The Biden-Harris reelection campaign sees reproductive rights as one of its most powerful issues heading into the fall. Trump reportedly understands that he is vulnerable on abortion, and he is already trying to have it both ways — boasting to the Republican base about overturning Roe v. Wade, while dissembling before wider audiences. The task for President Biden and Harris will be to make Trump and his party own the consequences of taking away women’s freedom to control their own bodies.
Politically, this should be a layup for Democrats. Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling nullifying abortion rights, voters across the country — even in red states such as Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio — have approved ballot measures to restore those rights to the extent possible.
Meanwhile, however, Republican officials are rushing to fill the vacuum created by the demise of Roe with ever-more-draconian restrictions on reproductive rights — six-week bans on abortion as legislated (but not yet imposed) in Florida, for example, or even total bans as now in effect in South Dakota. The most extreme example, so far, is the Alabama Supreme Court’s recent ruling that outlawed in vitro fertilization, which state legislators have scrambled to try to reverse.
Horror stories are legion about women whose lives have been threatened or whose health has been damaged by the denial of abortion care. Women who have been emotionally tortured by laws forcing them to carry unviable fetuses to term. Women forced to travel hundreds of miles to obtain abortions in states where the procedure is still legal.
Minnesota, where Harris campaigned on Thursday, is one of those havens. According to the Society of Family Planning, a nonprofit that tracks reproductive care, the estimated monthly number of abortions in the state rose by 33 percent in the year following the demise of Roe v. Wade — presumably from an influx of women fleeing states where “Handmaid’s Tale” restrictions are now the law.
Public opinion is clearly with the Democrats on this issue. According to a new poll by KFF, 66 percent of American adults “support a law guaranteeing a federal right to abortion.” That whopping majority includes 86 percent of Democrats, 67 percent of independents and even 43 percent of Republicans.
Some GOP strategists, including former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, have urged Republicans to stop pushing extremist policies and instead propose a “compromise” 16-week national abortion ban. Trump has flirted with taking that stance, though he hasn’t fully settled on it.
But the KFF poll found that 58 percent of adults surveyed said they would oppose such a federal law. One wonders what it is about the concept of bodily autonomy that Republicans don’t understand. It turns out that what Americans want — or want to reclaim — is the legal framework we had for nearly 50 years, before Trump’s three far-right appointees tipped the balance on the Supreme Court; women should have the fundamental right to choose, and abridgment of that right can only go so far.
An issue that once galvanized the GOP has become a minefield for Trump and the party. One evening last month, according to NBC, Trump went table-hopping among dinner patrons at his Mar-a-Lago Club, asking what they thought about the antiabortion views of several of the Republicans he might pick as his running mate. Did they think Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) went too far by supporting a six-week ban? Would that be a drag on the ticket?
While Republicans pull in all directions at once, Biden and Harris have been clear and consistent. During his State of the Union speech last week, Biden told the Supreme Court justices in attendance that “you’re about to realize just how much” political power women have in this country. He favors federal legislation that would “restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land.”
Harris, however, is taking the lead on protecting abortion rights. Her Minnesota trip was the sixth stop on what she calls her “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” campaign tour, which has included visits to swing states such as Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan and Arizona. Republicans have made no coherent effort to respond, which is understandable, because they have no idea what their response should be.
The GOP’s big problem is that what Trump ought to say is the one thing he never, ever says: I’m sorry.
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