Two years ago, POLITICO published a draft of the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a landmark decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling which guaranteed the right to an abortion, and set off a seismic shockwave in American politics.
The decision, which came a month later, resulted in a patchwork of abortion restrictions in states nationwide and put the issue of abortion front and center in American electoral politics.
Since the ruling, initiatives expanding abortion access have prevailed every time they’ve been put on the ballot — including in traditionally red states like Kansas, Ohio and Kentucky — and Democrats have credited a renewed focus on reproductive health with victories in special elections and the 2022 midterms, during which several pundits and analysts predicted a so-called “red wave” of Republican wins.
Democrats and abortion advocates are hoping that a focus on the issue — coupled with abortion-related ballot measures set for states like Florida, and others possible in battlegrounds like Arizona and Nevada — could bolster their chances of keeping the White House and expanding their control of Congress in the face of former President Donald Trump’s popularity in polling and a particularly difficult Senate map.
President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign on Thursday, the anniversary of the Dobbs decision leak, launched a new ad taking aim at Trump’s recent comments in an interview with TIME magazine about deferring to states who might choose to enforce abortion laws by monitoring women’s pregnancies and prosecuting them if they get abortions.
“It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It's totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions,” Trump said in the interview when asked if he would be comfortable with states criminally charging women for getting abortions. “And by the way, Texas is going to be different than Ohio. And Ohio is going to be different than Michigan.”
The advertisement, entitled “Prosecute,” features Texas OB/GYN Dr. Austin Dennard talking about having to leave her home state to get an abortion after the fetus she was carrying had a fatal condition.
“Two years ago, I became pregnant with a baby I desperately wanted, and I learned that the fetus would have a fatal condition and never survive,” Dr. Dennard says in the ad. “Because of the new laws in Texas, I had to flee my own state to receive treatment.”
“If Donald Trump is elected, that is the end of a woman’s right to choose,” she continues. “There will be no place to turn. We could lose our rights in every state, even the ones where abortion is currently legal, and that means every woman in every state is at risk.”
The ad, the Biden campaign says, is part of a seven-figure ad buy in battleground states, which will run “on networks with a young, diverse audience,” including ESPN, Bravo, TNT and Comedy Central. It will also air on sports programming, including Saturday’s Kentucky Derby.
“Over the last two years, we’ve seen a health care crisis unfold for women because of what Donald Trump did as president,” Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez-Rodriguez charged, adding: “If he’s reelected, he’ll make things even worse.”
The ad comes one day after Florida’s six-week abortion ban went into effect, which Vice President Harris blamed squarely on Biden’s predecessor.
“Across our nation, we witness a full-on assault, state-by-state, on reproductive freedom. And understand who's to blame: Former President Donald Trump did this,” Harris said Wednesday in Jacksonville, adding: “Here’s what a second Trump term looks like: more bans, more suffering, less freedom. But we are not going to let that happen.”
It also comes one day after lawmakers in Arizona voted to repeal a Civil War-era abortion ban, which predated its statehood by nearly 50 years.
While Trump has touted his role in overturning Roe v. Wade — the Republican appointed three of the six Supreme Court justices who were in the majority for the Dobbs decision during his sole White House term — he said in the TIME magazine interview published this week that “you don’t need a federal ban” on abortion, though he did not commit to vetoing one should it reach his desk in a hypothetical second term.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, 14 states have a total ban on abortion, while another seven have restrictions at or before 18 weeks. Another 20 have restrictions in place after 18 weeks, many of those at viability, the point in which a fetus can survive outside the uterus. The 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which was also invalidated by Dobbs, banned abortion restrictions prior to viability.
Abortion remains broadly popular in the United States, with 65% of respondents in a recent CNN-SSRS poll opposing the Dobbs decision and about half of U.S. adults — 49% — wanting to see politicians working to enshrine abortion access nationwide. Just 14% want to see nationwide restrictions on abortion, while 37% say it should be left to the states.