Abortion is the Number One Issue for Young Women Voters
9.3.24
Click to skip ahead: Starting off strong with new polling in America Supports Abortion. Trump’s Abortion Problem looks at the former president’s panicked flip flopping. In Anti-Abortion Language Watch, more on ‘coercion’ and the conservative war against ‘ban’. In the States, news from Texas, New Mexico, Ohio and more. Ballot Measure Updates in Florida, Nebraska, and more. 2024 looks at men’s votes on abortion, suburban outreach, and JD Vance’s latest fuck-up. In the Nation, some quick hits. Finally, a new video series announcement in You Love to See It!
America Supports Abortion
Let’s start with some good news: Abortion is now the number one election issue for American women under 45 years old. The latest New York Times/Sienna College poll also found that abortion is nearly tied with the economy as the number one issue for women of all ages in battleground states, and is just about tied with immigration as the second most important issue for all battleground voters. I don’t think the NYT will mind that I stole this quick screenshot:
I don’t find the numbers shocking in the least, but I’m glad to see them out there explicitly—especially because Republicans are so eager to pretend that abortion isn’t all that important to voters. Thats getting harder and harder to do.
Trump’s Abortion Problem
All eyes are on Donald Trump’s abortion flip-flopping, which has been equal parts hilarious and infuriating. It’s a nice reminder of just how popular abortion rights are, but incredibly frustrating to see Trump’s stance be treated seriously—especially by mainstream media outlets. (More on this in the newsletter last week.)
The short version: After Trump seemed to hint that he’d support Florida’s pro-choice ballot measure, now the disgraced former president says he’ll vote against it because “the Democrats are radical.” The switch-up came in response to outrage from anti-abortion groups, prompting Trump to repeat bullshit abortion ‘up until birth’ talking points and saying that’s why he’ll vote ‘no’ on Amendment 4.
Trump knows abortion could lose him the election. Journalist Jonathan Lemire reports that his sources say Trump knows abortion is his campaign’s biggest problem. And pollster Tresa Undem tells The Guardian that Trump is likely trying to reassure pro-choice Republicans:
“A third of his voters are pro-choice. In a recent survey we did, 16% of 2020 Trump voters say abortion rights are a top five issue.”
And, of course, that New York Times poll showing abortion rights support in swing states is probably weighing on Trump’s mind, too. Hence his constantly shifting public stance. But as Reproductive Freedom for All president Mini Timmaraju said on MSNBC, all this is proves is that “Donald Trump will say and do anything to distract from his disastrous record on reproductive freedom.” It’s also a particularly bad look for Trump as his campaign attacks Vice President Kamala Harris as a “flip flopper.” After all, as U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff pointed out, Trump “changed his position four times on abortion in the last 48 hours.”
Conservatives are obviously starting to worry—both about pissing off anti-abortion activists and alienating Republican voters who oppose abortion bans. Over at the conservative publication WORLD, for example, R. Albert Mohler Jr. encourages anti-abortion hardliners to vote for Trump because “the bottom line is what a Trump administration would do compared to what a Harris administration will do.” But over at The Federalist, they’re leaning into the idea of Trump as ‘moderate’ on abortion rights in an attempt to reach voters who don’t like abortion bans. It seems like it’s not just Trump who can’t decide which way to go publicly—but conservatives more broadly.
Anti-Abortion Language Watch
I just had to share this absolutely bananas quote from Aaron Baer, president of the Center for Christian Virtue, who is complaining about increased abortion rights in Ohio (where they just did away with the 24-hour waiting period).
“It's really heartbreaking. The reality of this is as more and more women get harmed by the abortion industry, as the realities of what this constitutional amendment means for the state really start setting upon voters, we think there's gonna be a lot of buyer’s remorse.” (Emphasis mine)
Buyer’s remorse is quite the statement! It’s a good reminder of the way they think about women. Baer also added this: “You're going to hear more stories of women being pressured, exploited, and coerced into getting abortions.”
As you know, I’ve been raising the alarm recently about language around ‘coerced’ abortions. Republicans think that claiming most abortions are somehow the product of domestic violence coercion will make their bans seem as if they’re somehow helping vulnerable women rather than hurting them.
Also in Ohio, Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno tried to dodge his anti-abortion extremism in an interview this weekend by saying, “I do think that at some point, aspirationally, we get to the point where, after 15 weeks, there’s some common-sense restrictions.” (Emphasis mine)
Man oh man they will do anything not to use the word ‘ban’! Moreno also used the phrase last month when asked about national legislation, telling a reporter, “I think we can get to a place where after 15 weeks, there's just some common-sense restrictions.” And back in a January debate, Moreno pushed back on the moderator for even asking a question using the word ‘ban.’
