Tag: abortion
When Trump Rants About Abortion, Women Voters Must Listen

When Trump Rants About Abortion, Women Voters Must Listen

It was one of those rants that would disqualify a normal candidate. Speaking to Sean Hannity on Wednesday night, Donald Trump took off on abortion, saying things that are flat-out untrue and mouthing opinions entirely out of the mainstream. Most of the media ignored it, Trump being Trump.

"It's a beautiful thing to watch," Trump said of states passing extreme and near total bans on access to abortion. The consequences of those bans — horrific consequences — have been documented. A 13-year-old rape victim in Mississippi forced to carry a pregnancy to term because she was denied access to a safe and legal abortion — what is beautiful about that? A young woman in Texas who almost died because doctors were afraid to treat her — does Donald Trump find that beautiful? A Florida woman who was turned away from the emergency room and lost roughly half her blood in a single day after experiencing a miscarriage — beautiful to watch?

Twenty states now have near or total bans on abortion, forcing women to travel out of state to secure needed and necessary medical care. The most vulnerable are the most seriously affected — teenagers who don't even know that they are pregnant, poor women who lack the resources and connections to find or afford help in distant states. It is dangerous and downright cruel. Trump claims he supports exceptions for rape and incest and the life of the mother, but he finds it a "beautiful thing to watch" states pass laws that include no such exceptions.

And he spouts lies and spreads misinformation about abortion. Trump claimed, as he has repeatedly, that "everyone" has been in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade since the case was first decided in 1973. It is simply not so that legal scholars on all sides were united in criticizing the decision. Indeed, what is noteworthy is that as the years have passed, Roe became more firmly entrenched in the nation's jurisprudence, leading some early critics, such as the late conservative Solicitor General Charles Fried, to reverse his critical position on Roe and support it as firmly established precedent.

Trump is right that he is responsible for overturning Roe, because he appointed the three justices who cast the deciding votes to do so. But they turned themselves into pretzels to avoid telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that they planned to do so, mouthing words that they did not believe and did not abide by about respecting precedent. They didn't do that because "everyone" wanted to see Roe overturned — just the opposite.

Trump lied about Democrats approving abortion in the eighth and ninth months and "even after birth."

"Everybody knows that in the eighth month and the ninth month and beyond that — hard to believe, they have some states passing legislation where you can execute the baby after birth," Trump said. "It's crazy." Another lie. Executing newborn babies is homicide, and no state and no Democrats support legislation to allow it. More than 90 percent of abortions take place in the first trimester, and the one percent that take place after 21 weeks legally involve women whose lives are in danger or who are carrying much-wanted pregnancies where they receive a fatal fetal diagnosis late in their terms. To suggest otherwise is simply irresponsible.

Trump has been trying to "defang" the abortion issue by his stance that it should be left to the states, and then applauding what the states do, even at the expense of women's lives. It is a purely political move, reflecting no principles at all. The anti-abortion movement, which has lost at the ballot box in Ohio and Kansas, has almost as much reason to turn on Trump, who was pro-choice before he bargained away his soul to the right to win their support in 2016, as the pro-choice movement does. When it comes to abortion, he has no principles at all. And that is so typical that he gets away with it, sloppy rants and all.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Reproductive Health Care Rights

Conservative State Courts Stir Trouble For GOP Legislators On Abortion

Abortion opponents have maneuvered in courthouses for years to end access to reproductive health care. In Arizona last week, a win for the anti-abortion camp caused political blowback for Republican candidates in the state and beyond.

The reaction echoed the response to an Alabama Supreme Court decision over in vitro fertilization just two months before.

The election-year ruling by the Arizona Supreme Court allowing enforcement of a law from 1864 banning nearly all abortions startled Republican politicians, some of whom quickly turned to social media to denounce it.

The court decision was yet another development forcing many Republicans legislators and candidates to thread the needle: Maintain support among anti-abortion voters while not damaging their electoral prospects this fall. This shifting power dynamic between state judges and state lawmakers has turned into a high-stakes political gamble, at times causing daunting problems, on a range of reproductive health issues, for Republican candidates up and down the ballot.

“When the U.S. Supreme Court said give it back to the states, OK, well now the microscope is on the states,” said Jennifer Piatt, co-director of the Center for Public Health Law and Policy at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. “We saw this in Alabama with the IVF decision,” she said, “and now we’re seeing it in Arizona.”

Multiple Republicans have criticized the Arizona high court’s decision on the 1864 law, which allows abortion only to save a pregnant woman’s life. “This decision cannot stand. I categorically reject rolling back the clock to a time when slavery was still legal and where we could lock up women and doctors because of an abortion,” state Rep. Matt Gress said in a video April 9. All four Arizona Supreme Court justices who said the long-dormant Arizona abortion ban could be enforced were appointed by former Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican who in 2016 expanded the number of state Supreme Court justices from five to seven and cemented the bench’s conservative majority.

Yet in a post the day of the ruling on the social platform X, Ducey said the decision “is not the outcome I would have preferred.”

The irony is that the decision came after years of efforts by Arizona Republicans “to lock in a conservative majority on the court at the same time that the state’s politics were shifting more towards the middle,” said Douglas Keith, senior counsel at the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice.

