Mandela Barnes Admits He Opposes Any Legal Limit on Abortion Until Birth

Milwaukee, Wis. — Wisconsin’s Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mandela Barnes, whose lead in the polls slipped away in September after he was pummeled over extreme stances on police funding and ending cash bail, is trying to reset the race by focusing on abortion. But Barnes’s own extremism on the issue — openly opposing any legal limit through all nine months of pregnancy — could prevent keep him from making any gains against incumbent Republican senator Ron Johnson.

On Saturday, Barnes held a “Rally for Roe” in Milwaukee with the city’s Democratic congresswoman Gwen Moore and Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson. “We need to get to 52 [Democratic senators] in order to codify Roe,” McGill Johnson told reporters when asked why she was focused on Wisconsin out of all the competitive Senate races. “We know that the voters of Wisconsin care about access to abortion. . . . Seventy percent of Wisconsins [sic] believe that Roe should be the law of the land, and so we are here to energize them.”

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John McCormack

John McCormack is a former Washington correspondent for National Review and was a fellow at the National Review Institute.

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Milwaukee, Wis. — Wisconsin’s Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mandela Barnes, whose lead in the polls slipped away in September after he was pummeled over extreme stances on police funding and ending cash bail, is trying to reset the race by focusing on abortion. But Barnes’s own extremism on the issue — openly opposing any legal limit through all nine months of pregnancy — could prevent keep him from making any gains against incumbent Republican senator Ron Johnson.

On Saturday, Barnes held a “Rally for Roe” in Milwaukee with the city’s Democratic congresswoman Gwen Moore and Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson. “We need to get to 52 [Democratic senators] in order to codify Roe,” McGill Johnson told reporters when asked why she was focused on Wisconsin out of all the competitive Senate races. “We know that the voters of Wisconsin care about access to abortion. . . . Seventy percent of Wisconsins [sic] believe that Roe should be the law of the land, and so we are here to energize them.”