Hey, it's Grace Haley, Abortion, Every Day researcher. Tonight is the second GOP presidential debate in California at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, where abortion is sure to play a central role. Here are instructions on how to watch it. I’m bringing you the newsletter today and I thought I’d start off with 2024 first. Let’s get to it—
2024
There are three themes we expect to see around abortion in tonight’s debate:
1. Infights between candidates like Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence trying to establish themselves as the anti-abortion movement’s champion over Trump;
2. Nikki Haley continues to court moderate voters, especially moderate women;
3. The misinformation messaging campaign around abortion.
Infighting
The GOP presidential candidates are using recent criticism from the anti-abortion movement against former President Donald Trump as a new opening to court more support for their campaigns.
As we’ve been reporting at Abortion, Every Day, Trump has recently come under scrutiny by the anti-abortion movement over his refusal to address a national abortion ban and his criticism of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 6-week abortion ban efforts during a Meet the Press interview. Trump is trying to play both sides on abortion—criticizing abortion bans while taking credit for Roe being overturned. And while anti-abortion activists and politicians are clearly irritated, GOP strategists told The Hill that it's “a smart move” on his part. (Trump’s hope is to reach women voters that voted for him in 2016, but not 2020).
Candidates are taking this as an opportunity to double down on their anti-choice extremism and attack Trump over his so-called moderate position (which we know isn’t moderate in the slightest). DeSantis said that Trump “is not the guy who ran in 2016. He’s now attacking the pro-life movement. He’s attacking states that enacted pro-life protections that had support,” on an Iowa radio program yesterday morning.
Former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Tim Scott, who both support 15-week federal abortion bans, criticized Trump in the days since his Meet the Press interview. Sen. Tim Scott made recent comments criticizing his other presidential primary competitors for not coming out strongly enough for a 15-week national abortion ban. He denounced Trump’s stance on abortion, stating that he’d “walk back” from a national ban. And Pence stated that Trump is “backing away” from his promises to the anti-abortion movement.
We expect to see more of this tonight as the candidates try to be seen as the strongest Trump alternative and appeal to the right-wing flank of the party, especially those who dominate the Iowa caucus in January. We’ll see how successful this strategy goes—DeSantis’ support has dropped since his last debate performance and he is now running even with the middle of the pack, according to a recent CNN/University of New Hampshire primary poll.
Nikki Haley
After the first debate, Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley saw the biggest spike in support from potential voters, including moderate women voters. Recent FiveThirtyEight polling shows that she is going into tonight with the highest expectations from Republican voters.
Jessica wrote about Nikki Haley’s last debate performance and how she worked hard to distinguish herself from the other Republican candidates on abortion, which will become even more apparent while her competitors are fighting each other over Trump’s Meet the Press comments. The former South Carolina governor said that conservatives need to “stop demonizing” the issue, which she called “personal for every woman and man.”
She’s crafted her talking points to convince voters that she’d be less restrictive than other Republicans. When talking about federal abortion legislation, for example, Haley characterizes the idea as unrealistic, noting that “no Republican president can ban abortions.” But Haley pledged to sign a national ban if president, and she still has support from anti-abortion movement leaders.
Haley’s position on abortion isn’t less radical than that of her competitors; she’s just good at making it sound like it is. That’s why she’s as dangerous as any other candidate on abortion—maybe even more so, given her messaging skills and potential for being a vice presidential nominee. And her strategy is working: two recent polls have also recently shown her as the only GOP candidate who could usher in a win over President Joe Biden.
Messaging
We expect the Republican candidates to continue to spread misinformation about abortion—using phrases like “late-term abortion”, “abortions up until birth” and “post-birth abortions”—as they attempt to reframe abortion in the extreme to make their case for a national abortion ban. Instead of talking about abortion policy, the strategy is to shift the focus to inaccurate and inflammatory portrayals of abortions later in pregnancy. Their hope is that by pivoting to fake scare tactics, Americans will forget about the abortion ban horror stories they’re seeing every day.
This is especially noteworthy as more polling shows how unpopular these GOP anti-abortion policies are—even when it comes to restrictions later in pregnancy. For example, a Data for Progress survey found that a majority of voters opposed the policy proposals made by Republican presidential candidates, including those that restricted access to abortion. And recent polling shows long-standing patterns in public opinion are shifting for the better: conservatives are increasingly more supportive of abortion rights than they were before Dobbs, and more voters are open to unrestricted abortions during the second and third trimester.
For more on the GOP’s messaging tactics, check out Jessica’s earlier column:
Also: We’ll have a live chat for our paid subscribers tonight during the debate, make sure to tune in! If you want to join but haven’t upgraded your subscription yet, you can sign up at a discount for tonight only:
In the States
The Ohio Supreme Court heard arguments today over whether to reinstate the state’s 6-week abortion ban—just weeks before the ballot measure vote that could enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution. The Ohio Attorney General appealed the block on the state’s initial six-week ban earlier this year in a move to prohibit most abortions in the state.
