Democrats believe abortion will motivate voters in 2024. Will it be enough?

The Biden campaign is betting big on abortion rights as a major driver in this year's presidential election

By COLLEEN LONG and CHRIS MEGERIAN, Associated Press
January 21, 2024

WASHINGTON -- When Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said recently that he was “proud” to have a hand in overturning the abortion protections enshrined in Roe v. Wade, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake took it as a political gift, thinking to herself, “Oh my God, we just won the election.”

It may not be that simple, but as the 2024 race heats up, President Joe Biden's campaign is betting big on abortion rights as a major driver for Democrats in the election. Republicans are still trying to figure out how to talk about the issue, if at all, and avoid a political backlash.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/democrats-abortion-motivate-voters-2024-106547428

Will Abortion Dominate the 2024 Elections? Tuesday Will Offer Clues.

Lisa Lerer and Shane Goldmacher
(New York Times)
Sat, November 4, 2023

Abortion has emerged as a defining fault line of this year’s elections, with consequential contests in several states Tuesday offering fresh tests of the issue’s political potency nearly 18 months after the Supreme Court ended a federal right to an abortion.

The decision overturning Roe v. Wade scrambled American politics in 2022, transforming a long-standing social conflict into an electoral battering ram that helped drive Democrats to critical victories in the midterm races. Now, as abortion restrictions and bans in red states have become reality, the issue is again on the ballot, both explicitly and implicitly, in races across the country.

Continued: https://news.yahoo.com/abortion-dominate-2024-elections-tuesday-151158875.html

ERA and Abortion Are Key to Women’s Vote in 2024

The overturning of Roe v. Wade was a wake-up call and the Equal Rights Amendment is needed now more than ever.

KATHY SPILLAR
Oct 29, 2023

In the majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning the federal right to abortion, Justice Alito purported that the electoral and political process are a sufficient antidote to the Court’s stripping away of privacy rights. Women got the message, loud and clear. Despite warnings from mainstream pundits that outrage over the ruling and commitment to the cause would fade, voters indeed turned out in force in support of abortion rights – again and again, in the 2022 midterms, in judicial elections, and in ballot measure after ballot measure.

As executive editor of Ms. magazine, I have long known the centrality of abortion in U.S. politics. The inaugural issue of Ms. in 1972, for example, featured a group of influential women who signed a petition “We Have Had Abortions” — at great personal risk, as abortion was outlawed in many states at the time. This set the stage not only for Roe v. Wade a year later, but organizing strategies that are still employed today. The Washington Post reported last year that the Ms. petition “changed the course of the abortion rights movement,” as it made visible that which had been invisible — the women who had abortions and the benefits to their lives.

Continued: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/era-abortion-rights-2024

Harris rallies against GOP push to roll back abortion rights

By CHRIS MEGERIAN and SEUNG MIN KIM

Jan 21, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris railed against efforts in Washington and in Republican-led states to restrict abortion on what would have been the 50th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, invoking fundamental American values such as freedom to make the case for protecting abortion access despite the Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate constitutional protections for it.

Leading the administration’s response on commemorating Roe on Sunday, Harris methodically detailed fights throughout history for certain liberties, such as civil rights and the right to vote for women, and tied that to access for abortion, which Harris called the “fundamental, constitutional, right of a woman to make decisions about her own body.”

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-biden-politics-health-florida-state-government-3050ca96e5d1fe914c1e2c1ad18a5b8f

21.01.2023

With Roe endangered, Democrats divide on saying the word ‘abortion’

By Caroline Kitchener
April 2, 2022

After Texas passed its restrictive abortion law last fall, Democrats started talking more about abortion than they had in decades.

House Democrats coalesced around a bill to turn into law the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing most abortions, Roe v. Wade, voicing their support for the landmark precedent in tweets and public statements. A few days later, three congresswomen shared their abortion stories on the House floor. And when he delivered his State of the Union address in March, President Biden became the first Democratic president since Roe to use that platform to call for action on abortion rights.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/02/abortion-rhetoric-roe/

What President Biden’s State of the Union Says About the Politics of Abortion

BY ABIGAIL ABRAMS
MARCH 2, 2022

Following abortion rights groups’ efforts to pressure President Joe Biden into speaking out in favor of reproductive rights in America, the President mentioned the topic just briefly on Tuesday during his first State of the Union address.

“The constitutional right affirmed by Roe v. Wade—standing precedent for half a century—is under attack as never before,” Biden said during the speech. “If we want to go forward, not backward, we must protect access to health care. Preserve a woman’s right to choose.”

Continued: https://time.com/6153102/biden-abortion-state-of-the-union/

USA – Supporters of Abortion Rights, at Nationwide Marches, Try to Regain Momentum

A nationwide march for abortion rights on Saturday offered an early test of Democratic enthusiasm in the post-Trump era.

By Lisa Lerer and Campbell Robertson
Oct. 2, 2021

Last fall, Hannah Dasgupta spent her days focused on politics, channeling her fear and anger over President Donald J. Trump into activism. Worried about the future of abortion rights, among other issues, during the Trump administration, she joined a group of suburban Ohio women who were working to elect Democrats.

A year later, Ms. Dasgupta, 37, still cares just as deeply about those issues. But she did not attend a nationwide women’s march for abortion rights on Saturday. In fact, she hadn’t even heard about it.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/02/us/politics/abortion-rights-march.html

From Alabama to Armagh, women are on the front line waging the ‘war on abortion’

From Alabama to Armagh, women are on the front line waging the ‘war on abortion’
Far from being driven just by men, many female voices are heard in the anti-choice lobby

Catherine Bennett
Sat 18 May 2019

Intensifying campaigns to criminalise all abortion in the US have been summarised, accurately, as a war on women, one that calls on women to, as the presidential contender Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has put it, “fight like hell”.

In terms of knowing the enemy, much of it, in the US, will certainly resemble the Alabama misogynists – the 25 white, male, no longer young Republicans who have just stripped half their state’s population of reproductive rights. Photographs have been generously distributed. But, as the men would probably be the first to admit, they couldn’t have ushered in a generation or more of unwanted children without assistance from at least two women combatants, Terri Collins and the state governor, Kay Ivey.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/18/from-alabama-to-armagh-women-are-on-the-front-line-in-the-war-on-abortion