Alex Brandon/AP, Eric Gay/AP
- Congressional challenger Jessica Cisneros called out Rep. Henry Cuellar’s stance on abortion.
- After the SCOTUS leak on Monday, Cuellar said “I do not support abortion.”
- Cisneros called on top democrats to drop their support of Cuellar ahead of their May 24 race.
Progressive Democratic House challenger Jessica Cisneros called her opponent Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar “the last anti-choice Democrat in the House,” and urged top Democrats to stop supporting the incumbent over his anti-abortion stance.
“As the Supreme Court prepares to overturn Roe v. Wade, I am calling on Democratic Party leadership to withdraw their support of Henry Cuellar who is the last anti-choice Democrat in the House,” Cisneros told NBC in a statement on Wednesday.
Roe v. Wade is the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that codified the right to an abortion into law, but the memo leaked by Politico on Monday showed that the court’s five conservative judges all shared their opposition to the law in February.
After the leak, Cuellar issued a statement saying he “does not support abortion,” according to the Associated Press.
“As a Catholic, I do not support abortion, however, we cannot have an outright ban,” Cuellar wrote. “There must be exceptions in cases of rape, incest and danger to the life of the mother.”
In 2021, Cuellar was the sole House Democrat to vote against the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill aimed at making abortion care more accessible.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer have endorsed Cuellar, and the Texas Rep. is set to speak at a rally in Texas on Wednesday evening with Rep. Jim Clyburn. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has also endorsed Cisneros, and the senior Democrats aligned with Cuellar have stood by him as FBI agents raided his home in January. The reasons for the raid are still unclear.
On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that if followed through, the move by Supreme Court justices would “inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past fifty years – not just on women but on all Americans.”
Cisneros told NBC that “with the House majority on the line, he could very much be the deciding vote on the future of our reproductive rights and we cannot afford to take that risk.”
—Jessica Cisneros (@JCisnerosTX) May 4, 2022
She added that she “would be a better working partner for Democratic leadership to be able to deliver on these Democratic priorities and proposals that Democrats ran on in the last election cycle.”
Cisneros and Cuellar’s offices did not immediately return Insider’s request for comment.
The two are set to face off on May 24, after neither secured the needed majority vote in a March 2 democratic primary.
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