Roger Marshall is embracing the support of anti-abortion activists in his closing reelection pitch to voters — including the leader of an organization that has promoted violence against abortion providers and conservative pastors who have compared abortion to human sacrifice. Marshall has spent little time talking about abortion in his reelection bid. But at a Sunday faith-based public gathering in Wichita, Marshall — an OB-GYN who has made his background caring for women central to his political identity — spoke alongside Troy Newman, the head of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, and local evangelical pastors Kyle Lammott and Con Howerton.
Lammott called on attendees to pray for “wives who are submissive” and said Kansas’ abortion protections have left the state “soaked with the blood of the innocent.” Howerton decried the “babies, millions of them being sent to Molech” — a Biblical reference to child sacrifice — and criticized the state’s laws for turning it into “a destination state for abortion.” Another speaker compared aborted fetuses to people killed at Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp where over 1 million Jews and others were murdered during World War II. Marshall did not use such extreme language, but was referenced as a champion for the anti-abortion movement by other speakers at the event, who also repeatedly criticized his opponent, Democrat Adam Hamilton. Marshall has not distanced himself from their remarks.
Newman moved Operation Rescue to Wichita in 2002 to focus on protesting outside the clinic of Dr. George Tiller, a then-prominent abortion provider who was murdered in 2009. (Operation Rescue at the time denounced Scott Roeder, the man who shot Tiller; Roeder said he had met with Newman and owned an autographed copy of his book.) Polls suggest that Marshall could lose his seat to Hamilton, a moderate megachurch pastor who has focused his campaign on issues such as diesel prices and agricultural policy. Recently, Hamilton’s campaign has emphasized Marshall’s history of suing former patients over medical debt, including some who were jailed.
But Marshall, who has been endorsed by the anti-abortion group Kansas for Life, has spent little time highlighting abortion policy in his reelection bid, instead arguing that his opponent is too liberal for a conservative state like Kansas. Marshall’s presence at the event, which also featured remarks from Ty Masterson, the state’s Republican candidate for governor and a longtime abortion opponent, has not been widely reported. Marshall’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Voters in Kansas have repeatedly backed abortion rights. In August, Kansans shot down a ballot measure that would have changed the selection process for the state’s Supreme Court, a move largely seen as a first step toward undercutting the state’s constitutional abortion protection. Wade in 2022, Kansas has seen a massive influx in out-of-state abortion patients, largely from Texas and Oklahoma, which both have strict bans.
Most Kansans feel the state has already handled the issue of abortion and that politicians should “stay out of it and stay out of their decisions,” said Ashley All, a Kansas-based political strategist who worked to defeat a 2022 anti-abortion ballot measure in the state and was previously communications director for Democratic Gov. An October poll from The New York Times and Siena University found that only 3 percent of likely Kansas voters say abortion is their top issue. Those voters are more likely to identify as Republicans and to say they previously voted for President Donald Trump in 2024.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
