The one issue Republican presidential candidates don’t want to talk about

Former President Donald Trump avoids getting specific on abortion policy. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) initially fumbled the issue. And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rarely brings it up.

One year after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, the Republican presidential field is testing a new response to abortion rights: Duck, and hope voters move on.

“We obviously have our work cut out for us,” said John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Planning Council and author of the upcoming book “Honoring the greatest Pro-Life leaders of the last 50 years.”

One Republican strategist granted anonymity to discuss the issue called it “terrible” for the GOP.

Another groaned when asked about the subject: “Oh, God, you're gonna make me talk about abortion, aren’t you?”

Every indication is that abortion is still a toxic subject for Republicans — and likely will be again in 2024. Democrats are galvanized, riding high off polling that shows opposition to stringent abortion bans and elections in battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Republicans, meanwhile, are on the defensive. And virtually everyone supporting some type of abortion ban agrees the GOP needs to fix its messaging.

But with the exception of the most conservative-leaning audiences – such as at the Faith & Freedom Coalition, which held its annual conference this weekend in Washington, D.C. — Republican presidential candidates are calculating that the best response may be to dodge the specifics.

Trump, despite heavy lobbying from anti-abortion rights activists for a 15-week ban, has kept his answers vague when asked whether he would support a federal prohibition. DeSantis, the leading alternative to Trump, makes little mention of a six-week measure that he signed into law in Florida – late at night, with no fanfare. South Carolina’s Nikki Haley delivered a campaign speech calling for national consensus on abortion without offering details on how to achieve that consensus. Scott, the U.S. senator and devout Christian from South Carolina, initially deflected questions before settling on supporting a 15-week ban. And Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, avoided taking a stance on a national abortion ban during a recent CNN town hall, arguing state governments should set their own policies.

Only former Vice President Mike Pence seems to embrace the subject by calling for a federal ban — a virtual imperative in his push to lure the evangelical bloc in the early voting state of Iowa.

“We have to go back to the basics, explaining to people the humanity of the unborn child,” Stemberger said. “The left has rather effectively pivoted this issue as the right of a woman against the interference of government.”

Anti-abortion activists have, at times, expressed frustration with the state of the field. They say they are getting little help from the top-of-the-ticket Republican White House contenders whose messaging will define the party in 2024. As the crowded campaign for the Republican nomination heats up, one candidate after the other has revealed unease with the subject of abortion. By contrast, President Joe Biden, who used to express similar unease, seems to be leaning into it more — raising the issue within the first few seconds of his 3-minute launch ad.

Trump announced his comeback bid last year without explicit support from the anti-aboriton movement, whose leaders felt alienated when he blamed them for Republican midterm losses, at least in part to deflect his own responsibility for the GOP’s underperformance. And he has bobbed and weaved on the matter in recent months — reminding Republicans he appointed the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe, while indirectly calling Florida’s six-week abortion ban “too harsh.”

DeSantis spends little time touting his “Heartbeat Protection Act” on the campaign trail — often relegating it to half a sentence in a long list of policy accomplishments. In front of select audiences, he has sought to capitalize on Trump’s approach to abortion, telling the Christian Broadcasting Network, “While I appreciate what the former president has done in a variety of realms, he opposes that bill. He said it was, quote, ‘harsh’ to protect an unborn child when there’s a detectable heartbeat.”

But when given the opportunity Thursday to embrace a national ban akin to the one he signed into law in Florida, DeSantis demurred.

“I think that the progress right now is being made, really, from the bottom up,” he said during a campaign stop in South Carolina, in response to whether he would support a national ban. “These places like South Carolina, Georgia — these places have done well and some of these other states may not necessarily follow suit. But this will be something that we are going to be able to debate.”

DeSantis’ position has earned him plaudits from leading anti-abortion activists like Bob Vander Plaats, who runs the politically influential Family Leader in Iowa and has criticized Trump while speaking warmly about the Florida governor.

But when touring New Hampshire earlier this month, DeSantis made no mention of abortion — an unspoken acknowledgment of the political climate and significance of independent-leaning voters in the early voting state.

“Even the Republican Party in New Hampshire doesn’t want to talk about this issue,” said GOP consultant Matthew Bartlett, a New Hampshire native who has worked on several presidential campaigns and is unaffiliated in this one. “We are certainly a pro-choice state. We may eventually vote for someone who is not fully aligned one way or another, but we just reject extremists.”

DeSantis is hardly the only Republican struggling with the issue. During a swing through Iowa and New Hampshire in April, Scott initially declined to answer whether he wanted federal oversight of the procedure at all, despite previously backing legislation in the Senate to outlaw abortions at 20 weeks.

Since then, Scott has announced support for a 15-week ban, while also saying that as president, he would “sign the most conservative pro-life legislation” that could reach his desk — all the while refusing to comment on six-week bans in Florida and Iowa.

Asked how he feels abortion is impacting the primary — a question Trump’s and DeSantis’ camps declined to answer — a spokesperson for Scott pointed to his recent Iowa town hall, during which he deemed himself “a hundred percent pro-life conservative” and said as president he would seek a federal limit on late-term abortions while aiming to build support for further restrictions.

A spokesperson for Haley declined to answer specific questions, pointing a reporter to her public remarks on the subject. During a CNN town hall this month, Haley said she believed in a “federal role” on restricting abortion access but declined to answer questions on when during a pregnancy that ban should take effect.

And then there’s Pence.

No other GOP candidate has staked his or her candidacy as much on a hardline anti-abortion position as the former vice president.

In his announcement speech in Iowa earlier this month, Pence accused Trump of having “retreated from the cause of the unborn” and said his former boss “treats it as an inconvenience.”

"He's the one that's been the most clear in talking about it," said Indiana Speaker of the House Todd Huston, who introduced Pence at his campaign launch. "This is a position he’s had forever. He's just stating what he's always said."

Pence was the first GOP candidate to respond after the fall of Roe. His non-profit Advancing American Freedom filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court arguing in support of Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. And on the day he announced his presidential candidacy, SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser issued a statement calling him “the definition of an unapologetic pro-life leader, a longtime friend of unborn children and their mothers.”

But Pence is an outlier. He will be the only major presidential candidate to speak at the National Celebrate Life Rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Saturday to commemorate the Supreme Court ruling.

“Republicans find themselves in a bind that they found themselves in often, and that is having to run one race in the primary and then another race in the general,” said a Republican strategist who is working on down-ballot races and was granted anonymity to speak freely about the sensitive issue. “It’s hard to reconcile issues as volatile as abortion, where public opinion is just so cemented right now.”