Venture capitalist Blake Masters—the Republican nominee in this year's Senate race in Arizona—was caught altering his campaign website to soften his position on abortion.
Earlier this week, Masters' website proclaimed he is "100% pro-life" and outlined his commitment to further restrict reproductive freedom. This was his stance while courting just Republican votes in the Arizona GOP primary.
A screenshot is provided below.
Blake Masters for Senate/blakemasters.com
But in an ad he posted to Twitter, Masters attacked Democratic Senator Mark Kelly—the incumbent—and sought to cast himself as a candidate who supports "commonsense regulation around abortion.”
In the ad, he claims to only support "a ban on very late-term and partial-birth abortion" saying such a position would put the United States "on par with other civilized nations.”
You can see the ad below.
\u201cMark Kelly is lying about my views on abortion \u2014 the Democrats have to do that because their own position (no limits of any kind, ever) is so extreme. Here\u2019s the truth.\u201d— Blake Masters (@Blake Masters) 1661438771
NBC News later reported the Masters campaign changed or deleted parts of its website and one of the sections axed included a statement supporting “a federal personhood law (ideally a Constitutional amendment) that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed.”
Fetal personhood, which confers legal rights from conception, has been championed by anti-abortion advocates who want to classify the procedure as murder. Masters later toldThe Arizona Republic he believes a "personhood law" should only come into play when a person is in the third trimester of their pregnancy.
Masters' decision to alter his abortion stance comes as Republicans face significant pushback in the weeks since the United States Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark decision that once protected a person's right to choose reproductive healthcare without excessive government restriction.
Nowhere was this more apparent in recent weeks than when Kansas voters secured a win for reproductive rights activists after voting to enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution, the result of an effort to ensure the state—typically Republican and conservative—remains a safe haven for abortion in the Midwest.
Democrats including Pat Ryan, a Democratic county executive in New York’s Hudson Valley, also made gains in primaries around the country this week. Ryan fended off a Republican opponent by stressing his commitment to abortion rights in a closely watched race that has now ensured the district remains under Democratic control.
Eagle-eyed social media users quickly criticized Masters for his woefully transparent flip-flop on reproductive rights.
\u201cLiterally no Democrat has ever argued that abortion should be allowed up until or after the birth of a child. It\u2019s insane that this lie keeps getting told over and over again without consequence.\u201d— shut up, josh (@shut up, josh) 1661528534
\u201cThe only person lying here is Blake Masters.\u201d— rodney ranken (@rodney ranken) 1661530438
\u201cThis was on Blake Masters website up until yesterday when his campaign dirty deleted it before releasing this commercial where he LIES about his positions\u201d— Brad Batt for TN State Sanity \u270a\ud83c\udffc\u270a\ud83c\udffd\u270a\ud83c\udffe (@Brad Batt for TN State Sanity \u270a\ud83c\udffc\u270a\ud83c\udffd\u270a\ud83c\udffe) 1661524721
\u201cOne good way to create a Streisand effect around your own fascistic lying is to support fetal personhood for months, erase it from your website abruptly, and then create this ad the next day.\u201d— Brian Beutler (@Brian Beutler) 1661486192
\u201cLots of people are talking about how this ad is dishonest, but not enough people are talking about how it's also extremely weird. This man is flat out incapable of appearing in a normal situation.\u201d— Respectable Lawyer (@Respectable Lawyer) 1661486986
\u201cAbortion has been weaponized politically to make folks believe gaggles of women decide to end their pregnancies at 8-9 months along for funsies. No one does that.\n\nVery late term abortions are done for medical reasons for the mother or fetus.\n\nNo one should support banning those.\u201d— Tiffany Bond (I) for Congress (ME02)\ud83e\udd9e\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (@Tiffany Bond (I) for Congress (ME02)\ud83e\udd9e\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8) 1661507084
\u201cWhile Blake Masters accuses other people of lying about abortion positioning, his media team is frantically working to cover his positions up. @bgmasters is a blatant liar, and a candidate no one can trust.\n#ResistanceUnited \n#LiveBlue2022 \n\nhttps://t.co/bbIx5HPS5J\u201d— Jeff Roush (@Jeff Roush) 1661520815
\u201cDUDE had on his website 48 HOURS AGO that he wanted to ban abortion from moment of batter blasting. Also Don\u2019t let what he is saying here sound reasonable. People need abortion in all stages of pregnancy. Legislating a body is NEVER OK, but this crapaziod is next level.\u201d— Lizz "Some Activist " Winstead (@Lizz "Some Activist " Winstead) 1661523003
Masters rose to prominence through his association with German-American billionaire Peter Thiel, a conservative libertarian who has made substantial donations to American right-wing figures and causes.
Masters would be chosen by Thiel to work on the transition team for former Republican President Donald Trump. Trump endorsed Masters in a statement last month calling him "a great modern-day thinker" and "one of the most successful businessmen and investors in the Country."
Masters has generated controversy on the campaign trail for supporting baseless conspiracy theories, particularly the racist and antisemitic "Great Replacement" theory embraced by White nationalists that states White European populations and their descendants are being deliberately demographically and culturally replaced with non-European peoples.