There's a version of Tom Tiffany that spent years in Congress voting to restrict abortion nationwide. And there's the version currently running for Governor of Wisconsin, whose campaign website doesn't want to talk about it.

They're the same guy. Only one of them is on the ballot.

What he actually did in Congress

Start with the record, because the record is not ambiguous.

On January 9, 2023, Tiffany signed on as a cosponsor of H.R. 175, the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2023 — a bill that would make it a federal crime for a doctor to perform an abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected. That's roughly six weeks into a pregnancy, often before a person knows they're pregnant.

You can see his name on the official cosponsor list at Congress.gov. He was one of 81 cosponsors, and he joined the day the bill was introduced.

The bill carries an exception for the life of the mother. It carries no exception for rape or incest — a point Tiffany has been asked about directly and declined to address.

That's not his only vote. Tiffany also voted against the Women's Health Protection Act, the bill that would have protected abortion access nationwide after Roe fell. And he signaled support for a 20-week federal abortion ban.

Before Congress, in the state Senate, he voted for Wisconsin's 2015 law banning abortion after 20 weeks — which is still Wisconsin law today. Of that bill, he has said plainly: "I stand by that bill."

The personhood problem

Tiffany belongs to the Republican Study Committee, the largest bloc of conservatives in the House.

In June 2023, the RSC published its budget blueprint for fiscal year 2024 — the document that lays out what the caucus wants to see enacted. Buried in its list of endorsed legislation, the budget backs a series of abortion bills. Two of them matter here.

The first is the Heartbeat Protection Act — the same six-week ban Tiffany personally cosponsored. The budget notes that "the RSC's Steering Committee officially endorsed the Heartbeat Protection Act."

The second goes considerably further. The budget endorses:

"Rep. Alex Mooney's (R-WV) Life at Conception Act, which would provide 14th Amendment protections at all stages of life."

Read that slowly. "14th Amendment protections at all stages of life" is the legal language of fetal personhood — the idea that a fertilized egg is a person with full constitutional rights from the moment of conception.

If that became law, abortion wouldn't just be banned. It could be treated as homicide. And it reaches past abortion entirely: personhood laws threaten in vitro fertilization, because IVF routinely involves creating embryos that don't get implanted — a collision the New York Times flagged as soon as Roe was overturned.

This isn't a fringe document Tiffany happened to be near. It's the budget of the caucus he belongs to, and it endorses a bill he personally cosponsored alongside one that would end abortion nationwide by redefining who counts as a person.

Then he ran for governor and the website changed

Here's where it gets interesting.

In October 2025, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Daniel Bice noticed something about Tiffany's personal website. His report was headlined: "Rep. Tom Tiffany erases abortion, gun rights and other issues from personal website."

Bice opened with the obvious point:

"When you've been in state and federal office for as long as U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, it's impossible to erase your political past. But you can certainly try."

The positions didn't change. The page describing them just stopped existing.

And when reporters have asked him the direct question — do you still support the six-week ban you cosponsored? — Tiffany has declined to say.

That's the whole strategy. Not a reversal. Not an explanation. Just quietly removing the evidence and refusing to answer.

Why he's hiding it

There's no mystery about the motive.

A June 2025 survey found that a majority of Wisconsinites support Planned Parenthood and abortion access. And since Roe was overturned in 2022, voters in 14 states have approved ballot measures protecting or expanding abortion rights.

Tiffany can count. He knows a six-week ban with no rape exception is not a winning platform in Wisconsin. So he's betting that voters will forget the votes if the website doesn't mention them.

The job he's applying for

This matters more than usual because of the specific office.

A member of Congress is one vote out of 435 on a bill that may never get a floor vote. A governor signs or vetoes what the Legislature sends. Wisconsin Public Broadcasting laid out where abortion law actually stands and what the 2026 candidates for governor would do about it — it is one of the sharpest dividing lines in the race.

A governor who "stands by" a 20-week ban and cosponsored a six-week ban would not be vetoing those bills. He'd be signing them.

Tiffany is asking Wisconsin voters for the one job where his abortion position converts directly into law — while declining to tell them what that position currently is.

If he's proud of the record, he can put it back on the website. If he's changed his mind, he can say so.

He's done neither. We deserve better.

Source

Reporting by American Journal News (July 31, 2026), with primary documents from Congress.gov, the RSC FY2024 budget, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.