An Abortion Case for Primary Endorsements
Guest column by Renee Bracey Sherman
Renee Bracey Sherman is co-host of the podcast The A Files: A Secret History of Abortion and co-author of LIBERATING ABORTION: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve, on shelves October 1st.
After President Joe Biden’s first debate performance, the buzz of calls for him to step down from the Democratic ticket have grown louder. They’re questioning his ability to perform the duties of his job, govern the nation, and understand complex issues as the leader of one of the wealthiest colonizing nations. And of course, his ability to beat alleged rapist, pedophile, and treasonist Donald Trump who now has clearance to do whatever he wants without repercussions.
While people debate the merits of Biden stepping aside, elevating Vice President Kamala Harris, or choosing someone else altogether (but who?!), I can’t help but think about how this all could have been avoided if primaries were taken more seriously.
What would happen if people had a chance to hear candidates' ideas on the issues, and then vote for whom they think is the most qualified for the office rather than anointing a presumptive candidate?
I am not going to debate the merits of whether Biden should be replaced or who should replace him. (For that, you should read this excellent conversation between Rebecca Traister and Brittney Cooper in New York Magazine.) What I do want to think about is how the Democratic Party anoints certain people to positions of power, giving us the illusion of political choice, and how little debate there is around our choices for President—leaving us stuck with the best of two unequally shitty options, and the erosion of our rights.
How are we evaluating who the best candidates for the presidency are, and why do we no longer make them compete with the best policies? Part of a primary process is the racking up of endorsements; organizations and people who are experts in various issue areas survey the candidates on their positions and award an endorsement to the one who has the best plan for that issue area. It’s common to see them in congressional and local races. And yes, it’s a political and imperfect game, yet one we have essentially forsaken in abortion rights at higher levels of office.
I truly think we wouldn’t be in this predicament if we had more thoughtful primary campaigns and real endorsement processes. It would also give us a bench of political leaders to look to for expertise, reduce the complacency of established politicians, and a vision for the future of the Democratic party (and a list of potential replacements).
I am an abortion activist so I know how high the stakes are. We cannot survive another Trump presidency and whatever final steps of fascism he will install. Yet, I cannot continue to go election after election voting for someone who is not him. We deserve better than that. We deserve a president who can articulate a vision and a plan to restore abortion access—not one who repeats an empty Restore Roe slogan when it’s politically convenient for him.
My issue with the President’s inability to lead on abortion is well-documented. I’ve led a two-year campaign begging him to say the word abortion—something we should not have had to do with a self-proclaimed “pro-choice” president—and it’s been five years since he declared he would run for this presidency. However Biden has yet to release a plan on what he will do for abortion access, nor has he released one for this campaign. His presidency has been frustrating for abortion activists to say the least.
This was irritating to me during the 2020 primaries, too. We had a field of candidates—including the most women ever—who were putting out plans detailing how they would protect and expand abortion access. I was excited! Finally, candidates were competing with real abortion rights strategies. Kirsten Gilibrand’s team was out first, then came the other campaigns, including Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren. (For me, Warren was by far the most comprehensive and thoughtful plan, which is why I endorsed her in the primary.)
This moment was a far cry from 2017, when Nancy Pelosi declared that the party would welcome anti-abortion Democrats and not place an abortion litmus test for midterm candidates. It felt good to see candidates upping the ante and working for an endorsement. Abortion finally felt like the winning issue organizers always knew it was. I assumed abortion rights organizations would be pouring over these plans to offer endorsements and signal a clear direction for our movement. But they didn’t.
The largest reproductive rights political organizations (including Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America) with the legal capacity and built-in base to endorse candidates early in the primary declined to. Instead, they waited for all of the candidates who had the most creative plans to drop out and formally endorsed Biden—a man whose opposition to Medicaid coverage of abortion was out of lockstep with the party (until he sought the nomination) and who actively advocated against ACA coverage of contraception.
Both organizations do endorse candidates, but not always in the primary. In 2008, NARAL Pro-Choice America (now Reproductive Freedom for All) faced significant backlash for endorsing Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. In 2016, Planned Parenthood made a splash with its first-ever primary endorsement of Clinton, but stayed out of the 2020 primary. It’s possible that organizations don’t want to be caught backing the wrong horse for the sake of donors, but the only loser in this is us.
