2018 ND Senate race: on Abortion

Heidi Heitkamp: Fund Planned Parenthood but don't fund abortions

Kevin Cramer (R): Ban. "Forty years ago, the United States Supreme Court sanctioned abortion on demand. & we wonder why our culture sees school shootings so often."

Heidi Heitkamp (D): Mostly legal. "Reproductive decisions should be left to a woman, her family, & her doctor." But opposes public funding & supports state's right to mandate parental consent for minors & to restrict partial-birth abortions.

Q: Let Planned Parenthood receive public funds for non-abortion health care?

Kevin Cramer (R): No. Co-sponsored bill to defund.

Heidi Heitkamp (D): Yes. Voted against numerous bills aimed at defunding.

Q: Allow employers to withhold contraceptive coverage from employees if disagree with it morally?

Kevin Cramer (R): Yes. Requiring contraceptive coverage infringes upon religious freedoms.

Heidi Heitkamp (D): No. Keep ACA requirement that insurance plans provide non-copay contraception.

Kevin Cramer: Abortion on demand for 40 years leads to school shootings

Kevin Cramer (R): Ban. "Forty years ago, the United States Supreme Court sanctioned abortion on demand. & we wonder why our culture sees school shootings so often."

Heidi Heitkamp (D): Mostly legal. "Reproductive decisions should be left to a woman, her family, & her doctor." But opposes public funding & supports state's right to mandate parental consent for minors & to restrict partial-birth abortions.

Q: Let Planned Parenthood receive public funds for non-abortion health care?

Kevin Cramer (R): No. Co-sponsored bill to defund.

Heidi Heitkamp (D): Yes. Voted against numerous bills aimed at defunding.

Q: Allow employers to withhold contraceptive coverage from employees if disagree with it morally?

Kevin Cramer (R): Yes. Requiring contraceptive coverage infringes upon religious freedoms.

Heidi Heitkamp (D): No. Keep ACA requirement that insurance plans provide non-copay contraception.

Heidi Heitkamp: Opposed 20-week abortion ban

Not only that, but C-SPAN cameras caught Heitkamp high-fiving Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on the Senate floor just after the vote. PolitiFact assessed the moment as being "more of an awkward greeting than a crude celebration," but to many constituents, it appeared tone-deaf and even offensive.

After that vote, on February 15, Rep, Kevin Cramer entered the race, immediately making it the most-discussed Senate contest of the midterm cycle, and rightly so.

North Dakota has just one member in the House. As a result, Cramer has already represented the entire state in Congress since 2012, the year that both he and Heitkamp were first elected (she in a close contest against Republican Rick Berg). In that election, Cramer received 12,000 more votes than she did.

Kevin Cramer: Announced for Senate due to incumbent's pro-choice vote

The president called to say he was disappointed. "I hope you don't disappoint me again," Cramer tells me Trump said to him at the time. "Start thinking more about your country and less about yourself." For Cramer, one of the very first Republican politicians to endorse Trump during his 2016 run for president, the pointed message was difficult to ignore.

Then, just a week or two later, the Senate voted on the 20-week abortion ban, and Heitkamp joined nearly all of her Democratic colleagues in opposing it, despite having promised her constituents that she'd support it.

After that vote, Cramer says, he was inundated with calls from North Dakotans demanding that he jump in to challenge Heitkamp.

Dustin Peyer: Government has no role in woman's choice