Republicans keep talking about rape, and the political consequences keep coming.

It’s a lesson learned the hard way so many times, most recently Wednesday night. With the GOP in control of both chambers of Congress, Republicans in the House were poised to pass a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy to try to advance it in the Senate. The bill is an outright challenge to Roe v. Wade, decided exactly 42 years ago .


Instead, House leaders had to cancel the vote after objections from some female Republicans who deemed a rape exemption unacceptably narrow and burdensome. The bill would not let rape or incest victims get an abortion after 20 weeks unless they had filed a police report, although most women who are raped do not report it.

Once again, the party of Todd Akin and transvaginal ultrasounds seemed to undo its own imminent victory.

“It’s a messaging issue,” said North Carolina GOP Rep. Renee Ellmers, whose objections to the restrictive rape language helped scuttle the bill and whose office later drew dozens of protesters who had wanted the stricter approach. “I believe our heart is in the right place, and we’re standing up for what is right. But I think in order to be able to have that conversation with the American people, we have always got to be speaking from the perspective of the individual and … having compassion for women in all situations.”

Republicans had vowed to avoid a repeat of candidates’ missteps in 2012, when Akin’s “legitimate rape” comments in Missouri and Richard Mourdock’s characterization of pregnancy from rape being “something God intended” cost the party two key Senate races and, arguably, control of the Senate.

The discipline paid off in 2014, when the GOP avoided talk of rape and swept Senate, House and state offices. Congressional Republicans quickly coalesced around abortion restrictions with potential to appeal even to those who tend to favor abortion rights.

Polls show Americans generally want abortion to stay legal — but with restrictions. More than a dozen states have passed 20 week bans, based on proponents’ contention that a fetus at that point of development can feel pain . A Quinnipiac University poll in November found 60 percent of Americans support the basic idea of a 20-week ban.

So House Republican leaders were caught off-guard when women in their own ranks — joined by at least one man — revolted. Anti-abortion activists in town for the annual March for Life were furious.

“Most women who are raped are not going to wait until their fifth month of pregnancy to seek an abortion,” said Tami Fitzgerald, an anti-abortion activist from North Carolina who was protesting in front of Ellmers’ office on Thursday. “It was her objection that led to this, and she has caused a major pro-life victory, probably the biggest one of this decade, to be torpedoed over a distinction that makes no difference.”

In reality, the bill’s passage would have been symbolic, albeit important. It’s unlikely to get a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate — and would likely face a White House veto and legal challenges if it did. The language goes beyond the parameters of abortion restrictions the Supreme Court outlined in Roe.

Rape has added extra controversy to abortion bills before. In 2011, a ban on federal funding had an exemption for “forcible rape,” which led to an outcry as that definition excluded some rape victims, including statutory rape. And in 2013, with the party still wincing from Akin’s comments, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) claimed the incidence of pregnancy after rape is “ very low” while pushing for a similar ban after 20 weeks.

Activists march in the annual March for Life, Jan. 22, 2015 in Washington, D.C. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

The incidents reflect a “number of elderly, very white men dictating to women” about their lives, said American Constitution Society President Caroline Fredrickson, a former legal director for NARAL Pro-Choice America. “It’s just sort of a vision of a world that they wish still existed.”

Republicans are urging their colleagues to distance themselves from discussions of rape.

“The less we engage on this issue, I think, the better off we are as a party,” said Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, who backed pulling the 20-week measure although he has voted for some anti-abortion legislation in the past. “Would somebody try to explain the difference between rape and forcible rape to me?” he added. “Rape is rape. I don’t know the difference, and I don’t want to have to explain this to anyone.”

But for ardent abortion opponents, the best way to avoid parsing rape is to eliminate abortion rape exemptions.

“The lengthy history of this debate makes pro-lifers nervous about loopholes,” said Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior editor at the National Review and author of “The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life.” “They’re concerned that you could just have a situation where the abortionist just says, oh, that’s a rape and that’s a rape and that’s a rape.”

Others don’t worry so much about women manipulating loopholes; they just don’t believe in abortion, period. For them, life should be protected, no matter how it originated. At the March for Life, Kristi Hofferber’s sign stood out: “My biological father was a rapist.”

Hofferber, from Edwardsville, Ill., was glad to see the fetal pain bill canceled rather than watered down. “Every life is important, and if there are any kind of exceptions in the bill, then it shouldn’t be. Our lives are valuable, those who are conceived in rape and incest.” Her mother was a victim of both, she said.

Arkansas is the only state that has passed a 20-week ban that includes an exemption for rape or incest. The other 12 states only provide exemptions when the health of the mother is at risk, although they exclude risk of suicide or other psychological impairment. But the police-report requirement appears to be a federal innovation.

Only about one in three women who are raped file reports with law enforcement, according to the Justice Department. Leila Abolfazli, a senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, which supports abortion rights, said that statistic means that an exemption only for victims who do report the crime is “so narrow that it’s meaningless for most women who are in that situation.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Thursday that women’s reluctance to report rape is “a legitimate concern ” and he would modify the language in the Senate legislation — language that he said he didn’t realize was in the bill that he had introduced and championed. But he accused abortion-rights supporters of using the rape controversy to distract from “the underlying concept.”

”Should we allow wholesale abortions after 20 weeks of the pregnancy — and that is an extreme position to take,” he said.

Questions about whether rape victims feel comfortable reporting the crime — and whether they’re credible — have gotten unusual focus in the media recently. Dozens of women have emerged to accuse comedian Bill Cosby of sexual assaults, sometimes decades old. At the same time, a high-profile report in Rolling Stone about a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity was roundly discredited. At least initially, defenders and detractors of the piece split on partisan lines, with the right leading the charge against it.

As president of Americans United for Life, Charmaine Yoest often frames abortion-restriction measures as a way to protect women, noting in the case of the 20-week bill that later abortions are more dangerous than those performed in the first trimester. But she counseled Republicans not to downplay the experience of rape victims.

“You always address it starting out with agreeing that every normal human being out there agrees that it’s a tragedy,” she said. “We need to focus on underscoring that point with women.”

Republican leaders are getting the message, said Ponnuru. Gone are the days when George W. Bush would sign a partial-birth abortion ban surrounded by men, for instance. And it was the women of the House who stopped this bill.

Natalie Villacorta, Lauren French, Jennifer Haberkorn, and Erin Mershon contributed to this report.