I have warned about the need to discuss abortion in the primaries for nearly a decade. During the 2016 Democratic primaries, I created the #AskAboutAbortion campaign because candidates were doggedly debating every issue except abortion. When I raised the issue with reporters and news producers, they said that because both Clinton and Sanders were pro-choice, there was nothing to debate. How is it possible that we didn’t need to debate the impending fall of Roe, but we do have time to ask the candidates to say something nice about their opponent? The candidates also agreed that banks should be regulated and climate change should be addressed, yet voters still got to hear their plans for both. Why couldn’t we have the same for abortion?
Detailing and defending different plans helps voters understand what’s at stake. Had that happened, maybe fewer people would have been surprised when Roe was overturned.
What are we doing here?
Are we a movement that is looking to liberate abortion, or are we simply following the preconceived decisions of the Democratic Party and political donors? How will we ever progress if we won’t even debate the merits of candidates' ideas? How can we expect voters to care about what’s possible for abortion access if our movement won’t?
Endorsements give us the opportunity to tell politicians what they should be running on, and to educate the public about what’s possible for abortion. Yet reproductive rights organizations sit on the sidelines until the candidate has already been anointed. There’s no leadership in that, and it’s certainly not pro-choice. “Restoring Roe” will not solve even 10% of this country’s abortion access barriers. The fact that we can’t have an honest conversation about how that slogan means restoring the bare minimum and leaving out the most vulnerable is a problem with our political process. Yet, that’s what the national political organizations in our movement are putting our organizing behind.
We are abortion advocates. We exist to advocate for people who have and provide abortions. Our loyalty must be to people who need abortions. No candidate who supports restrictions on abortion or contraception should have our full-throated backing. Our endorsements must be reserved for politicians who will stop at nothing to support people who have abortions, and have clear plans to do so.
The lack of vigorous debate over policy issues is just one aspect leading to complacency among our politicians. They believe they should be automatically elected or re-elected because they’re not as bad as the other guy, rather than spelling out what they’re for. Endorsements allow us to have real conversations about abortion access policies rather than simply whether a candidate is for or against abortion.
Endorsements allow us to hold politicians accountable to their campaign promises, but if groups never make any there’s nothing to ever demand of them. There is no point in creating $100 million plans to create a plan for abortion if you’re never willing to evaluate any politicians against it, or hold them accountable while in office. We should have rigorous debates on policy issues to prepare us for honestly discussing who is most fit to lead—not who political donors happen to get along with the best, or who fits the mold of what we’ve always been told a politician “looks like.”
Project 2025 is real; we need political leaders who are up to the challenge and have ideas on how to stop it. Engaging discussions of abortion plans also give us the space to be honest about where certain politicians fall short, and a path of policies they can move toward.
With every “Dems in disarray” election headline, I keep wondering if all of this would have been different if we’d had healthy policy debates in 2020 or before. At the very least, we could have had a conversation about the plans of pro-abortion politicians, and encouraged voters to envision what could be rather than the mess of a situation we’re in. We could have heard more from voters about who they saw as the top viable candidates, rather than candidates dropping out or fading out of our view before many states and DC voted.
Perhaps I am wrong, and we would have ended up in the same place with the same candidates—but at least we would not have been surprised by inaction or the political bait and switches.
Endorsements won’t solve everything. We have to get rid of the two party system, get money out of politics, and invest in voter enfranchisement for all. But it could help us have a healthy debate, start preparing a real bench of next-generation political leaders, and educate some voters along the way.
What I do know is that at this point, it can’t hurt.
I can tell you exactly what the problem with primaries is. PEOPLE don't give a shit. The amount of people like us who are committed to following the news and staying informed and actually voting in primaries is ridiculously small.
People aren't just busy dealing with their own lives, they are checked out completely. The Internet came and silo-ed people into their own preferred bubbles and now we can't even reach them. They only see the stuff they want to see, no one answers their phone anymore because it's 95% scams, the algorithm chooses what people see whether it's true or not. There aren't any overall shared experiences anymore.
It's the biggest problem you, me, the Democratic party, the government, everyone who cares about facts and reality have. It astounds me when I talk to random people and they have nooooo ideaaaaa what's going on. A lot of people's brains struggle to sit through a long discussion of in-the-weeds policy since it's been conditioned to absorb info in 1 minute or less chunks. I don't know how to fix it.
The time to have questioned was during primaries. Why it didn’t happen only the future will tell us. Ship has sailed. We are voting for a blue administration with whatever topper it comes with. This election is far too important. Vote blue no matter who.