The court is weighing procedural questions right now, namely if the state can appeal and whether abortion providers can challenge the ban. Ohio Solicitor General Benjamin Flowers argued today that providers shouldn’t have been able to sue in the first place because they don’t have a “close” enough relationship with their patients to bring a challenge on their behalf.
During the arguments, Flowers told justices that “the state sustains irreparable harm, no way to remedy it later, every day its law is enjoined.” Perhaps it’s not irreparable harm to the state that Ohio should be worried about, but the women within it.
The Associated Press reports that the Justices questioned Flowers relatively aggressively, suggesting that they may be apprehensive about lifting the block on the law. Another positive development: When Flowers made his point about the supposed lack of a “close relationship” between abortion providers and their patients, Justice Jennifer Brunner took issue with his characterization of the clinics as having a “business interest” in performing abortions:
“There’s the Hippocratic oath, though. I mean the medical profession is a profession...It’s not what you would portray it as, as just some kind of monied factory.”
That said, this is the same court with a 4-3 Republican majority that allowed the state GOP to keep inflammatory language in the ballot summary (like calling a fetus an “unborn child”) that Ohians will see when they go to cast a vote. As you may remember, the state ballot board approved language for the ballot summary last month that seeks to mislead voters.
Recent polling from USA Today/Suffolk University and Baldwin Wallace University showed that the majority of Ohio voters support the abortion rights constitutional amendment.
We’ll have a ruling on Saturday on whether a North Carolina federal judge will freeze provisions in the state’s abortion ban that prohibit doctors from prescribing abortion pills before a 6-week ultrasound and require abortions after 12 weeks happen in a hospital (those allowed in the narrow scope of the state’s abortion ban). As Jessica wrote yesterday, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and a North Carolina OB-GYN are asking the court to block those two provisions because they were left out of the court decision that allowed the state’s ban to move forward.
A new ruling on Wyoming’s abortion ban could come sooner than expected. As we mentioned last week, the women, OBGYNs and abortion right groups challenging Wyoming's abortion ban filed a motion asking for the Judge to deliver her ruling. They argue that the judge has all the facts needed to deem the ban unconstitutional. Wyoming’s recently-passed abortion ban is currently blocked until next April when the court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case, but the Judge’s ruling could alter that timeline. Republicans in the state have been trying to hold up the case by arguing that questions about the law are too “burdensome” to answer, and by trying to prevent the plaintiff’s experts from testifying.
As we reported last week, abortion rights groups are spending history-making amounts on ad campaigns in the upcoming Pennsylvania elections, particularly with the state’s open Supreme Court seat. Planned Parenthood is running ads targeting Republican candidate Carolyn Carluccio’s anti-abortion views, and the support she has from anti-abortion groups. They’ve also pointed out Carluccio deleted language from her campaign website that called her a defender of “all life under the law.”
Carluccio is already making the media rounds to deny her political ideology and pro-life stances, saying that the press has mischaracterized her views and that she’d “follow the law.” This aligns with what we’re seeing from so many candidates across the board: they’re hiding just how extreme they are on abortion, knowing that voters overwhelmingly support legal access.
(Given the Republican party’s history with backing judges who lie about keeping court precedent—see: Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings—it’s hard to take those words at face value.)
Although this race won’t immediately affect who controls the court majority, state justices hold 10-year terms—so advocates are taking the long view in working to protect abortion rights in the state.
Also in the state: The Associated Press has a little more on the role abortion is playing in the Pennsylvania treasurer race Jessica told you about yesterday. Local and state elections across the country are heating up ahead of 2024. In Pennsylvania, a Democratic state lawmaker announced his bid to unseat the GOP incumbent in the upcoming state treasurer race, citing the Republican party’s vision for an anti-abortion future for Pennsylvania if the party strengthened their hold in the state.
More than 200 organizations have joined the campaign promoting Florida’s abortion rights ballot measure. Floridians Protection Freedom have been gathering signatures for their pro-choice amendment in the hopes that it will restore and protect abortion rights in the state. Ballot measures in Florida require 60% of the vote to pass, but activists are hopeful. There is strong support for the amendment so far and voters don’t like the state’s abortion bans. This is all happening at the same time that the state Supreme Court is considering a challenge against the 15-week ban—a ruling that will determine the future of a newer 6-week ban, as well.
The anti-abortion movement is targeting the states taking care of out-of-state abortion patients, with New Mexico being the latest example. (In the year after Roe was overturned, New Mexico’s Planned Parenthood clinics saw a 97% increase in abortions, and a whopping 57% of the clinics’ patients are from Texas alone.) As Abortion, Every Day has reported for the last year, conservatives have been working to pass anti-abortion ordinances in small towns, especially border towns in pro-choice states. The strategy is meant to both make it more difficult for patients traveling from anti-abortion states, and to bring a broader challenge on the Comstock Act to the Supreme Court.
