USA – Abortion Wins Elections for Democrats. What Should Advocates Demand in Return?

How can this popularity translate into political power for a movement that is not accustomed to making bold demands of its political leaders?

AMY LITTLEFIELD
Nov 20, 2023

If abortion were a 2024 presidential candidate, it would wipe the floor with Donald Trump. On November 7, abortion helped Democrats take back the Virginia House, keep the Kentucky governorship, and secure a Pennsylvania Supreme Court seat. In Ohio, 57 percent of voters approved enshrining abortion access in the state Constitution; it was the seventh time abortion has faced a direct vote since Dobbs and the seventh time it’s won.

Abortion wins. Abortion rights activists have known this. Voters have often chosen to defend abortion when they get a direct vote, including in red states. What’s changed is that Democrats have finally started treating abortion like an issue they can win on—and in the wake of Dobbs, they’re doing just that.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/abortion-democrats-elections/

USA – Lying About Abortion Is the GOP’s Election Strategy

Despite voters making their choice for safe and accessible abortion resoundingly clear at the polls, Republicans are doubling down on their life-threatening bans.

Kylie Cheung
Nov 20, 2023

The weekend after Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to enshrine a right to abortion in the state Constitution, Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel went on NBC’s Meet the Press and CNN’s State of the Union to pitch her master plan for Republican candidates on abortion moving forward: lie. Candidates in her party, McDaniel argued to CNN, should follow the lead of a newly elected Republican state senator in Virginia who falsely claimed that he doesn’t support abortion bans; he instead supports “common sense limitations.” On NBC, McDaniel offered an example of how Republican candidates should answer questions about the matter, saying, “It’s confusing right now. But in a time of consensus, can’t we agree on reasonable limitations [on abortion]?”

This was precisely the playbook on which anti-abortion candidates across Virginia ran—and lost—last week. They lost their narrow majority in the State House, giving Democrats control of both chambers of the state legislature and barring Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin from being able to sign an abortion ban into law. The governor, together with Virginia state Republicans, vowed to enact a 15-week ban. Yet Youngkin’s PAC stated that “there is no ban” and referred to the proposed 15-week ban as an ostensibly moderate, reasonable “limit.”

Continued: https://www.damemagazine.com/2023/11/20/republicans-abortion-position/

USA – Tuesday’s Election Results Show Women Will Fight for Abortion Rights

Women don't want men making laws getting between us, our families, and our doctors.

NANCY BRAUS, Common Dreams
Nov 12, 2023

It is clear that the Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court caught the Republicans completely off guard, even though they have been working to take away the rights of women since before they killed the Equal Rights Amendment.

The right must have thought that stealing the basic rights to bodily autonomy and to determining the size of one's own family would be upsetting at first, but then we would all get over it. The pundits always say that Americans have a short span of attention, especially when it comes to politics, so it appears that the forced birthers didn't have a clue about the buzz saw they were about to confront.

Continued: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/tuesday-election-abortion-rights

The Supreme Court dismantled Roe. States are restoring it one by one.

Support for abortion cuts across party lines, performing significantly better at the ballot box than Biden and other Democrats.

By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN, MEGAN MESSERLY and JESSICA PIPER
11/09/2023

Justice Samuel Alito challenged voters to decide the future of abortion when he wrote the U.S. Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade last year. “We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond,” he noted as he threw out half a century of precedent.

Now, 17 months later, the court has an answer: Americans want to preserve or restore Roe-like protections.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/09/abortion-rights-elections-red-states-00126225

How Republican Courts Could Sabotage the Ohio Abortion Vote and Future Ballot Measures

BY MARY ZIEGLER
NOV 09, 2023

After Ohio voted to enshrine reproductive care access in the state’s constitution on Tuesday, abortion rights supporters are now a perfect 7-for-7 in ballot initiative fights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. Ohio has Republicans in control of all three branches of government, but the state’s voters still managed to approve a ballot initiative on reproductive rights. Meanwhile, abortion helped propel state lawmakers in Virginia to control of both chambers of the state Legislature—and fueled the reelection of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear in Kentucky. Memes and tweets have circulated saying that if abortion were on the ballot in 2024 instead of Joe Biden, the race would be a done deal.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/11/republican-ohio-abortion-vote-florida-desantis.html

Abortion Rights Fuel Big Democratic Wins, and Hopes for 2024

Election results from Tuesday showed that Democrats, independents and even some moderate Republicans can coalesce around the issue.

By Lisa Lerer and Shane Goldmacher
Nov. 8, 2023

Democrats won decisive victories in major races across the country on Tuesday evening, overcoming the downward pull of an unpopular president, lingering inflation and growing global unrest by relying on abortion, the issue that has emerged as their fail-safe since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.

In races in parts of the South and the Rust Belt, Democrats put abortion rights at the center of their campaigns, spending tens of millions of dollars on ads highlighting Republican support for abortion bans.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/us/politics/election-results-democrats-abortion.html

08.11.2023

News

Andy Beshear

Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee

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

Abortion is the common thread in 2023 elections. That’s bad news for Republicans.

The GOP still hopes that the only voters who care about abortion rights are women.

Oct. 28, 2023
By Andrea Grimes, MSNBC

Americans haven’t forgotten that the ability to decide if and when to become a parent is one of the most essential, personal and life-changing decisions we’ll ever make. And we especially haven’t forgotten that the GOP is primarily responsible for wresting that decision away from many millions of us.

Because we remember both of these things, the issue of abortion remains a common thread in upcoming elections around the country — much to the consternation of Republicans. A year after the issue boosted Democrats in the midterms, the GOP is struggling to convince voters that the abortion bans the party has pushed for decades are some sort of collective fever dream. They want us to think abortion bans are a mass hysterical event that has caused us to hallucinate traveling far from home for abortion care, to invent the state-mandated traumas of forced birth, or to imagine that the pregnant people we’ve lost to poor maternal care were always ghosts, irrelevant and expendable, and never our living, loved ones.

Continued: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/election-2023-abortion-republicans-rcna122327

28.10.2023

Andy Beshear

Daniel Cameron

Glenn Youngkin

public support for abortion

USA – Abortion is on the ballot in November. The outcome will shape 2024.

Republicans hope to prove the legitimacy of “consensus” bans.

by Rachel M. Cohen
Oct 22, 2023

Few states have major elections coming up in November. But in those that do, abortion rights are playing a pivotal role.

The outcome of those contests — an abortion rights ballot measure in Ohio, a competitive gubernatorial election in Kentucky, and a fight over whether Republicans in Virginia will gain full control of state government — will shape reproductive health care in those states. The results also have big ramifications for political strategy and investments into 2024, as leaders wait to see if abortion rights yield the same kinds of electoral wins for Democrats as they did in 2022.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/2024-elections/23910990/abortion-midterms-elections-dobbs-roe

22.10.2023

Commentary

Andy Beshear

ballot initiatives on abortion

Some Republicans say the midterms were a mandate for further abortion restrictions

Many GOP lawmakers who sailed to victory in states with anti-abortion laws are planning to use their expanded power.

By MEGAN MESSERLY
12/03/2022

Republicans racked up big wins in more than a dozen state legislatures this fall — and now they’re planning to use their expanded power to crack down on abortions come January.

With sweeping abortion legislation having little chance in a divided Congress, conservative state legislators are stepping into the void, proposing to limit when the procedure can take place, enact new regulations on abortion pills and strengthen penalties for doctors who break the law. Taken together, the legislation could make it harder for tens of millions of people to obtain abortions — particularly in Southern states that still permit most abortions, like Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, which have become havens for access since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/03/anti-abortion-republican-party-roe-00071988