“To be clear, you’re using that word, I’m not…Insomuch as there is a federal law, I think we can work towards consensus around not having federal funding for abortion, and getting to a point where we can have a 15-week floor where there’s common-sense restrictions after 15 weeks.”
In the States
Could abortion oust Ted Cruz? I almost hate to say it aloud as not to jinx the possibility! But it appears that Cruz is only two points ahead of Rep. Colin Allred in Texas, a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat in nearly three decades. Cruz has been uncharacteristically quiet on abortion rights these days—in one case literally running away from a reporter who was asking him questions about Kate Cox. Something tells me he can see the writing on the wall.
In fact, if you want to know just how poisonous abortion rights has become for Republicans, consider that the GOP Senate candidate in New Mexico issued a cease and desist order over a 30 second ad linking her to a national abortion ban. That’s right, even the mention of a national abortion ban has prompted legal threats from Republican Nella Domenici.
The ad from Sen. Martin Heinrich tells voters that Sen. Mitch McConnell and “the MAGA Republicans” recruited Domenici, and that “a vote for Nella is a vote for a national abortion ban.”
Domenici really didn’t like that and is demanding that Heinrich take down the ad, which her attorney says “makes defamatory, false and misleading claims intended to deliberately deceive New Mexico voters about Ms. Domenici and her position on abortion before the November 2024 general election.”
Domenici claims that she doesn’t support a national abortion ban, and recently released her own ad that would make you think she’s downright pro-choice if you didn’t know the truth:
You know what I’m going to say: It doesn’t mean anything when a Republican says they don’t support a national ‘ban.’ I’m betting if someone would ask Domenici about a federal ‘restriction’ or ‘standard,’ we’d get a much different answer. They’re just playing semantics in order to trick voters.
After all, Domenici is supported by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and was hand-picked by Sen. Mitch McConnell. As Planned Parenthood Alexis McGill Johnson noted, “Electing Nella would give the national GOP the vote they need to pass a national abortion ban, taking the freedom to control our own bodies, lives, and futures away from millions.”
Meanwhile, since Ohio passed Issue 1, which protects abortion rights in the state constitution, the state has seen an influx of out-of-state patients. Dr. Sharon Liner, the medical director for Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio, says, “We've seen patients [from] as far away as Florida, Georgia, Texas. So people really are traveling quite a distance.”
Finally, women’s lives are endangered in Louisiana, where Republicans passed a law classifying abortion medication as a controlled substance. The Louisiana Illuminator reports that some hospitals have “already preemptively pulled misoprostol from their obstetric hemorrhage carts and kits because controlled dangerous substances need to be stored and accessed differently from other medications.”
Obstetric. Hemorrhage. Carts. That’s what this law does. For more on the Louisiana law, read Abortion, Every Day’s explainer here.
Quick hits:
NC Newsline speaks to Amber Gavin of A Woman’s Choice to make sense of what’s been happening in North Carolina since Roe was overturned;
Spectrum with more on the New Mexico ad campaign targeting Texas doctors and encouraging them to come work in a state where they don’t have to fear jail time;
And despite the lawsuit against the city, Austin, Texas will move ahead with its plans for a Reproductive Justice Fund that supports people leaving the state for care.
Ballot Measure Updates
Anti-abortion groups in Nebraska are dead set on making sure that voters don’t have a say on the issue. After first rejecting legal challenges against the state’s pro-choice ballot measure, the Nebraska Supreme Court has now agreed to hear the cases after anti-abortion activists refiled with slightly tweaked language. The suits want the Court to take the proposed amendment off the ballot entirely.
The Court has also agreed to hear a lawsuit brought by a group of pro-choice doctors who “reluctantly” filed in response to the other challenges. They argue that if the Court takes the pro-choice amendment off the ballot, they should do the same to the anti-abortion measure. (That’s the fake pro-choice amendment I’ve been telling you about for a while now.) “The Restrictions Amendment and the Rights Amendment must both be included or excluded from the ballot together,” the suit says.
The pro-choice ballot measure campaign in Florida has picked up another near-million dollars in advance of November’s election, Health News Florida notes. This comes as The Wall Street Journal reports on growing Republican support for Florida’s Amendment 4. The activists behind the amendment—knowing that they need 60% of the vote to pass the measure—have been wooing bipartisan support, hoping that Republican women in particular will help push them over the edge. According to WSJ’s reporting, the move is working.
Pro-choice support from Republican women may be a broader trend across the board this November. Tresa Undem of polling group PerryUndem points out that before Roe was overturned, just about 20% of Republican women thought their party’s abortion stance was too extreme—now that number is 40%.
