Rep. Nancy Mace, R.S.C., on Sunday lamented the abortion extremes on the right and left, asserting “there has to be a place for the center on this very emotional issue.”
In an interview on NBC News’ “Meet The Press,” Mace said the abortion debate in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has exposed the “extremities on both sides.”
“On the far left you have folks who want any abortion [and] states are trying to assure that no abortion for any reason including rape and incest victims in girls and that is not okay with the electorate either,” she said.
According to Mace, “the vast majority of people here are okay with some guardrails but they don't want the extremities of either side.”
“If we are not moderating ourselves and including exceptions for women who are raped and girls victims of incest and in every instance where the life of a mother is at stake — that is a position I have staked out and is important to me personally — that is where the vast majority of women are in my state,” she said.
Mace also argued for a guarantee for women to have access to contraception.
“Whether it's South Carolina or any other state that is banning abortion altogether or trying to, then women's access to contraceptives has been to …guarantee,” she said. “How is a woman supposed to get any kind of care, health care, medical care, care for an infant when those resources don't exist? Seventy-five percent of of America [support putting] in guardrails that they are comfortable with… we can do this at the federal level and give some guidance to states or states do it as well. We will continue to see extremities until Congress steps in.”
Mace said she is also opposed to “the violation of a woman’s privacy,” citing her own experience as a rape victim.
“One of my concerns you got states that are going to try to ban women from traveling, that if you're raped that you got to report it to the police,” she said. “I was raped when I was 16. And it took me a week to tell my mother. By that time, any evidence would have been gone. And the violation of a woman's privacy, I can't tell you how traumatic that event was in my life. My own home state, they want women to be required and mandated to report when they are raped and I just can't even imagine a world where you're a teenage girl and raped and have to report those things.”