Quick hits:
Ohio doctors are coming out in support of the state’s ballot measure vote, saying that voting matters and deeply affects the health of constituents;
The November Virginia election that determines who has control of the Commonwealth (and thus the state’s abortion restrictions) will act as a national bellwether for 2024;
Jewish organizations in Arizona are mobilizing efforts to gather enough signatures to get the abortion-rights ballot measure on the ballot (Shanah Tovah to our Jewish readers);
And Arizona politics are stalled in a battle between the state’s Democrat governor and Republican state lawmakers over abortion.
In the Nation
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) determined that the Department of Defense abortion travel policy does not need congressional approval. This comes as hundreds of military promotions are still blocked by Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville over the policy. This clears the policy of any potential procedural hurdles despite Tuberville asking the GAO to review the policy earlier this year.
Last week, the Senate voted to confirm the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps commandant, and the Army chief of staff, bypassing Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s block of hundreds of military promotions. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer moved three top military promotions from Tuberville’s hold by bringing the nominations to a vote on the Senate floor.
The rest of the blocked nominations will remain on hold while Tuberville refuses to give up his ‘protest’.
Meanwhile, more Senate Republicans are backing Tuberville, including Indiana Sen. Mike Braun, who is currently running in the state’s gubernatorial election and was one of the 11 Republican Senators who voted against the three promotions. He claimed that the “woke policy initiatives” of the military was the reason for his opposition. This aligns with the Republican strategy we’ve reported on previously: Tuberville and the GOP are looking for a reason beyond abortion to justify his actions, and so they’ve started to call service members' qualifications into question, and claim that the administration’s ‘wokeness’ is weakening the military.
YouTube changed its guidelines on abortion being mentioned in videos on their platforms, which will potentially allow content creators who mention abortions in their videos to make money from paid ads (if they aren’t being described in a “graphic way”). We’ll keep you updated on whether this approach will actually ease-up the issues abortion rights advocates have had on social media platforms.
Finally, Ms. magazine has a great roundup of abortion rights billboards—a welcome change from all of the anti-choice billboards people are so used to seeing.
Quick hits:
Bipartisan efforts introduced The Rape Kit Backlog Act today, which is designed to force state and local governments to identify untested kits or risk losing federal grants;
The GOP reliance on the aging MAGA electorate could bring trouble for the party while abortion continues to be a major issue for large swaths of voters;
And Brazil’s Supreme Court began a monumental vote to decriminalize abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy (watch documentary filmmaker Eliza Capa’s striking NYT Opinion film on this historic moment).
You Love to See It
We have some good news today: The Massachusetts group behind the state’s recent political wins for abortion rights is expanding into Connecticut and New Hampshire. The group wants to codify and broaden protections for abortion providers across New England and is aiming to lift the gestational limits in New Hampshire’s current restrictions on abortion.
Reproductive Equity Now President Rebecca Hart Holder told reporters that these efforts will be the first regional model for abortion advocacy of its kind. From her statement:
“What has become abundantly clear since the fall of Roe is that protecting and expanding abortion access is a state-by-state, voter-by-voter grassroots battle. Now, as 20 states have moved to restrict or ban abortion, wiping out access to care in broad regions of our country, we must focus on state-by-state work to build a regional block for abortion access—right here in New England.”
After Roe was overturned, every New England state saw an increase in virtual clinics prescribing abortion medication. And as more patients rely on New England doctors for medical care, shield laws protecting abortion providers and patients are increasingly important.
We’ve also been seeing more inter-state collaboration recently: Tennessee’s Planned Parenthood chapter partnered with Virginia’s to bring Title X funding back to Tennessee after it lost a $7 million grant once the state’s abortion ban was put in place. The Virginia League for Planned Parenthood was already a Title X grantee, which paved the way for expanded funding access in their new partnership.
Tennessee was the first state to lose Title X funding after Dobbs, which further exasperated the reproductive health care crisis for services beyond abortion. Regional partnerships are a pivotal new strategy for the abortion rights movement to try to fill in these gaps of care, and we expect to see more moves like this one in the future.
Ohio SG: abortion providers: NO STANDING
Texas: DoCtOrS wHo cOuLd hAvE dEliVeReD a BABY and-don’t-get-to-and-just-golly-gosh-darn-it FEEL SAD inside: STANDING
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Abortion is the canary in the coal mine. This is the template for how they will handle every other issue if they win next year's election. Human rights, civil rights, democracy, and the rule of law - these are all obstacles to their goals and so they will all be dispensed of. If we can't get the American public to see that before they vote we run a strong risk of it coming to pass. Because, you know, Trump and the Republicans are "better" on "the economy" 🙄🤦