Senate candidate Larry Hogan has long record of opposition to abortion

Statement from Erin Bradley, Executive Director for Planned Parenthood Advocates of DC, Maryland & NoVa

On February 14, former Maryland Governor and current U.S. Senate candidate Larry Hogan said, in an appearance on CNN, “States can pass reasonable restrictions but I stood up and protected the right for people to continue to have abortions in the state of Maryland.” 

“Stood up” is not how Planned Parenthood Advocates for DC, Maryland & NoVa (PPADMV) would describe former Gov. Hogan’s actions on abortion care. The fact is that Larry Hogan has had an extreme record in opposition to abortion, which he demonstrated as governor and as a perennial candidate before he was elected. 

In late March 2022, the Maryland General Assembly (MGA) sent the Abortion Care Access Act to the governor’s office. In addition to equitable insurance coverage for abortion care, the act lifted outdated physician-only restrictions for providing abortion care and established a $3.5 million annual training fund to enable qualified providers to add abortion care to their scope of practice. 

The bill was vetoed, and then-Gov. Hogan insultingly suggested that nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives, and other advanced-practice clinicians (APCs) “lower[ed] the high standard of reproductive health care services received by women in Maryland.” 

Some APCs in Maryland already had clearance for labor and delivery or miscarriage management — both of which carry more risk of complication than abortion care. What’s more, numerous other states had long since lifted physician-only restrictions on providing abortion care. 

The former governor had easy access to this information when he wrote his veto message. The fact that he continued with his veto, and chose to insult APCs in the process, shows that he either knew this information and chose to say the opposite of what he knew to be true, or refused to look for information and took his lead from his fellow party members. Either way, this is not someone who can be trusted to “not vote to support a national abortion ban,” as he claimed on CNN. 

In July 2022, then-Gov. Hogan chose to add injury to insult. Mere days after the politically motivated and dangerous Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision was handed down by the Supreme Court, the Maryland budget went into effect without the $3.5 million training fund the General Assembly had mandated. Qualified providers ready to train in abortion care and respond to the health care crisis brought about by Dobbs had to wait until Governor Wes Moore released the funds more than six months later, the day after his inauguration. 

These are the harshest actions related to reproductive health and rights during Hogan’s term as governor, but his tenure was marked by harmful inaction as well. In 2017, the MGA passed a bill mandating that the state continue to allow Medicaid and Title X patients to access care at any qualified provider, regardless of former President Donald Trump’s promise to block Planned Parenthood health centers from seeing those patients. That bill went into effect without Hogan’s signature. 

In 2019, when the Trump Administration followed through with his promise and barred Planned Parenthood health centers across the nation from accessing Title X family planning funding, the MGA passed a bill establishing a state-funded Title X program, the first state in the country to do so. That bill also went into effect without a signature from Hogan. 

In March 2020, when then-Gov. Hogan was holding a press conference shortly after COVID-19 shutdowns, he said that abortion providers had “to free up beds for the things that are needed to save people’s lives.” This displays the same gross misunderstanding of what abortion care is and how it is provided that he showed in his 2022 veto message insulting APCs. 

In November 2020, the campaign account for Larry Hogan said, “The Georgia runoff elections are about that future and what the first two years of President-elect Biden’s term will look like. I urge Georgians to uphold America’s mandate for moderation and compromise by voting for David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler”— two staunchly anti-abortion rights politicians. Earlier that year, Perdue introduced the “Abortion Is Not Healthcare Act” in the Georgia Senate, and Loeffler had been aggressively courting anti-abortion voters for the entirety of her campaign. 

This is to say nothing of the numerous times Larry Hogan has called former Vice President Mike Pence a “good friend.” Mike Pence is anything but a good friend to abortion access. 

Senate candidate Larry Hogan has long relied on his words when it comes to abortion access. But his actions speak much louder than those words. As Maryland’s governor, he was able to hide behind the words “settled law.” He repeated those words again on CNN, saying that while he understands why abortion is an "emotional issue for women," he felt a constitutional amendment protecting reproductive liberty “wasn’t really necessary,” and that it’s “settled law” in Maryland.  

“Settled law” was a favorite term of multiple Supreme Court nominees when asked about Roe v. Wade, and those nominees went on to become justices who voted in the majority to overturn the “settled law” they spoke of.  

The plain truth of Larry Hogan’s tenure as governor of Maryland is that he simply did not have the power to do what he has advocated for since the 1980s when he supported the Human Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. By supporting the Human Life Amendment, Larry Hogan is on record supporting a national abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. Women and pregnant people cannot trust Larry Hogan to do the right thing when it comes to abortion.   

Hogan’s tenure in Maryland also shows that in any state, policies and laws can easily reflect the values of select members of the state’s leadership — abortion access is still under threat. The surest way to protect Marylanders’ access to abortion is to have voters make their views on abortion clear in November. 

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Planned Parenthood Advocates for DC, Maryland & NoVa (PPADMV) is a 501(c)(4) political and advocacy organization that fights to protect and expand access to reproductive health care. PPADMV builds local power to influence and promote accountability among state and local policy makers.