From Barbie to Bud Light influencers to a bizarre fantasy of his own making involving “Mickey and Pluto going at it,” Ted Cruz rarely misses an opportunity to weigh in on an issue he thinks will score him some air time on Fox News and ingratiate him to the right. But apparently, even Senator “Gelatinous Tubeworm” doesn’t want to be associated with Texas’s appalling treatment of Kate Cox, the woman who had to flee the state to get a medically necessary abortion because a barbaric law and a state supreme court believes pregnant people should be subject to cruel and unusual punishment.

Cruz was asked three separate times on Tuesday to weigh in on the matter but refused to do so, telling NBC News to speak to his press office, which didn’t respond to a request for comment. When asked again on Wednesday, the Texas lawmaker again refused.

Cruz has never previously been shy about discussing reproductive matters. Before Roe v. Wade was overturned, he was the lead sponsor of a bill that would have banned the procedure after 20 weeks nationwide. Weeks before Roe was gutted, responding to a leaked draft decision indicating the Supreme Court would reverse nearly 50 years of precedent, he wrote, “If this report is true, this is nothing short of a massive victory.” After it became official, Cruz called the Dobbs v. Jackson decision a “momentous moment” and a “vindication for the rule of law.”

It’s not clear why Cruz has chosen not to wade into the Cox matter, but it likely has to do with the fact that even he realizes how bad it makes Texas look and that it could impact his chance of reelection next November. Last week, a judge granted Cox’s request for an abortion, siding with her lawyers’ argument that the procedure was necessary to preserve future fertility and protect her from undergoing a potentially dangerous birth and tragic outcome. (Cox’s doctors had diagnosed her fetus with a genetic condition that almost always leads to miscarriage, stillbirth, or the child dying within one year.) Shortly thereafter, state attorney general Ken Paxton appealed the ruling to the Texas Supreme Court, which blocked the lower court’s order. Cox has left the state to undergo the procedure elsewhere, with the group representing her saying, “This past week of legal limbo has been hellish for Kate. Her health is on the line. She’s been in and out of the emergency room, and she couldn’t wait any longer.”

Like Cruz—a certified weasel and a coward—Texas’s other senator, John Cornyn, has refused to weigh in on the matter, telling NBC News, “I’m not a state official, so I’m not going to comment on what state officials are doing. I’m happy to comment on anything that I’m responsible for.”

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