Democrats Launch Robust Reproductive Freedom Campaign on 51st Anniversary of Roe v. Wade
In the wake of successful state initiatives securing abortion access, Democrats intensify efforts on the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, emphasizing reproductive freedom. This strategic move gains significance in an election year where abortion rights hold the potential to influence the power dynamics in Washington.
Senate Democrats held a briefing on abortion access, focusing on the impact of state abortion bans. More than half of the Democratic caucus, including Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, heard from and questioned medical professionals and experts.
“I was thrilled to be pregnant for the fifth time, then, a routine ultrasound showed devastating — the brain and skull had not formed. It was anencephaly. The most severe neural tube diagnosis. Although relatively rare, this is fatal,” said Dr. Austin Dennard, a Texas OB-GYN and plaintiff in a lawsuit brought against the state by people denied abortions since the Dobbs decision.
Vice President Kamala Harris is gearing up for a national tour next week to champion the issue of abortion, a sign of how the Biden campaign plans to put a big focus on reproductive access and efforts to restrict abortion in Republican state legislatures.
Despite hurdles in Washington with a GOP-controlled House and a Senate filibuster threshold, Democrats turn to the accomplishments of abortion-rights advocates in states as a blueprint for refining messaging, campaigning, and aspiring to enact legislation on the issue.
“If this is a silent story that women don’t talk about, which has been our past, then women won’t know that they need to go out and fight for their rights,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who organized the briefing and has long been a proponent in Congress of codifying abortion access into law.
After the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision ended the national right to abortion in 2022, Murray worked to secure support for the Women’s Health Protection Act and pressured leadership to force votes on the bill, which was stopped in the Senate when conservative Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia joined with almost all Republicans. Senate Democrats again took to the floor to push reproductive health legislation one year later, though the effort was largely seen as symbolic.
Legal battles over abortion access mounting across the country
The federal stasis on the issue could not be more different from the situations in individual states, where there has been a wave of new legislation and where reproductive rights advocates and Democratic operatives have seen major victories transcending party lines to counter abortion bans in purple and even some red states.
A reproductive rights advocate working on ballot initiatives in a purple state recalled needing to “clobber” high-level party strategists with data points and polling to illustrate what a winning issue reproductive freedom could be.
While the majority of congressional Democrats do support legislating a national solution to reproductive access, it can also be a politically divisive issue for Democrats, some of whom are up for re-election in ideologically mixed states.
“I think that people are more comfortable today talking about the realities of having a pregnancy that either you don’t want, can’t have or you are pregnant and need to have an abortion for whatever reason. They’re more comfortable about talking about it today than I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Murray said in an interview in her Capitol office.
Murray, however, acknowledged that the burden has been on women to be loud and in front about reproductive access, even in 2024.
“Actually, we want [men] out there more. I’ve always seen that women lead this fight because they know the impacts. But more and more men are seeing this happen to their daughters, their neighbors, their friends, their relatives and even their own wives or girlfriends.”
There is no man more powerful than the president of the United States, and Joe Biden’s long political career includes a complicated relationship with abortion policy. While he supported Roe as a senator and as vice president, Biden also backed some restrictions on the procedure in an era before the Democratic Party was down-the-line pro-abortion rights.
Today, advocates are looking to Biden, the leader of today’s Democratic Party, to facilitate support among voters who see reproductive access as a basic right and would descend on the ballot box to send pro-abortion-rights Democrats to Congress.
