Two days after dodging the question, Martha McSally addresses Alabama's abortion law

Note: Column has been updated to include McSally's Friday comments.

Just days after lamenting that Arizona voters didn’t have a chance to get to know her last year, Sen. Martha McSally on Wednesday was presented with a golden opportunity to introduce herself.

On that day, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill outlawing abortion – even for a girl or a woman who is raped or the victim of incest. The law is the most extreme of its kind and the talk of the country. For good reason.

The Alabama abortion ban is clearly aimed at overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 law that made abortion legal. But it also could upend next year’s elections.

It's only natural to ask McSally about it

Democrats are horrified at the lengths to which Alabama went. Republicans have been … mostly silent.

Perhaps it's because they know this issue will resonate with women and not in a good way, if you happen to be a Republican.

Still, Alabama’s abortion ban will be a campaign issue, so it seemed only natural to ask McSally, who is running in 2020, where she stands. McSally desperately needs to win back the moderate Republican women and independents she lost to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in 2018.

The same McSally lamented last year’s short general-election time span, saying earlier this week, “We didn’t get a chance for (voters) to know me …”

And, naturally, she dodged the question

So, what does Arizona’s appointed senator think about Alabama's abortion ban? Does she agree that a 12-year-old who is raped by her uncle should be forced to give birth? That a doctor who would dare terminate that pregnancy should be put in the slammer for 99 years?

On Wednesday, a Washington Post reporter caught McSally in a Capitol hallway and asked her about Alabama's new abortion law.

Cue the dodge:

“That’s a state issue,” McSally replied. “I’m focused on my work here.”

Actually, it’s a national issue. A big one, given President Donald Trump's appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to what is now a more conservative Supreme Court.

If the Supreme Court upholds that Alabama law, Arizona already has a pre-Roe law on the books, banning abortion unless the woman’s life is at risk. As with Alabama, Arizona’s old law has no exceptions in cases of rape or incest.

McSally previously supported exceptions

Democrat Mark Kelly, McSally’s likely general-election opponent, quickly spoke out Wednesday against the Alabama law.

McSally previously has said she is pro-life, “with three exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.”

So her say-nothing stance Wednesday on Alabama's law was curious and possibly alarming if you happen to be that rape or incest victim. (It certainly wouldn't be the first time she flipped on an issue.)

Even evangelist Pat Robertson has called Alabama’s law “extreme.”

Yet all McSally has to say is … nothing?

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Update: On Friday – two days after her dodge and a day after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the Alabama law "goes further than I believe” – McSally told Arizona News Radio that any law banning abortion must include the three exceptions. 

"These things are state-level actions that’ll work their way through the courts, but I believe any, any initiative needs to have exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother," she said.

Apparently, she is interested in trying to appeal to moderate voters after all. Anybody who would support a ban as extreme as Alabama's might as well give up any hope of winning over moderate Republicans and independents.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com.