NC governor’s race: Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson changes his position on abortion law
Welcome to the governor’s race edition of our Under the Dome politics newsletter. I’m Dawn Vaughan, The News & Observer’s Capitol bureau chief.
The Republican candidate for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, has a new television ad out about his stance on abortion that is very different than what he’s been saying. In the new ad, he says, “I stand by our current law,” which bans abortions, with exceptions, after 12 weeks’ pregnancy.
That’s a change from what Robinson — and more recently his campaign — have been saying for the past few years. Before running for lieutenant governor in 2020, Robinson had thousands of followers on Facebook, and his comments on abortion, guns and other topics have gained even more attention since then.
What Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, candidate for NC governor, has said about abortion
As I reported in June, Robinson has until now supported a “heartbeat” bill, which means that abortion would be banned around six weeks’ pregnancy. That’s in contrast to what Senate leader Phil Berger and other Republican lawmakers decided in the 2023 abortion bill, and some of them don’t see a need to change the law again in the 2025 legislative session. Berger and others have cited that the law is consistent with what polling shows North Carolinians want, too.
Robinson’s opponent, Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein, has an ad out that shows Robinson talking about abortion, including a 2019 selfie video in which Robinson talks about abortion on demand.
“It’s about killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down or your pants up — and not get pregnant by your own choice, because you felt like getting your groove thing on,” Robinson said in his Facebook video. “And now instead of taking care of that child, you want to kill that child so your life can go on being on easy street, and you can keep running to the club every Friday night.”
You can read our previous coverage about what Robinson has said about abortion over the past few years.
Robinson paid for an abortion with his wife, Yolanda Hill, and in his new ad the couple talks about what he described as “a very difficult decision” 30 years ago that was a “silent pain between us that we never spoke of.”
Robinson then goes on to say “it’s why I stand by our current law, and it provides common-sense exceptions for the life of the mother, incest and rape. Which gives help to mothers and stops cruel late-term abortions. When I’m governor, mothers in need will be supported.”
While Robinson changes positions in his new ad, he doesn’t mention his previous support for a heartbeat bill, nor does he rule out signing a stricter law, if Republicans were to send him one.
Stein’s campaign responded to the ad by saying Robinson is “misleading voters” and pointed to what Robinson has said previously about abortion, including a CBS 17 report of Robinson talking to a voter in Pitt County, saying, “We’ve got to do it that same way they rolled it forward, we’ve got to do it the same way with rolling it back. We’ve got it down to 12 weeks. The next goal is to get it down to 6, and then just keep moving from there, but I think the most important work we have to do, beyond that, is the work we’re going to do with crisis pregnancy centers. The work we’ll do with our adoption, day care, all those systems.”
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