In 2022, two enlightened white, middle-aged “Never Trump” former Republican friends of mine from the Atlanta suburbs candidly shared their surprise at the Supreme Court’s decision to eviscerate a half-century-old Constitutional right to an abortion.
Back in 2016, these two fathers of daughters, who consistently followed the news, had not appreciated that if Donald Trump won the presidential election, girls and women would lose the right to an abortion. They blamed the Democrats’ euphemistic talk eight years ago of “reproductive rights,” “protecting Roe v. Wade,” “women’s health,” and “choice.” These men—who had not felt that their own rights to bodily autonomy were continually under assault—had needed to hear the word “abortion” directly and explicitly to understand what was at stake for women and their own daughters.
Their bewilderment makes sense. Terms like “Roe,” “choice,” and “reproductive rights” may have been evident in 2016 to politically obsessed Democratic consumers of news. But imagine what a busy mother with young children working two jobs understood in 2016 when she heard, in passing, that “reproductive rights” or “the right to choose” were at stake. Consider what a Gen Z guy in 2016 thought when he heard “Roe is at risk” and “women’s reproductive rights are on the ballot.”
No terms convey “abortion” like…the word “abortion.”
Over the last 50 years, Democrats have generally eschewed the word. To sidestep it, politicians have preferred vague phrases such as “women’s health” and “reproductive health,” which can also allude to universally popular causes like breast cancer research or having a family. Bill Clinton used the word abortion but qualified it, saying, “It should be safe, legal, and rare.”
That language may have sufficed when Roe was the law of the land. But since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, the political and women’s health landscape has changed dramatically. The Dobbs majority not only overturned the constitutional right to an abortion but also gave states and presumably Congress carte blanche to completely outlaw the procedure. For many families, access to an abortion means the difference between the life and death of the mother. In Texas, an Austin woman in her thirties, Amanda Zurawski, had been undergoing fertility treatment for more than a year, got pregnant with a baby she wanted, and almost died from septic shock mid-way through her term. Under Texas law, her physician could not legally provide her with an abortion, even though the baby was no longer viable.
To combat Donald Trump’s anti-abortion record, President Joe Biden has recognized the need to lean into the word abortion– including at the joint 2024 campaign kickoff in January, and in his March State of the Union address. Dobbs—and the resultant threat to women’s health—demands that candidates, political commentators, and journalists provide Americans with explicit language about the threats women and families face.
Those threats are not hypothetical. They are spelled out publicly in a GOP action plan for a second Trump administration, Project 25, from the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups. Their blueprint includes a 180-day playbook that promises that MAGA Republicans will rescind Food and Drug Administration approval for the abortion pill mifepristone and that they will prohibit the availability of abortion pills by mail using the 1873 Comstock Act. They also promise to deploy the Centers for Disease Control to surveil providers and recipients of abortion and to declare that abortion is not health care. They’ll also roll back the Biden administration guidance requiring hospitals to perform lifesaving abortions, even in the 16 states with near-total bans.
The Biden-Harris campaign promises to use the GOP’s own roadmap to warn voters. But to communicate the stakes to voters, Democratic candidates and their campaigns, up and down the ballot, need to be blunt. Democrats cannot risk whether the mother with two jobs makes time to vote because Democrats promise to “codify Roe.” They can’t rely on a rallying cry to “restore Roe” to get the next wave of 20-something fraternity boys to the polls.
That’s why it was such welcome news when the White House announced this week that Vice President Kamala Harris would visit a Minnesota abortion clinic, making history as the first vice president or president to do so. Her visit to the facility, along with the state’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, and Representative Betty McCollum, spoke volumes about normalizing women’s need for support for all aspects of reproductive care. In her remarks, Harris highlighted the care that these clinics provide—whether for a woman’s uterus, fibroids, or breasts or her need for contraception or an abortion.
While at the clinic, Harris noted that “the majority of women who receive an abortion are mothers.” Democrats can use that data point to persuade male, female, inconsistent, independent, and Nikki Haley voters to vote for the Biden-Harris ticket and Democrats downballot.
The Democrats should take comfort in the fact that the data is on their side. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released last week found that 86 percent of adults favor protecting access to abortions for patients who are experiencing miscarriage or other pregnancy-related emergencies. Two-thirds of the public support a law guaranteeing a federal right to an abortion.
Voters need to know that if they stay home or vote for a third party, the GOP will rescind this right. If Republicans regain the Senate and White House and pass a national ban, abortion could become illegal in all 50 states. There will remain no safe state to provide abortion care. Voters need to hear from campaigns, journalists, and news commentators that only Democrats will pass a federal law to ensure women have the right to a legal abortion. In 2024, the word abortion, for better or worse, will help Democrats win.
