Audio: Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson tells supporters he wants to get abortion restrictions down to ‘zero’ weeks

It’s only been a few weeks since Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and his wife released a campaign ad about the decision they made 30 years ago to get an abortion and how that informed his decision to support the state’s current 12-week ban. Many observers found Robinson’s new position to be disingenuous and hypocritical – including us at Progress NC Action – and it appears that was the correct read.

Audio released from a Sept. 3 campaign event shows Robinson still believes in his long-held position that he is opposed to abortion in all circumstances. According to NBC News, Robinson told a crowd at an event in Troy that he wants to get abortion restrictions down to “zero” weeks.

In the recording, a woman asks Robinson why he changed his position on abortion to support the state’s 12-week ban.

Robinson replied, “That 12 weeks, exceptions for rape and incest … I’m not going to say it’s reasonable. But my faith allows me to live with that because that’s where the consensus is. Do I want to continue to lower it? You better know it,” he said. “I would love to get down to six weeks. And I’d like to get down to zero. I would like to push it back as far as we could and eliminate as many abortions as we can. We can’t do it all at once.”

That statement lines up with what he has previously said about the procedure.

“We’ve got it down to 12 weeks, the next goal is to get it down to six, and then just keep moving from there,” he told supporters at an event in February.

At the recent stop in Troy, he also told the woman that he hasn’t changed his stance “at all” and that “there’s no reason why an abortion should happen ever.”

“I’m 100% for life, and that’s how I think it should be. If I’m a pastor in the pulpit, that’s what I’m preaching. If I’m counseling someone, a young lady, a couple, that’s what I’m telling them. I’m telling them, ‘Choose life for your child,’” he said. 

Over the last six years since Robinson came onto the North Carolina political scene, he has called abortion “murder” and “genocide” and said women who undergo the procedure, even if they are only “24 hours pregnant” are murderers.

“For me, there is no compromise on abortion. It makes no difference to me why or how that child ended up in that womb,” he said in July 2020.

“If I had all the power right now, let’s say I was the governor and had a willing legislature, we could pass a bill saying you can’t have an abortion in North Carolina for any reason,” Robinson said in a February 2023 radio interview with state Rep. Jeff McNeely.

In January, Robinson tried to pretend he had never expressed his previous views, saying that he “doesn’t recall” his past statements on abortion.

Undecided voters who value the freedom to make their own reproductive health decisions will have to determine whether they believe Robinson’s one ad or his years of speeches denouncing abortion and calling for bans.