THORNTON, Colo. — Republican State Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer is adamantly anti-abortion, but you wouldn’t be to tell if you looked at her congressional campaign website these days.
Politico first reported this week that many national Republicans have scrubbed information about their anti-abortion positions from their campaign sites, following public opposition to the Supreme Court’s ruling eliminating a constitutional right to abortion.
An archived version of Kirkmeyer’s campaign site from July 5 lists “defending the sanctity of life,” as a priority.
“I’m pro-life and I always have been,” Kirkmeyer told 9News Wednesday, saying her only exception is to protect the life of the mother.
“If you go back and look at everyone’s websites, not just mine, but you look at my opponents and other folks who are campaigning, there’s a campaign that happens in the primary," she said. "And then things shift and everybody goes back and revises their webpages and they focus in on the things that they are going to focus in on.”
On Wednesday, an abortion stance was also missing from Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl’s website. A former webpage listed Ganahl’s position as pro-life with exceptions for victims of rape, incest and to preserve the life of the mother. But as of Wednesday morning, that position wasn’t listed on her page.
A campaign spokeswoman said she was in the process of updating Ganahl’s website anyway and updated it to include the pro-life stance Wednesday afternoon.
Kristi Burton Brown, chairwoman of the Colorado Republican Party, told 9News all Republican candidates are firmly pro-life.
“Our Republican candidates are very clear we’re the pro-life party,” she said. “And Hispanic voters share that value with us. They are family values voters, and we stand for the whole family.”
A recent poll from Unidos Mi Familia Vota found 74% of Colorado Latinx voters believe abortion should remain legal, despite their personal beliefs about abortion.
In Kirkmeyer’s race in Colorado’s new eighth congressional district, 38% of eligible voters are Latinx, the most in any congressional district in Colorado.
“I’ve probably hit at least 10,000 doors myself in talking to folks, and I can probably count on one hand the number of people who’ve asked me about abortion,” Kirkmeyer said. “It’s usually the media who asks me the most.”
“Everyone makes changes [to their website]. My opponent made changes to her website… I didn’t notice anyone making comments about that,” she said.
A search of the Wayback Machine internet archive of Kirkmeyer’s opponent Yadira Caraveo’s website congressional website didn’t show any significant changes in policy positions.