“I would like everyone to realize the magnitude of the issue, because at first people minimized it, they did not realize the real scope.”
Angela Crawford, a citizen of Missouri, refers to the consequences that in June 2022 The Supreme Court of the United States annulled the ruling known as “Roe v. Wade,” which for almost five decades guaranteed the right to abortion in the country.
It is the states that since then have had power over the issue, and in view of the strict local laws that have been coming into force and how reproductive health care has also been affected, this 38-year-old woman chose to take action.
Decisive was that Alabama temporarily paused fertilization in vitroa procedure by which she managed to conceive her daughter, she told the AP agency.
So now he is collecting signatures so that in November, in addition to voting to elect president, Missourians can decide in a referendum if they want to protect the right to abortion in the state Constitution.
A lifelong Republican and “pretty conservative,” Crawford says the issue will lead her to support Democrats in the first presidential election of the post-Roe era.
Hoping other voters will follow Crawford’s example, President Joe Biden made abortion one of his workhorses for re-election.
And he doubled down last week, after the Supreme Court of Arizona — one of the states that could decide the outcome of the election — ruled that an 1864 law prohibiting the termination of pregnancy from conception can be applied in almost all cases. all cases.
Although it remains to be seen if and how the legislation will end up being applied, the ruling also made Biden’s opponent in the race for the presidency, Republican Donald Trump, react.
trumpwho always boasts of having been the architect of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, said that this time it had been gone “too far”.
Just a couple of days before he had also assured that, if he wins the elections, he will not sign a national abortion veto but rather that the issue will remain in the hands of the states, thus showing more moderate than he had initially hinted.
A turn in his speech that analysts interpret as a balancing act to try to please his hard-line base, which is widely opposed to the interruption of pregnancy, without risking the vote of the undecided who, according to polls, support him in a majority.
Wind for or against
“Abortion is a opportunity for Democrats and remains a problem for Republicans“Republican strategist Kevin Madden told BBC Washington journalist Holly Honderich.
He did so after the Florida Supreme Court last week approved a law enacted a year earlier by Republican Governor Ron De Santis that prohibits abortion after the sixth week. It will come into effect on May 1.
The same court also allowed a consultation to be held in November in which Florida residents can decide whether to include the right to abortion up to week 24 in the state Constitution.
“This gives them [los demócratas] some tailwind,” said Madden, who was a spokesman for Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns.
That’s what the polls seem to show.
According to one conducted by The Associated Press-NORC in July, two-thirds of Americans think abortion should be legal in most cases and a quarter that it should always be legal; Only one in 10 citizens considers that it should be prohibited in all cases.
Meanwhile, 1 in 8 consulted by the independent organization KFF Health in March said that abortion is the main reason why they will go to the polls in November.
In the particular case of Arizona, for 39% of registered voters the issue is “extremely important” when deciding which candidate to lean towards. This was concluded in a Fox News poll in March.
Another carried out in October by the New York Times and Siena College had already noted that 59% of those registered to vote in that state believe that the law should protect the interruption of pregnancy in all or most cases.
The eyes in the “pendulum states”
It is no coincidence that the polls and attention focus on Arizona, one of the so-called “swing states”, which are those in which neither of the two parties is assured of victory and in which an issue such as abortion can tilt the balance.
This year the crucial states are Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona.
“Arizona is clearly an electoral battleground”says Anthony Zurcher, BBC reporter and expert on American politics.
In fact, In 2020, Biden was the first Democrat in 24 years to win the stateand only by a margin of 10,000 votes.
“If he could repeat the feat, that would pave the way for him to win even if he lost in other now battleground states that he won four years ago, such as Wisconsin, Nevada and Georgia,” Zurcher continued.
Defending access to pregnancy termination could help you do this, and your strategists know it.
Also in consultations
“That Democrats are campaigning aggressively on the abortion issue also has to do with the fact that it is widely recognized that They owe this issue the result, better than expected, that they obtained in the midterm elections.”, Zurcher also points out.
They are those that are carried out in the middle term and usually all the seats in the House of Representatives and a third of those in the Senate are at stake.
In the most recent, held in November 2022, despite the fact that the Republicans gained the majority in the House of Representatives, their hopes of a red tide that would lead them to total dominance of the bicameral Congress did not materialize.
On the contrary, the Democrats did much better than expected, and managed to retain control of the Senate.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, most Republican-controlled states have new restrictions on abortion in place, including 14 that prohibit it at all stages of pregnancy. Meanwhile, most Democratic-governed states have passed laws or issued executive orders to protect access.
Likewise, in the last almost two years it has also been shown that the defense of access to abortion wins other types of votes.
“It has turned out to be a much more powerful issue than many people thought it would be,” Susan Estrich, a veteran Democratic analyst who once ran Michael Dukakis’ presidential campaign, tells the BBC.
“Wherever they have been carried out consultations on abortion, the option in favor of the right to decide has been imposed”, Add.
This has happened in the referendums held in seven states: California, Michigan, Vermont, Montana, and also in the Republican strongholds of Kentucky, Ohio and Kansas.
In the latter, with a historic level of participation, 60% of voters rejected in August 2022 changing the state Constitution to restrict the right to abortion.
Consultations of this type are expected to be held in other states in November, although it is yet to be determined how many.
One of them could be Arizona, where they have already gathered the necessary signatures for it to be carried out.
In Florida, The state Supreme Court has already given the green light for a consultation to be held in November on a constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to terminate a pregnancy until “before viability” (calculated at around 24 weeks).
This has fueled speculation about whether this large state, which has tilted toward the Republican Party in recent years, may fall to the Democrats.
Other vote mobilizers
Be that as it may, there are analysts who are more cautious when analyzing the effect that this issue will have at the polls in November.
“We warn Democrats that don’t take anything for granted”, said this week the Center for Politics of the prestigious analyst Larry Sabato.
“It’s kind of easy to imagine regular Republican voters in Arizona (and Florida) voting in favor of abortion rights but supporting the GOP candidate in the race.”
In addition, there are issues beyond that that concern Americans and can also mobilize votes.
One is the border crisis.
A survey conducted by Monmouth University (New Jersey) published last month found that 8 out of 10 Americans -affiliated with one or another party or none- they see the immigration issue as a primary problem.
91% of Republican supporters, 41% of Democrats and 58% of those who do not support either party consider undocumented immigration a “very serious problem,” the study notes.
Likewise, 28% of those surveyed by Gallup in February estimate that the most serious problem facing the country is immigration, ahead of the economy, inflation or other social issues.
Issues that, in themselves, are also mobilizers of the vote.
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- Arizona Supreme Court allows 1864 law banning abortion to be enforced in almost all cases
- “The idea of getting pregnant now in Florida is terrifying”: a doctor’s concern about the new ban on abortion after 6 weeks
- “Fewer children will be born because of this”: the dilemma of devout Christians in the US after the court ruling in Alabama that considers embryos as persons
- “The border is going to define the White House”: the simultaneous visit of Biden and Trump to Texas that shows how the immigration crisis is crucial in the race for the presidency