Arizona Republican senate nominee Blake Masters alters pro-life stance

Arizona GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters this week appeared to back sharply away from his earlier hardline pro-life stance, significantly moderating his position on the controversial topic as he struggles to catch up with his Democratic competitor in the race. 

Masters sometime this week appeared to significantly alter his campaign website's statements on abortion, stripping from it a pledge that he would support an anti-abortion "personhood" amendment to the Constitution, a proposal that would presumably outlaw abortion nationwide. 

Also gone from Masters's site was a promise to strip government funding from scientific projects that use aborted human remains in their testing materials. 

In a campaign ad released to Twitter, meanwhile, Masters said he supports "a ban on very late-term and partial birth abortion," referring to procedures that constitute a very small fraction of the total number of abortions performed throughout the country. 

Why Masters made the radical less than three months away from the November election is unclear. The campaign of Masters's Democratic rival Mark Kelly, meanwhile, slammed the move. 

"If Blake Masters thinks that he can quietly delete passages from his website and disguise just how out of touch and dangerous his abortion stance is, he’s in for a rude awakening," Kelly campaign spokeswoman Sarah Guggenheimer told NBC News.