Quick hits:
The Denver Post on the abortion rights ballot measure in Colorado;
I love this piece from The 19th about Gabriella Cázares-Kelly, a Native election official in Arizona working on voting accessibility for marginalized communities (vital for the abortion rights measure);
Finally, learn more about the Montana ballot initiative in this interview with Kiersten Iwai, executive director of Forward Montana, one of the coalition groups behind the state’s pro-choice measure.
“The reality is you cannot protect IVF and champion fetal personhood—they are fundamentally incompatible—and the American people won’t be fooled by another one of Donald Trump’s lies.” - Sen. Patty Murray
2024
JD Vance just can’t seem to do anything right! The Republican vice presidential candidate has come under fire for his anti-abortion extremism, weirdo comments about “childless cat ladies,” and equivocating over his support for a national abortion ban. Now it’s come out that Vance wrote the introduction to a radical misogynist manifesto/report from the Heritage Foundation.
The 2017 report is a collection of dozens of ultraconservative articles, including those opposing IVF and fertility treatments, criticizing single mothers, and encouraging women to have babies earlier—deriding feminism for pushing women into higher education “and spending a large portion of their most fertile years building their careers.” Yikes.
How many different ways can this guy show us who he is?
A few months ago, I wrote a column asking where all ‘the protectors’ were on abortion rights. The men who identify so strongly as protectors of their wives and daughters had seemed eerily silent to me on the issue (something that’s slowly seemed to change, I’m glad to say). It seems I’m not the only one thinking about men and abortion, and that it may not just be women’s anger over bans that could drive voters to the polls this November.
The Guardian says that Democrats are focusing on ‘Dobbs Dads’—suburban fathers who are pissed off about the idea that the government could be stripping away their wives’ and daughters’ rights. From Trygve Olson at the Lincoln Democracy Institute:
“The Dobbs dads tend to be millennial. They are more likely to be college-educated white males and they’re disproportionately girl dads. Some of them are pro-life; they’re conservatives. Their conservatism is grounded in, ‘I don’t want government telling me what to do.’”
Do I wish that men were able to see abortion rights as vital because women are people rather than those in need of protection? Of course. Will I take their votes any damn way I can? Absolutely.
The Washington Post is also covering men and abortion this week, writing that men in red states are increasingly coming out to support abortion rights. They spoke to Thomas Stovall in Arkansas, whose wife Chelsea was denied an abortion despite a dangerous and nonviable pregnancy. I actually wrote about Stovall in my ‘protectors’ piece, who said the experience “was a monumental change for me.” Here he is in WaPo:
“It was barbaric and made me just sick when we were already mourning this very much wanted pregnancy. I was once that way, too, thinking you would go to hell if you had an abortion. But it wasn’t that simple. I was lied to. If I can change, others can too.”
Public Source reports on how important voters in the suburbs will be in the presidential election, particularly those in the swing state Pennsylvania—which helped Biden to unseat Trump. Unsurprisingly, reporters found that abortion seems to be top of voters’ minds. One 78 year-old woman told Public Source that her abortion fury overrode any concerns she had about the border: “What angers me more than anything is the fact that…these boys from Capitol Hill are taking away a woman’s control of her own body.”
In the Nation
States Newsroom on the abortion funding crisis;
Trump’s campaign folks are still trying to make ‘post-birth abortion’ happen;
The Conversation on IVF, embryo loss and abortion bans;
Truthout warns that a Trump presidency would mean the reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule;
In Ms. magazine, Rosa Topp writes about being a queer nurse working at an abortion clinic;
Finally, the new abortion rights documentary Zurawski v Texas premiered at the Telluride Film Festival this weekend. I know it’s going to wrenching, but I’m really looking forward to watching it.
You Love to See It
If you’re a regular reader, you know that I’ve been obsessively tracking anti-abortion terminology and the way conservatives fuck with language around abortion in order to trick voters. That’s why I’m super excited to share this new video series with you: “Anti-Abortion Glossary.”
The series is a collaboration with the fabulous folks over at The Meteor, and there will be new episodes out every Tuesday. So make sure to keep an eye out! In the inaugural video, I’m taking on ‘post-birth abortion.’
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"One 78 year-old woman told Public Source that her abortion fury overrode any concerns she had about the border[.]"
I find it interesting that the GOP's dire warnings on the border are very nebulous. The voters are TOLD there is a Border Crisis, (debatable,) but they don’t necessarily SEE "millions of illegal immigrants invading their cities and towns."
But abortion bans, that's an in-your-face proposition that everybody understands.
Damn skippy that abortion and reproductive rights more broadly should be the #1 issue for any woman under 50. If we don't control our own bodies at all times, then we don't control anything.