Not One Word About Abortion at the RNC. Literally.

7.22.24

Click to skip ahead: In 2024 news, let’s talk more about Kamala Harris and the anti-abortion response to her likely nomination. In the States, news from Iowa, North Carolina, Virginia and more. In Ballot Measure Updates, a look at attacks on democracy in Florida, Montana and Arkansas. In the Nation, Republicans are running from abortion (again). In Care Denied, a Texas man speaks up about his wife’s horror story. Finally, in You Love to See It, a necessary call for federal abortion protections.

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2024

Okay, let’s talk some more about very likely presidential nominee Kamala Harris! Harris has been racking up a slate of powerful endorsements since President Joe Biden’s announcement yesterday, and a whole lot of excitement.

There’s particular optimism around Harris’ strength on abortion rights. As Democratic pollster and strategist Celinda Lake told The Guardian, “She’s so comfortable saying the word ‘abortion’….she’s so comfortable leaning in and speaking to the repercussions.” I also appreciated The Nation’s Elie Mystal’s take, which got straight to the point:

“My argument for why Harris can win is that she’s in the best position to run the ‘Abortion, abortion, abortion, also dude is a criminal, abortion, abortion’ campaign that has pretty much worked in every state that it’s been run since Dobbs.”

As you can imagine, the anti-abortion movement is very unhappy with the news that Donald Trump will likely have to face off against the vice president. National Right to Life and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America both issued press releases calling Harris the “Abortion Czar”—inadvertently making her sound about a million times cooler. (If I was Harris, I would be getting business cards printed immediately.) And SBA president Marjorie Dannenfelser said, “While Joe Biden has trouble saying the word abortion, Kamala Harris shouts it.” Again, a compliment in my book.

Students for Life president Kristan Hawkins tweeted that under a Harris presidency, “we can expect nothing less than abortion extremism through all nine months, and after birth, for any reason,” and criticized Harris’ “abortion-loving campus tour.” And National Right to Life President Carol Tobias said Harris has been “pushing unlimited abortion.”

We knew that this would be their go-to messaging, so nothing surprising there. The truth is that I don’t think any of this is going to hurt Harris’ campaign. Anti-abortion groups just don’t seem to grasp that abortion is popular. Tying the vice president to the issue isn’t going to hurt her—it only helps.

After all, this is one of Harris’ strongest issues. I will never forget when she put Brett Kavanaugh on the spot on abortion at his confirmation hearing:

Conservative pundits, however, seem to understand what a danger Harris poses to them on abortion rights. Media Matters notes that Daily Wire podcast host Michael Knowles admitted this week that Trump is “trying to minimize how he speaks about it because as he said, you gotta get elected.” Their fear, he said, is Harris “leaning into” abortion. So let’s hope she does.

Quick hits:

• Lydia Polgreen at The New York Times asks why JD Vance isn’t being called the “DEI candidate;”

• POLITICO on how a Harris presidency would differ from Biden’s;

• STAT News says Harris is to the left of Biden on healthcare issues and Axios breaks down her healthcare stances;

• Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post writes that Vance has ruined the GOP’s chance of appearing moderate on abortion rights;

• And The Guardian and Mother Jones on why abortion rights advocates are excited about Harris.

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If you missed my piece yesterday about Harris’ history with abortion rights, check it out below:

Harris/Abortion 2024

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In the States

The Iowa Supreme Court has denied Planned Parenthood’s request to rehear arguments on the state’s 6-week abortion ban. That means the law is likely to go into effect later this week. Read Abortion, Every Day’s Iowa explainer for details on the law.

While Republicans try to distract from voters’ ire by focusing on the ban’s ‘exceptions,’ OBGYNs point out that those exemptions aren’t really usable. Dr. Emily Boevers told the Sioux City Journal that the exceptions are “exceedingly difficult to access for both patients and physicians,” and that they force doctors to “break the relationship of trust with our patients by acting as legal interpreters of the law and as enforcers of a criminal ban.” (Remember, doctors are expected to question rape victims about whether they were really attacked.)

It will come as no surprise to find out that anti-abortion groups in the state are already pushing for an even stricter law that would ban abortion at conception.

Meanwhile, in North Carolina—where anti-abortion extremist Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is running for governor—the Republican hopeful’s wife, Yolanda Hill, recently spoke at a crisis pregnancy center. And not just any center: a center that claims to do abortion ‘reversals,’ a dangerous and unproven treatment. Extremists have been increasingly touting reversals at their fake clinics.

But if you remember anything Robinson, let it be this: He said women who have abortions aren’t “responsible enough to keep your skirt down.”

Landlords in Bristol, Virginia are trying to remove an abortion clinic from their building—a growing tactic across the country. Bristol Women's Health, which opened after Roe was overturned, is being sued by their landlords for ‘fraud’’; they claim the health center didn’t reveal abortions would be performed in the building. Clinic owner Diane Derzis says that’s not true.

Bristol is an important hub for abortion access because it’s a border town—one side of the city is in Virginia, the other is in Tennessee. That’s made it the center of some controversy and community disgareement. Derzis says, however, “the clinic will definitely stay open.”

Speaking of Virginia: JD Vance is there today, and the DNC has wasted no time releasing an ad in the state highlighting just how extreme he and Trump are on abortion rights.

