively impacts the health of the woman”, his letter said.
Glynn claimed that Murphy received the least number of votes among county delegates when contacted by phone. This is why he was not given the county’s backing.
Glynn declined to answer more questions before hanging up on a reporter.
Mike Holmes, one of Murphy’s rivals, has sparked a lot of excitement and Gov. Murphy’s support. Kelly Armstrong — for his expertise in energy technology and industrial development. Holmes, the governor, claimed he is aware of “what it takes to keep North Dakota’s economy strong.” Holmes has been silent on abortion and didn’t respond to ProPublica’s requests for an interview.
In a campaign mailer, Chandler praised her “respect for life,” but she is favored by anti-abortion causes. ” It’s a pretty stark contrast”, said Bridget Turbide, executive director of North Dakota Right to Life, who called Murphy’s proposal” the most extreme pro-choice bill we’ve ever seen”.
A mailer calling Chandler a” champion of family values” was funded by Citizens Alliance of North Dakota, a conservative group that supports abortion among other causes. The same group marked Murphy in “bad standing” in an online roster of legislators, questioning his alignment with North Dakota values.
Republican State Sen. Jeff Barta, Murphy’s third coworker and representative for District 43, ran for office with him as a member of a unified Republican ticket in 2022 when the primary election was unopposed.
Asked about the upcoming race and the candidates, Barta pointed to Murphy’s proposal that would have expanded abortion access in North Dakota.
He introduced House Bill 1488, which created a small divide there, according to Barta, last session.
Barta said Murphy has also broken with the party on other issues.
Barta continued,” That probably opened the door for the third candidate to run.” Had that not happened, Murphy would have made it to the general election without having to defend his spot on the ballot.
According to abortion historian and professor Mary Ziegler, those who took such nuanced positions on abortion bans before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 may not have risked receiving a career death sentence.
” The kind of incrementalism that Eric Murphy seems to be doing is something from a bygone era, where people were more pragmatic in the movement and not punished for it”, she said.
These Republican lawmakers criticized abortion bans. Then They Faced Backlash. first appeared on ProPublica.
