By Jasper Ward
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrats are set to kick off an abortion rights campaign next week on the 51st anniversary of the now-overturned Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court ruling, with speeches by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as well as advertisements focused on women affected by Republican-backed abortion bans.
With Biden running for re-election in November and his party seeking to defend its majority in the Senate and regain control of the House of Representatives, Democrats are hoping the issue of abortion rights will prove to be a winner at the ballot box.
The conservative-majority Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the Roe v. Wade decision, which was issued on Jan. 22, 1973. The Roe ruling had recognized a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion and legalized the procedure nationwide. Since it was reversed, Republicans at the state level have passed numerous restrictive abortion laws.
Harris is scheduled to travel to Wisconsin on Monday – the Roe anniversary – to put a spotlight what the Biden campaign called a Republican “all-out assault” on reproductive rights.
The Biden campaign said that the president, Harris and their spouses will take part in a campaign rally in Northern Virginia the following day. A campaign press release said the rally is intended to highlight the stakes of the Nov. 5 election “for a woman’s right to make her own healthcare decisions,” citing “the very possible reality” of a Republican-led national abortion ban in the future contrasted with Biden’s commitment to signing legislation that would enshrine Roe’s abortion rights into law.
Biden aides think the issue of reproductive rights will be particularly potent in northern Virginia, where Democrats need voters from the affluent Washington suburbs to carry the state in the election.
Most opinion polls, including a Reuters/Ipsos poll in July, have shown a majority of U.S. voters expressing opposition to presidential candidates who favor strict abortion limits.
Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Biden, last week said he was “proud” of his role in overturning Roe. The three conservative Supreme Court justices who Trump appointed during his presidency were pivotal in the decision overturning Roe.
“Donald Trump is the reason that more than one in three American women of reproductive age don’t have the freedom to make their own healthcare decisions,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement, adding that Trump and his party now want to “go even further if they retake the White House.”
“Trump directly paved the way for Republican extremists across the country to enact draconian bans that are hurting women and threatening doctors. In 2024, a vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is a vote to restore Roe, and a vote for Donald Trump is a vote to ban abortion across the country,” she added.
Biden’s campaign also said it will launch a new advertising campaign targeting women and swing voters in election battleground states, focusing on the personal impact that abortion bans have had on women and providers.
The overturning of Roe was a triumph for conservatives, but appears to have turned abortion into a political liability for Republicans. All seven statewide ballot questions about reproductive rights since 2022 have resulted in victories for abortion rights advocates, including in conservative-leaning states such as Ohio, Kansas and Kentucky.
Voter backlash on abortion rights also was credited by many political analysts with limiting the scale of Republican gains in the 2022 congressional midterm elections – though Republicans did win control of the House – as well as propelling Democrats in 2023 to election victories in Virginia and Kentucky.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Heather Timmons and Will Dunham)
