North Carolina GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson appears to have changed his stance on abortion after releasing a new ad, which outlined his wife’s own abortion story.
“Thirty years ago, my wife and I made a very difficult decision. We had an abortion,” he said in the advertisement shared online.
Robinson, who currently serves as the Tar Heel State’s lieutenant governor, was choked up when he said the medical procedure was a “solid pain” between him and his wife that they “never spoke” about.
“It’s something that stays with me forever,” Yolanda Hill, his wife, said as they held hands in the video.
Robinson added that he is also backing the state’s 12-week abortion law because it “provides common sense exceptions,” including protecting the life of the mother or in case of rape or incest.
The state’s law, he said, “gives help to mothers and stops cruel later term abortions.”
“When I’m governor, mothers in need will be supported,” the Republican candidate added.
The comments mark a new tone for the lieutenant governor, who in the past has been outspoken against abortion access.
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat running against Robinson, previously launched ads that attacked his opponent on the issue.
The ad included a clip of Robinson talking on a Facebook Live stream in 2019 where he said abortions are not “about protecting the lives of mothers” but rather the procedure is “about killing the child because you weren’t responsible to keep your skirt down.”
In the past, the GOP official regularly said abortion was “murder” and “genocide,” comparing the anti-abortion movement to the efforts to end slavery, CNN reported.
In a July 2021 speech at a church, Robinson said women who receive abortions are murderers. He said he didn’t care if the person was 24 hours pregnant or 24 weeks pregnant, “if you kill that young’un. It is murder. You got blood on your hands.”
As the swing state gubernatorial race heats up, Robinson appears to have shifted his position on abortion to appeal to voters in North Carolina, a state that’s had a back-and-forth fight over abortion rights since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
According to The Hill/Decision Desk HQ, Stein leads with 40.9 percent support compared to Robinson’s 38.3 percent.
In a statement Friday, Stein’s campaign said Robinson was misleading voters about his true position on abortion.
“Mark Robinson knows North Carolinians can’t stomach his beliefs that abortion should be banned ‘for any reason’ and that women have abortions because they ‘can’t keep their skirts down,’ so he has resorted to running from his record and misleading voters,” Morgan Hopkins, a spokesperson for Stein’s campaign, said in a statement. “If North Carolinians want to know where Mark Robinson stands on abortion, they should listen to every other comment he’s made on the issue before today.”
The Hill has reached out to Robinson’s campaign for comment.