But then she blew off the actual endorsement interview for the group multiple times. A PPSAT spokesperson told Jezebel, “Rep. Cotham’s campaign scheduled numerous candidate interviews with our board (the board endorses candidates), but she did not attend any of the interviews,” which is why they didn’t endorse her.

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Then the day after the Supreme Court Dobbs opinion leak, Cotham complained to Alston via a now-public Twitter DM that Planned Parenthood and another organization had “really screwed” her. In the message, Cotham asks Alston if she would share a video of her abortion speech.

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Alston told Jezebel she believed Cotham sent the DM because she was upset about not getting the PPSAT endorsement, as “she had considered herself such a champion for women and women’s rights.”

“The only thing that I can say for sure about Tricia Cotham from here on out is that she will always be the victim,” Coby said. “That is just who she believes herself to be, just a victim of life.”

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And so, feeling under-appreciated and under-celebrated by the left, Cotham saw an opportunity “to be the new shiny object in the Republican Party,” as Alston put it. And that meant being the hero who delivered them a huge victory on abortion. Nevermind everything she said before on the subject, or that she was throwing her own constituents who voted for her, and millions of other people, under the bus.

Now, Cotham still has a chance to change her mind. Gov. Cooper is expected to veto the abortion ban on Saturday, after which Republicans will take a vote to override it. Cotham could, by some miracle, decide not to join them, and activists on both sides are certainly pinning their hopes on her. The influential anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America has launched digital ads to support Cotham and three other lawmakers they accuse the governor of “bullying” in advance of the expected veto override. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic is appealing to her conscience.

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“We hope that a person who has experienced an abortion would do everything they could to protect access to it,” said Jillian Riley, director of public affairs at PPSAT, told Jezebel in a statement. “Rep. Cotham has one last chance to do that—to honor her personal experience and to stay true to her word.”

Alston, meanwhile, says she would just “like Tricia Cotham to remember where she came from,” having experienced life as a young mother working in the State House, needing an abortion herself, and more recently, struggling with long covid.

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“Her new party would not support the decision she had to have an abortion. Her new party downplayed the significance of covid. She is now aligning herself with a party that is directly opposed to so many things she has not just stood for, but who she is and has been as a person,” Alston told me. “Selling out your soul is not worth it in the long term.”