October 28, 2024 01:07 PM UTC

Gabe Evans Still Won't Give Straight Answers On Abortion

• 2 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

We’re just over a week away from the election in one of the nation’s most competitive congressional districts, where Republican freshman state Rep. Gabe Evans is running a close race against the incumbent Democratic Rep. Yadira Caraveo. Throughout the campaign since winning the Republican primary in June, Evans has struggled with a cagey position on abortion rights, in which Evans’ prior much more strident views on the subject have been qualified during his run for Congress with exceptions to his general opposition to abortion that Evans had previously failed to distinguish.

Speaking with Denver7’s political reporter Brandon Richard in an interview that aired this weekend, Evans tried once again to evade straight answers to straightforward questions:

Regarding abortion, Evans wouldn’t provide a direct answer on whether he supported the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“I think the Supreme Court very clearly sent this back to the states for the states to be able to handle,” said Evans. [Pols emphasis]

Evans said he’s anti-abortion but supports exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother. He also said he would oppose a national abortion ban…

Brandon Richard tried hard to get a straight answer from Evans on whether he agrees with the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, and although Evans doesn’t provide one, he seems to agree with the decision on 10th Amendment grounds:

RICHARD: In your opinion, was the Supreme Court right in in overturning Roe?

EVANS: I think the Supreme Court very clearly sent this back to the states for the states to be able to handle. And we see that in the in the Constitution in the 10th Amendment, where it talks about stuff that’s not at the federal level is explicitly delegated to the states.

But then, on the subject of protecting women to travel to Colorado for abortion care, legislation on the subject of which Gabe Evans voted against in 2023, Evans had a highly detailed answer:

RICHARD: So last year we saw that you voted against a shield law 23-188, designed to protect women who travel from other states to Colorado to have an abortion from criminal prosecution. Why did you vote against that?

EVANS: So I’ve done a lot of investigations involving domestic domestic violence, sex assault, child abuse, human trafficking, things of that nature as a police officer. And so as I read that bill, I understood what it was trying to do, which, as you said, was to provide that protection for women from out of state who travel to Colorado for an abortion. But that was a 29 page long bill that really muddied the waters about how those some of those other investigations could take place. Again, domestic violence where a pregnant woman is the victim, child abuse, sex assault, human trafficking, all of these situations are places where a pregnant woman could be the victim here and an abuser, human trafficker or somebody else could be inappropriately leveraging their influence to try to cause them to get an abortion…

Selectively dodging questions about abortion as a federal candidate because the overturning of Roe v. Wade sent the question of abortion’s legality back to the individual states to decide should be followed up with the question of how Evans voted on the last abortion restriction ballot measure to face a statewide vote in Colorado, 2020’s Proposition 115 22-week abortion ban.

Unfortunately, that’s the same Proposition 115 Evans implausibly claims he cannot remember how he voted on only four years ago. After Evans’ first Donald Trump-style dodge about the virtues of sending the question of abortion rights “back to the states,” Evans dodges the principal question again by refusing to disclose how he voted on the most recent state-level abortion ban.

Think about that. Evans can rattle off a dense justification for voting against a bill to protect women traveling to Colorado for abortions, but he can’t remember how he voted on the last abortion ban measure Colorado voters rejected? It’s preposterous to the point of insult.

There are of course certain admissions about Evans’ view of abortion rights that reveal themselves implicitly as he attempts to avoid the question. If Evans agrees that abortion rights should be “up to the states,” that means he condones the terrible outcomes being reported in states where abortion is banned, and patients are facing immediate threats to their own health due to being unable to access care. And if that’s an outcome Evans finds acceptable elsewhere, why not here in Colorado?

These are the answers Evans is leaving intentionally blank. Undecided voters filling in those blanks, and despite Evans’ attempts to muddy the waters they are, aren’t going to like what they find.