Try as he might, David Schweikert is finding it harder and harder to run away from his outspoken anti-abortion record.
On Tuesday, a mobile billboard traveled through the Phoenix and Scottsdale area calling out the congressman for supporting the Life at Conception Act and its disastrous impact on IVF. Schweikert’s response when asked about what’s actually in the bill? “I don’t know.”
David Schweikert’s ignorance has unintentionally made his position perfectly clear: he’ll sign onto anything that bans abortion, no matter what. When it comes to other impacts on issues like IVF, he simply doesn’t know and doesn’t care.
Mere minutes after being face to face with the disastrous impacts his extremist rhetoric has on everyday Arizona women, Schweikert went right back to proudly bragging of his “anti-abortion principles.”
DCCC Spokesperson Lauryn Fanguen:
“With women’s reproductive freedoms at stake, ‘I don’t know’ simply doesn’t cut it. David Schweikert will sign onto anything to ban abortion, regardless of its devastating impacts on IVF and Arizona women.”
National Democratic groups are seizing the opportunity to highlight Republicans’ shifting rhetoric on abortion rights after the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a near-total ban on abortion. They are taking aim at candidates in several of Arizona’s top-of-the-ticket races.
The Democrats’ congressional campaign arm is using a billboard campaign to target Rep. David Schweikert, R-Ariz., an Arizona member of Congress seen as vulnerable this year.
Schweikert has said he was “pleased” by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade. But he criticized Tuesday’s state high court decision, writing “this issue should be decided by Arizonans, not legislated from the bench.”
On Wednesday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee deployed a “mobile billboard” truck to traverse Schweikert’s district, which includes Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Cave Creek, Fountain Hills and parts of north Phoenix, focusing on his past support for legislation that Democrats argue clashes with his recently stated position on in-vitro fertilization.
The mobile billboard bore the message: “David Schweikert supported a bill that could outlaw IVF nationwide.”
As recently as 2021, Schweikert co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, which would have established a “right to life” extending to “all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.”
That appears to be at odds with Schweikert’s recently stated position that “IVF is a valuable and important tool for many Arizona families” and he would “oppose any effort to restrict it.” Schweikert did not co-sponsor the Life at Conception Act when it was re-introduced in 2023.
“House Republicans will stop at nothing — including outlawing in vitro fertilization — to reach their ultimate goal: banning abortion and restricting reproductive rights nationwide,” Lauryn Fanguen, a DCCC spokesperson, wrote in a statement to The Arizona Republic.
In an interview, Schweikert countered that the billboard’s claim was misleading.
“The magic word there is ‘could.’ But I don’t think it does (outlaw IVF),” he said.
Pressed on specific language in the bill, the congressman replied, “I don’t know” whether it would call into question the legality of IVF, and said it was meant as a statement of anti-abortion principles.
Schweikert pointed out that he co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act before Roe vs. Wade was overturned. He said that decision “changed the playing field” and suggested he did not back the same bill in 2023 because “the issue now belongs to the states.”
If there was some sort of technicality in the bill, “that’s fine, attack me,” he said. “But I think we’ve been pretty clear I’m pro-life.”
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