Quick hits:

• NC Newsline on how North Carolina’s abortion ban is hurting women;

• A New Jersey OBGYN lays out how abortion rights are still in danger, even in pro-choice states;

• Planned Parenthood of Michigan says they’ve seen a 3x increase in the number of out-of-state patients;

• And the Texas Observer has a powerful photo essay of Texas women who were denied abortions despite fatal fetal abnormalities.

Ballot Measure Updates

You all know I’ve been following the ‘financial impact statement’ brouhaha over Florida’s Amendment 4. The short version is that a panel stacked by Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote up a statement that voters will see with the pro-choice ballot measure in November, which claims restoring abortion rights will cost the state tons of money. (This is what Republicans tried to pull in Missouri, too.)

Amendment 4 activists rightly called the document a ‘dirty trick’ meant to mislead voters, and have been trying to fight back. Unfortunately, an appeals court declined to weigh in today, saying the case was moot. The panel of judges did say that Floridians Protecting Freedom could bring forward a whole new legal challenge if they wanted to.

If that sounds complicated, that’s because it’s meant to. Republicans and state leaders are trying to exhaust abortion rights activists and all of their avenues for a fair ballot measure. Because they know when voters have a choice, abortion rights win.

I’m also still keeping an eye on what’s happening in Arkansas and Montana, where Republican leaders have rejected signatures in support of getting pro-choice measures in front of voters. The abortion rights group in Arkansas is suing over the unlawful move by the Secretary of State’s office, though the Republican Arkansas Attorney General is trying to get that suit dismissed. And in Montana, the Republican Secretary of State is claiming some signatures are from ‘inactive’ voters and therefore ineligible. There, a judge ruled that the signatures must be accepted—but Montana Republicans are taking the case to the state Supreme Court.

Once again, they’re simply unwilling to let voters have a say.

In the Nation

If you want to know how afraid the GOP is of abortion rights, consider that there wasn’t one single mention of the issue at last week’s Republican National Convention. A New York Times analysis of the most common phrases at the RNC found that “the word ‘abortion’ did not appear in the 110,000 transcribed words.” (The phrase ‘born and unborn’ appeared twice.)

Not everyone was happy with that development: The Hill reports that protesters near the convention shouted “Blood, blood, blood on your hands!” Abortion’s notable absence at the RNC also happened right around the same time that JD Vance quietly removed language from his website about being “100 percent pro-life.”

Matt Bennett, a co-founder of left-center think tank Third Way, says that Republicans’ efforts to run from abortion “is a kind of desperate attempt to, you know, wave people’s attention away from an issue that is very, very damaging for them.” And as Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, told The Guardian, “Trump and Vance can downplay the abortion message all they want, but the political reality speaks for itself.”

Very much agreed.

Quick hits:

• Republican Speaker Mike Johnson admits that the GOP’s platform isn’t really about giving abortion back to the states;

• More RNC coverage from CBS News, HuffPost, and PBS;

• The Los Angeles Times editorial board says Republicans want to ban abortion, no matter what the GOP platform says;

• And Sarah Posner at MSNBC reminds us not to fall for Republicans’ gaslighting on abortion.

“If we want this access to continue during Trump, during the right-wing take-over of the courts, we need to decide as a community to continue to pay for it.”

-Diana Parker-Kafka, executive director of the Midwest Access Coalition, on the drop in donations to abortion funds

Care Denied

Two years out from Roe being overturned, and the stream of horror stories has shown no sign of stopping. One of the worst I’ve heard came from Ryan Hamilton in Texas, who shared a viral Twitter thread about his wife being denied miscarriage care in her second trimester. Since then, Hamilton has been speaking out—something I’m especially grateful for, because we desperately need more men to do so.

Last week, Hamilton did a timeline recounting of his wife’s experience at MSNBC—from their first visit to an emergency clinic where they find out the fetal heartbeat stopped, to Hamilton “lifting her cold, limp body off that bathroom floor” three days ago because no doctor would help her.

As you can imagine, it’s a tough read. But it’s an important one, and the timeline format, in particular, hits home.

You Love to See It

Lots of hard news today, so here’s something cool to leave you with. If you’re a regular reader, you know I feel strongly that we need to stop compromising on abortion rights. There’s never been a better moment to push for the world we actually want, rather than continuing to play defense. Especially now that Kamala Harris is the very likely Democratic nominee.

That’s why I was so thrilled to learn about Abortion Justice Now. A clear and necessary call for federal abortion protections, the brief calls for an end to government interference in pregnancy—which 81% of Americans want!—and a vision of what real abortion rights and justice might look like. And you really can’t beat this line: “Compromise is injustice.”

Abortion Justice Now was written by Drs. Jenni Villavicencio and Colleen McNicholas, Co-Founders of the Raven Lab for Reproductive Liberation; Pamela Merritt, Executive Director, Medical Students for Choice; and Garin Marschall and Erika Christensen, Co-Directors of Patient Forward. (You may remember Erika’s name from her fantastic guest column in December.)

Here’s what Merritt told me today:

“The potential of a Harris nomination changes everything. Harris said it herself: ‘we are no longer burdened by what has been.’ The Roe era for abortion rights was the burden of our past. This moment is a real opportunity to end government interference in abortion and pregnancy decisions once and for all.”

I highly, highly recommend you read the brief. The hope is to get organizations to sign on in support, though individuals are welcome to sign as well.