‘We need to read the room’: GOP divided on abortion as Democrats unite for 2024

Democrats center abortion rights in early stages of presidential campaign while Republicans waver over unpopular position

Lauren Gambino in Washington DC
Sun 30 Apr 2023

Hours after Joe Biden announced his re-election campaign on Tuesday, his vice-president and 2024 running mate, Kamala Harris, delivered a fiery call to action for voters alarmed by the loss of constitutional protections for abortion.

“This is a moment for us to stand and fight,” she said to a packed auditorium at Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington and her alma mater. To the “extremist so-called leaders” rolling back access to reproductive rights, Harris warned: “Don’t get in our way because if you do, we’re going to stand up, we’re going to organize and we’re going to speak up.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/30/republicans-divided-abortion-democrats-united-2024-election


‘THE central issue’: How the fall of Roe v. Wade shook the 2022 election

More than 50 Democratic and Republican elected officials, campaign aides and consultants took POLITICO inside the first campaign after the Supreme Court's landmark ruling.

By ELENA SCHNEIDER and HOLLY OTTERBEIN
12/19/2022

On May 4, less than 48 hours after a draft opinion was published showing the Supreme Court was poised to end the federal right to abortion, a group of eight strangers gathered around a conference table in the Detroit suburbs to talk about the news.

They were all white women, mostly in their 30s to 50s and without college degrees. Their home county, Macomb, had voted for President Barack Obama twice and President Donald Trump twice. In the upcoming gubernatorial race, they were undecided, frustrated by how Democratic incumbent Gretchen Whitmer had handled the pandemic.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/19/dobbs-2022-election-abortion-00074426


Support for Legalized Abortion Grows Since Dobbs Ruling, WSJ Poll Shows

More than half of voters said the issue made them more likely to cast ballots in the midterm elections; majorities oppose 6-week and 15-week abortion bans

By Catherine Lucey
Sept. 3, 2022

WASHINGTON—Voters have grown more supportive of legalizing abortion following the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, with a clear majority opposing restrictions, like bans at a certain point of pregnancy or barring women from traveling to get a legal abortion, according to a new Wall Street Journal poll that underscores the importance of the issue in the midterm elections.

According to the survey, 60% of voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, up from 55% in March. Another 29% said it should be illegal, except in cases of rape, incest and when the woman’s life is endangered, compared with 30% in March. And 6% said it should be illegal in all cases, down from 11% in March.

Continued: https://www.wsj.com/articles/support-for-legalized-abortion-grows-since-dobbs-ruling-wsj-poll-shows-11662210020?mod=hp_lead_pos3


‘It’s earth-shattering’: Democrats and allies vow midterm fight over abortion

Pro-choice groups and lawmakers will focus voters’ attention on the threat to reproductive rights after Mississippi case

Lauren Gambino in Washington
Fri 3 Dec 2021

With the US supreme court seemingly poised to exploit its conservative supermajority to undermine or overturn the landmark Roe v Wade decision, Democrats are vowing to make abortion a defining issue of next year’s midterm elections, embracing what they view as a political silver lining in an otherwise nightmare scenario.

As the justices weigh whether to uphold a Mississippi law banning most abortions after 15 weeks, far earlier than Roe allows, and a request by the state that they explicitly overturn the historic 1973 ruling, Democrats and their allies have promised a fight.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/dec/03/abortion-rights-driving-force-2022-elections-experts-predict