TThe famously loquacious Senator Ted Cruz has been largely silent on abortion, one of his biggest legislative and rhetorical priorities during his reelection campaign for the Texas Senate. This bodes ill for both Senator Cruz and the anti-abortion movement as a whole.
In fact, Representative Collin Allred of Texas is running an unusually strong campaign to win Senator Cruz’s seat in a state that has been the epicenter of the horrific maternal and child health disaster that has swept across the nation since the demise of Roe v. Wade. The race between Cruz and Allred is currently neck and neck, with Cruz leading the former NFL player by just two points (47 to 45 percent), according to a new University of Houston poll. This is particularly notable for Texas, a state that has not elected a Democrat to a statewide election in 30 years and has never elected a black senator.
Abortion has been a particularly toxic issue for Republicans during this presidential election, with even Donald Trump posting after the Democratic National Convention that his administration would “be great for women and their reproductive rights.”
Cruz publicly celebrated the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe in 2022, calling the decision a “huge victory.” But he has remained silent since Texas women began sharing their personal horror stories and suing state after state for being denied emergency abortions under the state’s strict ban.
Senator Cruz avoided multiple questions about the Texas Supreme Court’s December denial of 31-year-old Kate Cox’s request for an emergency abortion, which forced her to travel out of state for treatment after doctors found serious abnormalities in her fetus. Senator Cruz has repeatedly dodged press questions about abortion since then. As Senator Cruz attempts to distance himself from the very real consequences of the U.S. Supreme Court’s abortion ban, it is important to look at exactly how much influence Senator Cruz had behind the scenes to enable this medical catastrophe.
The conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which Texas Monthly magazine aptly described in a headline as “The Rogue Court that Brought the End of Roe,” is filled with right-wing judges who got their start in Texas politics, including perhaps its most ardent anti-abortion ideologue, Trump appointee James Ho, an old friend of Cruz’s who was heavily involved in his 2017 Senate campaign a decade after succeeding him as Texas attorney general.
During the Trump administration, Cruz “basically took liberties” filling district courts with conservative judges, during which he reportedly lobbied Trump behind the scenes to nominate Ho to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, according to the Texas Tribune. Cruz later attended the swearing-in ceremony for his “good friend” Ho, who went on to become the notorious appeals judge who cited wildlife cases in arguments to ban a commonly used abortion drug in 2023, writing that doctors suffer “aesthetic damage” when they can no longer see their unborn patients, much like birdwatchers suffer when they can no longer see birds.
Cruz also boasted about his role in confirming Texas convicts Don Willett and Andrew Oldham to the Fifth Circuit, touting his role in “reforming the federal courts” in a 2020 press release, gushing that Willett, Oldham, and Ho are “well on their way to becoming national judicial superstars.” The trio has since been described as “perhaps the most transformative figures” on the Supreme Court, paving the way for the Roe overturning, approving laws such as Texas’ notoriously cruel anti-abortion law, the Heartbeat Bill (Senate Bill 8), and overturning lower court decisions in abortion cases that were purposely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Cruz wasn’t just a bystander in the abortion wars. He played a key role in paving the way for Dobbs and reforming the justice system to allow states to punish pregnant women, effectively torturing them as they do today. Cruz can dodge questions about this, but there’s not much more to say. The crisis in Texas is already his fault.
This could be just the boost Allred needs to make history in Texas.