All the while, anti-abortion groups have been pressuring Republicans to clearly define where they stand.

“Whether running for office at the state or federal level, Arizona Republicans cannot adopt the losing ostrich strategy of burying their heads in the sand on the issue of abortion and allowing Democrats to define them,” Kelsey Pritchard, a spokesperson for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in an emailed statement. “To win, Republicans must be clear on the pro-life protections they support, express compassion for women and unborn children, and contrast their position with the Democrat agenda.”

Two months before the Arizona decision, the Alabama Supreme Court said frozen embryos from in vitro fertilization can be considered children under state law. The decision prompted clinics across the state to halt fertility treatments and caused a nationwide uproar over reproductive health rights. With Republicans feeling the heat, Alabama lawmakers scrambled to pass a law to shield IVF providers from prosecution and civil lawsuits “for the damage to or death of an embryo” during treatment.

But when it comes to courts, Arizona lawmakers are doubling down: state Supreme Court justices are appointed by the governor but generally face voters every six years in retention elections. That could soon change. A constitutional amendment referred by the Arizona Legislature that could appear on the November ballot would eliminate those regular elections—triggering them only under limited circumstances—and allow the justices to serve as long as they exhibit “good behavior.” Effectively it would grant justices lifetime appointments until age 70, when they must retire.

Even with the backlash against the Arizona court’s abortion decision, Keith said, “I suspect there aren’t Republicans in the state right now who are lamenting all these changes to entrench a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.”

Meanwhile, abortion rights groups are trying to get a voter-led state constitutional amendment on the ballot that would protect abortion access until fetal viability and allow abortions afterward to protect the life or health of the pregnant person.

State court decisions are causing headaches even at the very top of the Republican ticket. In an announcement in which he declined to endorse a national abortion ban, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on April 8 said he was “proudly the person responsible” for ending Roe v. Wade, which recognized a federal constitutional right to abortion before being overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, and said the issue should be left to states. “The states will determine by vote or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” he said. But just two days later he sought to distance himself from the Arizona decision. Trump also praised the Alabama Legislature for enacting the law aiming to preserve access to fertility treatments. “The Republican Party should always be on the side of the miracle of life,” he said.

Recent court decisions on reproductive health issues in Alabama, Arizona, and Florida will hardly be the last. The Iowa Supreme Court, which underwent a conservative overhaul in recent years, on April 11, heard arguments on the state’s near-total abortion ban. Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed it into law in 2023 but it has been blocked in court.

In Florida, there was disappointment all around after dueling state Supreme Court decisions this month that simultaneously paved the way for a near-total abortion ban and also allowed a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution to proceed.

The Florida high court’s decisions were “simply unacceptable when five of the current seven sitting justices on the court were appointed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis,” Andrew Shirvell, executive director of the anti-abortion group Florida Voice for the Unborn, said in a statement. “Clearly, grassroots pro-life advocates have been misled by elements within the ‘pro-life, pro-family establishment’ because Florida’s highest court has now revealed itself to be a paper tiger when it comes to standing-up to the murderous abortion industry.”

Tension between state judicial systems and conservative legislators seems destined to continue, given judges’ growing power over reproductive health access, Piatt said, with people on both sides of the political aisle asking: “Is this a court that is potentially going to give me politically what I’m looking for?”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

RFK Jr.

Abortion Doubts May Drive Wavering Democrats Away From RFK Jr.

The extended family of third-party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made an explicit effort Thursday to blunt his appeal among Democratic voters by endorsing President Joe Biden en masse.

Robert's sister Kerry Kennedy, daughter of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and niece of former President John F. Kennedy, called Biden “my hero” at an endorsement event in Philadelphia featuring at least 15 members of the Kennedy clan.

“We want to make crystal clear our feelings that the best way forward for America is to reelect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for four more years,” she said, a clear sign of the threat third-party candidates pose to Biden's 2024 reelection bid.

Almost simultaneously, news broke that RFK Jr. and his tech entrepreneur running mate Nicole Shanahan qualified for the ballot in the swing state of Michigan after being nominated by the Natural Law Party.

The ultimate effect of third-party candidates this cycle and exactly where they will make the ballot remains unclear. But we do know that Donald Trump, who has never won more than 47 percent of the vote, will need a spoiler or two siphoning away votes from Biden in order to prevail in November.

The supposed bipartisan group No Labels recently complicated Trump's calculus by ending its bid to find a candidate to run. That leaves anti-vaccine activist RFK Jr., Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and Harvard professor Cornel West as potential spoilers to Biden's reelection, either individually or as a group. Kennedy, who polls highest and has the resources to potentially get on the ballot in all 50 states, poses the biggest threat.

It remains to be seen whether Kennedy's candidacy—which draws interest from conspiracy theorists and Kennedy-nostalgic Democrats alike—will hurt Biden or Trump more in November. But some polling suggests that Kennedy is currently skimming more voters away from Biden.

