As Sens. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump prepare to face off on the debate stage in Philadelphia, the fight over abortion rights has leapt to the center of the 2024 presidential campaign for the first time since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
At last month’s convention, Democrats highlighted the harrowing stories of women who suffered health crises as a result of state abortion bans following the Roe decision. Last week, the Harris campaign launched a 50-stop “reproductive freedom” bus tour through several battleground states, starting in Trump’s “backyard” a few miles from his Mar-a-Lago mansion in South Florida.
And this weekend, days before the first (and maybe only) prime-time presidential debate in which the issue is likely to come up, the Harris campaign debuted three new TV ads in which Trump repeatedly takes credit for his role in ending the constitutional right to abortion 50 years ago. The message is straightforward: Because of Trump, one in three women of reproductive age live in a state where abortion is banned or severely restricted. And they warn that a second term for Trump could make the situation even worse.
“Donald Trump is a fundamental threat to reproductive freedom. You don’t have to take our word for it; Trump himself says it,” Lauren Hitt, a spokesperson for the Harris-Waltz campaign, said in a statement. “Vice President Harris and Governor Waltz are fighting to restore reproductive freedom in all 50 states because we believe women should be able to make the right decisions for their families.”
Abortion remains a glaring weakness for Republican candidates in the hotly contested race for the White House.
“You can tell this is an important issue because Trump is trying to shift positions,” said Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic pollster.
As a candidate, Trump has taken ambivalent positions on the issue of abortion, boasting that he appointed three of the nine Supreme Court justices who cast the deciding vote to overturn Roe while complaining that Republican extremism on the issue has hurt his party at the polls.
Trump recently appeared to support a ballot measure to expand abortion rights in his adopted home state of Florida, but announced the next day that he would vote against it after drawing backlash from prominent conservative groups. He also indicated he would support a 15-week federal ban but argued the issue should be left to individual states. Trump’s campaign has said he would not sign a nationwide abortion ban as president.
While the economy remains the top issue for voters in the November election, a New York Times/Siena College poll released in August found that an increasing share of voters in battleground states, especially women, say abortion will be central to their election decision. Among women under 45, abortion has surpassed the economy as the most important issue.
In the final months of the campaign, Democrats are seeking to capitalize on unbridled anger, particularly among women and young people, over the loss of federal abortion protections and unite behind a policy platform that seeks to protect access to abortion and the availability of what remains of reproductive health care, including contraception and fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Lake said in polls and focus groups that abortion rights are a particularly important issue for women, adding to the widening gender gap between Harris and Trump. Harris’ vocal support for abortion rights has not only energized the Democratic base of young voters, it has also helped her persuade independent women and, in Lake’s words, “older women who remember when abortion was illegal and don’t think the idea of jailing doctors, investigating miscarriages, or eliminating contraception and IVF is a good idea.”
Trump, who has long worried that Republican-led efforts to ban abortion and restrict access to reproductive health care could jeopardize his presidential bid, has rethought his approach to the issue in recent weeks. At a rally in the battleground state of Wisconsin, he also endorsed a plan to have the government or insurance companies cover the costs of IVF, a type of fertility treatment that can cost tens of thousands of dollars and that some abortion opponents have called for restrictions on.
“We want to have babies in this country, right?” Trump said.
Democrats have called the proposal disingenuous, pointing to Republican Mr. Trump’s record and the positions of his running mate, J.D. Vance.
Trump has “more positions on reproductive rights than he has wives,” Ana Navarro, a TV personality and anti-Trump Republican, said at the start of Harris’ campaign bus tour in Florida last week.
Democrats used the abortion issue to secure key victories in the 2022 midterm elections. Mobilizing around abortion rights increased turnout and enthusiasm, helping Democrats maintain control of the Senate and stave off Republican gains in the House of Representatives. In Michigan, Democrats took control of all three branches of government after voters overwhelmingly supported a vote to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.
“By getting our message to people, by talking to women, by talking to health care workers and by talking to families, we were able to get historic results here in Michigan in a ’22 election,” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, co-chair of the Harris campaign, said in an MSNBC interview this week. “But it’s also important for Michiganders, New Yorkers and Floridians to know what’s at stake if President Trump is re-elected.”
Some Republicans have argued that a tumultuous presidential election would weaken abortion rights, but Lake believes the opposite may be true.
Abortion rights are a priority for young voters, who are more likely to vote in a presidential election year. Constitutional amendments guaranteeing abortion rights are on the ballot this fall in 10 states, including battleground states like Arizona and Nevada, as well as Florida, once a presidential marker but now heavily Republican.
“Here in Florida, we are the belly of the beast,” said Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikki Fried. “Our state has undergone dramatic change on abortion, from fully legal two years ago to now having one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation.”
Florida Democrats hope the ballot proposition will help reverse former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel Powell’s losing streak against Republican incumbent Sen. Rick Scott. In the race for control of the Senate, Democratic Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Jacky Rosen of Nevada will both have abortion rights measures on the ballot.
Fried, who attended Harris’ campaign kickoff in Palm Beach County last week, said the referendum helps bring attention to the state and mobilizes voters from all political walks of life.
“If we can take away access to reproductive health care, what’s next,” she said? “What other rights have we advanced that will be rolled back if Trump is reelected?”
The state’s referendum would overturn the state’s unpopular six-week abortion ban and guarantee the right to an abortion before “viability,” usually around the 24th week of pregnancy. A poll released in mid-August showed that 56% of Florida voters support the amendment, just short of the 60% threshold needed to become law. But Trump led Harris in the state, 51% to 47%.
Abortion remains Harris’ biggest issue, with her trailing Trump by 15 percentage points in a New York Times/Siena College survey of national voters. But there are signs that Trump’s mixed signals are muddying the issue: Nearly half of independents say they don’t think former president Harris would sign a nationwide abortion ban, according to a survey released Sunday.
Still, Republican candidates will have to contend with their base, particularly evangelicals and other conservative Christians, who expect Trump to further restrict access to abortion as president.
Kristan Hawkins, head of the National Student Life Association, a prominent anti-abortion group, recently told the Guardian that young conservatives are “shocked and saddened to see people they thought were pro-life, or who have consistently reaffirmed their pro-life values, reversed their views.”
Tuesday’s presidential debate in Philadelphia will be one of the most high-profile opportunities for Harris to draw a sharp contrast with Trump on the issue, with reproductive rights advocates predicting she will challenge the former president’s attempts to change his stance on the issue.
“I hope that Vice President Harris will make it clear to the tens of millions of people watching this video that leaving it to the states is not a moderate position, it’s an extreme position,” said Rob Davidson, a Michigan-based emergency physician and executive director of the Committee to Protect Health Care, a left-leaning coalition of doctors and medical professionals that recently endorsed Harris.
Davidson said voters also want to hear Harris articulate her vision for expanding access to reproductive health care.
“We know what Trump has done,” he said. “What are we going to do now?”