Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, was forced on the defensive on abortion during last week’s debate against Democratic Representative Colin Allred.
Cruz has long been staunchly anti-abortion but has remained quiet on the issue and repeatedly declined to answer questions from reporters as he faces what polls indicate is a competitive race that could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.
Allred, on the other hand, has made abortion central to his campaign, blaming Cruz for the state’s extreme abortion ban and vowing to restore access if he wins in November.
Abortion has become an election liability for Republicans since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade, with voters choosing to protect abortion rights in every state where the issue has been on the ballot, including in the staunchly Republican states of Kansas and Kentucky.
Kate Cox and several other women who were denied abortions in Texas are supporting Allred’s campaign, hopeful that the issue will rally enough voters to propel him to victory in a state that has not elected a Democrat to a statewide office in 30 years.
In interviews with Newsweek, Cox and four other women—Lauren Miller, Taylor Edwards, Kaitlyn Kash and Ashley Brandt—excoriated Cruz for his record on abortion, calling him a “liar” who would work to further erode reproductive rights.
“There’s nothing reasonable about the abortion bans in Texas,” Cox said, when asked if she had a message for Cruz. “There’s nothing pro-life about having women suffering and being pushed to the brink of death.”
Cruz said Texas “made a perfectly reasonable decision to protect life” when it enacted a law that banned abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. The state then enacted one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans after Roe was overturned, allowing exceptions only to save the life of the mother. But Cox and others were still denied abortions while facing dangerous pregnancy complications.
Texans “have to vote like our lives depend on it, because for me and so many others, they do,” Cox said.
Newsweek has contacted the Cruz and Allred campaigns for comment via email.
Cox, a 32-year-old mother of two from Dallas, sued Texas in December last year to obtain an abortion after her fetus developed a fatal condition. She ultimately fled Texas to get an abortion in another state, a day before the state Supreme Court denied her request.
Cox, who is now expecting her third child, said she “wouldn’t be pregnant today if I didn’t have access to abortion care.”
Kate Cox introduces Vice President Kamala Harris at an event on reproductive rights at Ritchie Coliseum on the campus of the University of Maryland on June 24 in College Park, Maryland. Cox said there is “nothing reasonable about the abortion bans in Texas.”
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Miller, Edwards, Kash and Brandt were among 22 plaintiffs in Zurawski v. Texas, which sought an amendment to the state’s abortion law to clarify when medically necessary abortions can be performed. The lawsuit argued that the language creates confusion among doctors, who were turning away some pregnant women experiencing complications because they fear repercussions. Under Texas law, doctors who perform abortions risk life in prison, fines of up to $100,000 and revocation of their state medical licenses. The Texas Supreme Court also rejected that challenge, saying the law’s exceptions are broad enough.
During the debate, Allred urged Cruz to speak directly to Kate Cox and other women who have suffered because of Texas’ restrictions and explain why he described them as reasonable.
Cruz also repeatedly avoided directly answering whether or not he supported exceptions in cases of rape and incest. “Why do you keep asking me that?” Cruz asked the moderator at one point.
Asked if he supports Texas’ law, Cruz said the specifics of abortion law have been and should be decided by the Texas Legislature.
“I don’t serve in the state Legislature. I’m not the governor,” he said.
Miller, 37, slammed Cruz for seeking to distance himself from Texas’ strict ban.
“The first thing to always remember with Ted Cruz is that he’s a liar. He’s just a liar,” she told Newsweek. “If there is one thing that Donald Trump has ever been right about, is that he is Lyin’ Ted.”
She said that Cruz would push for a national abortion ban if reelected, calling him a “dyed in the wool anti-abortion politician who wants to strip women of our rights.”
He “was instrumental in helping to overturn Roe v. Wade,” she added, noting that Cruz and other Republicans senators had blocked President Barack Obama from appointing a Supreme Court justice in 2016. President Donald Trump later appointed three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe.
Lauren Miller, a plaintiff in the Zurawski v. Texas case, speaks during a press conference outside the Travis County Courthouse in Austin, Texas, on July 19, 2023. She called Texas Senator Ted Cruz a “dyed in the wool anti-abortion politician who wants to strip women of our rights.”
Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images
Miller also criticized Cruz for not showing up when she testified in June about how Texas’ abortion ban affected her before a Senate subcommittee that he sits on.
“I don’t know if he was too busy podcasting or whatever, but he certainly wasn’t there to do his job,” she said.
Allred, she said, spent an hour talking to her that day.
“That’s the kind of representative I want, somebody who will actually listen,” she said.
Edwards, 32, said Cruz “refused to take any accountability for his actions” during the debate but that he is “happy” that extreme abortion bans are in place.
“I think it showed people that he’s trying to dodge the blame for something, an environment he created,” she told Newsweek.
Edwards, who needed IVF to get pregnant, is also concerned about future access to fertility treatment.
IVF is “also at risk with Ted Cruz winning, and no matter what he says about supporting it, his actions speak differently than his words,” she said. (Cruz and other Senate Republicans voted against legislation earlier this year that would have made it a nationwide right for women to access IVF.)
“I think Texans are fed up with this, and I think that they realize that we need a change in office,” Edwards added. Allred’s victory, she said, would show “the rest of the country how serious we are about women’s rights and that we’re not going back in time.”
Kash, 37, of Austin, said Cruz refused to meet with her when she traveled to Washington, D.C., over the summer.
He’s “a disgrace,” she told Newsweek. “You can’t ignore half of your constituents,” she said about her message to Cruz. “Women make up half of the voting bloc, and you can’t ignore us. You can’t not hear what is happening to us. You may choose not to act on it, but you need to hear it out.”
Kash said that Cruz has “done nothing” for Texans, recalling how he went to Cancun during a deadly winter storm that left millions of Texans without power in 2021.
“We were one of the towns hit hardest by the ice storm, and I didn’t have power for six days…and I remember that he went on a vacation,” she said.
Texans need to vote for Allred because the state government is not hearing women on abortion, she added.
“We need federal protection,” she said. “Our state government is not listening. I’ve lobbied at the state Legislature, I have tried to get bills out of committee, I’ve testified in front of the Texas Medical Board. We’ve sued the state, the state is not coming to help us.”
Brandt, 33, who is from the Dallas area, called Cruz’s stance on abortion “disgusting.”
She also called him out for ducking questions about the issue.
“There are videos of him being asked about Kate Cox…he literally runs away,” she said. “We need someone who’s actually going to stand up for us. Speak out for us, hear us when we’re going to them. He won’t even take calls.”
Texas “needs politicians like Colin Allred who are going to advocate for us, for all Texans,” she added.
“In order to restore Roe and restore rights, they’re going to need as many Senate votes as they can, and so Texas needs to have a Democratic senator in there… so that we can move forward. If we have someone like Ted Cruz in the Senate, we’re not going to get anywhere.”