What is clear is that Trump benefits disproportionately from every third-party candidate in the race since he fell several points shy of reaching 50% in both 2016 and 2020. By contrast, Biden won in 2020 with 51% of vote—just barely enough to tilt the Electoral College in his favor. It’s telling that Kennedy's presidential bid has been bankrolled by one of Trump's biggest donors, Mellon banking heir Timothy Mellon, and championed by one of Trump's biggest allies, Steve Bannon. Not so coincidentally, a key Kennedy campaign official, Rita Palma, also said her No. 1 goal was blocking Biden's reelection bid. Palma has since been axed by the Kennedy campaign.

All that said, it is incumbent upon the Biden campaign to blunt Kennedy's allure among Democrats to make him a bigger drag on Trump in November.

“If Kennedy makes it on the ballot in these states—and that’s a big if—we’re going to make sure voters know how extreme his policies are and that MAGA megadonors are bankrolling his spoiler campaign to be a stalking horse for Donald Trump,” said Democratic strategist Lis Smith, who is advising the Democratic National Committee on the matter.

The Kennedy family itself, with its enduring star power among Democrats, has been searching for ways to kneecap RFK Jr., who's leveraging the family name while damaging the Kennedy legacy with his antithetical stances.

But at some point soon, the Biden campaign will have to deploy a strategy to neutralize Kennedy's Democratic appeal, and a recent Engagious focus group in Pennsylvania of 11 Trump-to-Biden swing voters may offer a window into one potential avenue.

According to Axios, roughly half of the swing voters who participated in the focus group said the candidates' stances on abortion would play a role in how they voted in the fall.

Six of those swing voters also said they would vote for Kennedy over Biden and Trump, but questions about Kennedy's abortion stance became an immediate hang-up for them.

"If he doesn't agree with what I agree with abortion, then I'm going to switch," said participant Michael W.

Rich Thau, the focus group moderator and president of Engagious, said that pro-choice swing voters who expressed support for Kennedy "seemed to second-guess their support when confronted with the argument that a vote for Kennedy is effectively a vote for Trump and his abortion policies."

After some initial jostling last year, Kennedy told NBC News’ Ali Vitali that he supported abortion during the first three months of pregnancy but would sign a federal abortion ban if elected.

“I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the women during the first three months of life," Kennedy said. "Once a child is viable, outside the womb, I think then the state has an interest in protecting the child." The exchange between Kennedy and Vitali was captured on video, making it fodder for attack ads.

Kennedy’s campaign has since backtracked on those remarks, issuing a statement saying he does not support a federal ban on abortion.

“Mr. Kennedy supports a woman's right to choose,” says the statement, adding that it’s “not up to the government to intervene in these difficult medical and moral choices.”

A national abortion ban is a nonstarter with Democratic voters, and perhaps most importantly, many Democrats who aren't thrilled about voting for Biden but would never consider voting for Trump.

In a follow-up exchange with Daily Kos, Thau said, "For pro-choice Trump and Biden voters, the risk posed by voting for RFK Jr. could be too much if abortion is a top-tier concern."

He added that he hasn't yet come across another issue that "would have the same effect on RFK-curious swing voters as abortion does. It’s not to say there aren’t such issues … but I haven’t pushed or probed on those yet."

Whatever the range of issues that could dissuade Democrats from voting for Kennedy, abortion appears to offer the Biden campaign a starting point.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Joe Biden

New Poll Shows Republicans (And Trump) Losing Badly On Abortion

A new Civiqs poll for Daily Kos shows why the issue of abortion is so perilous for the Republican Party, with voters viewing themselves as significantly more aligned with Democrats on the matter.

By 15 points, registered voters say their opinion on abortion is closer to that of Democrats in their states than Republicans, at 48% to 33%, according to the poll released Wednesday.

President Joe Biden also fares eight points better than Donald Trump on the question of how voters think the candidates' abortion views track with their own, with 44 percent choosing Biden compared to 36 percent picking Trump.

Democratic lawmakers likely performed slightly better than Biden on the abortion measure partly because voters generally view Trump as more socially liberal on abortion than most Republican lawmakers overall.

For instance, a December 2023 Data for Progress poll found that roughly two-thirds of voters believed congressional Republicans would take action to pass a national abortion ban if they took control of Congress in 2024, ranking only second to the belief that they would build a wall at the southern border. Meanwhile, only 48 percent of voters said Trump would pass a national abortion ban as president, putting the issue seventh on his likely to-do list.

The disparity between how voters view Republicans lawmakers versus Trump on abortion is exactly why the Biden campaign hammered Trump’s pretzel twisting on abortion last week after Arizona’s Supreme Court ordered the enforcement of a draconian Civil War-era abortion ban.

The Biden campaign’s rapid response team also made an explicit effort to link Trump to anti-abortion zealot House Speaker Mike Johnson, deploying roughly 18 tweets in a 24-hour period featuring the two men together.

Notably, the Civiqs poll also found that independents view Democrats as more closely aligned with their abortion views than Republicans by 12 points, at 41 percent to 29 percent. Biden and Trump run about even among independents, with 35 percent saying their views track more closely with Biden's, and 36 percent choosing Trump.

The bottom line: Any time candidates of either party talk about abortion or the topic dominates the headlines—as happened last week—it’s a win for Democrats and Biden.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

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