Pro-Life Kevin Cramer Defeats Heidi Heitkamp, Who High-Fived Senators After Voting for Abortion

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Nov 6, 2018   |   11:11PM   |   Washington, DC

In another Senate victory for pro-life advocates, North Dakota Democrat Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, who became nationally infamous after she celebrated a vote to defeat a ban on late-term abortions, has gone down in defeat.

In January, Democrats in the United States Senate gave each other a high five, normally meant to celebrate camaraderie and a job well done, on something dark and disgusting. After the vote to defeat the bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks, Democrats on the Senate floor gave each other a high-five. How members of the Senate can explain their actions is beyond most Americans — as fully two-thirds of Americans believe late-term abortions on viable unborn babies ought to be illegal.

All but three Democrats voted to keep late-term abortions legal as did two Republicans. And after the vote, Heitkamp gave Chuck Schumer a high-five, or whatever the awkward move was that was captured on C-Span.

Heitkamp lost to pro-life Rep. Kevin Cramer, who has served three consecutive terms in the House. Cramer said he had to jump into the race after his opponent celebrated voting against a 20-week abortion ban.

Keep up with the latest pro-life news and information on Twitter.

“At that point, you realize it’s bigger than you,” Mr. Cramer said.

“Somebody has got to step in and do something about it,” he said.

Leading pro-life groups thought Heitkamp could be defeated in part because Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 36 percentage points in North Dakota in the 2016 presidential election.

Heitkamp also lost votes after deciding to oppose Brett Kavanauagh’s Supreme Court nomination.

Cramer has called out incumbent Heidi Heitkamp for failing to fulfill her promises to be a political moderate.

National Review reports:

Despite having said in 2012 that she opposed publicly funded and late-term abortions, Democratic senator Heidi Heitkamp voted against the 20-week abortion ban in January and has voted several times to continue federal funding of Planned Parenthood. Unsurprisingly, Heitkamp earned herself a 100 percent rating on Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s 2018 congressional scorecard.

But with her votes on the issue, she also earned herself a formidable challenger. Republican Kevin Cramer, North Dakota’s at-large congressman, told National Review in June that Heitkamp’s vote against the 20-week ban was one of the key reasons he decided to jump in the race even after having announced that he wouldn’t do so. Cramer says that following Heitkamp’s vote — and her apparent high-five with Chuck Schumer directly after the pro-life bill was defeated — his office was inundated with calls from constituents demanding that he challenge her.