A GOP senator said he's 'perfectly comfortable' with criminalizing abortion amid what could be a groundbreaking SCOTUS challenge to Roe v. Wade
- Indiana Sen. Mike Braun said on Sunday he was "perfectly comfortable" with criminalizing abortion.
- Braun gave the caveat that this applied to state-level laws, not federal-level legislation.
A GOP senator said on Sunday that he would be "perfectly comfortable" if abortion were criminalized at the state level, arguing that the states should decide abortion laws.
On Sunday, MSNBC host Chuck Todd asked Republican Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana whether he would criminalize abortions.
"I'm perfectly comfortable with doing it. Just not at the level where everybody's gotta live with the same thing," he said.
"When you talk about criminalizing it, then all you're doing is taking this to a logical extreme that you'll never get to anyway," he continued. "We just need to take it off of where it is. Send it back to the states. Let's find that right way to address it. And this applies to many other issues as well."
Earlier in the interview, Braun said that because he believed in the "sanctity of life," he wanted abortions to be "eliminated from the landscape" if possible.
"Whatever one's opinion is, whatever you're trying to do politically, why try to do it at the national level? We generally don't do things well here anyway," Braun said. "It'd be practical and not political to send it back to the states and let every state do what they want to do, and live with it. And if you don't like it, then go to work within those legislatures."
Braun was elected to the US Senate in 2018. He previously expressed his support for state's rights, moving in November to challenge Biden's vaccine mandate for private businesses, calling it "federal overreach."
Braun's comments come as the Supreme Court contemplates what may be the most substantial challenge to Roe v. Wade in decades — a case brought by Mississippi that is attempting to overturn the 1973 landmark ruling.
The SCOTUS has signaled that it may be open to Mississippi's position that abortion should be banned after 15 weeks of pregnancy.