In the summer of 2019, as a crowded Democratic primary gathered speed, Joe Biden was on the defensive, beaten by abortion rights groups and his opponents for his support of the Hyde Amendment, a measure that prohibits the use of federal funds for most abortions.
He changed his position, but the episode underscored his shaky position in the eyes of abortion rights activists when he faced off in 2020 against Donald Trump, who became a hero of the anti-abortion movement by using his presidency to appoint justices to the Court. Supreme Court that seemed likely to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Now, in 2024, the situation has changed.
This week, it was Trump who infuriated abortion opponents as he sought to wash his hands of the issue and leave it up to the states, while President Biden described himself as an outspoken champion of the cause, releasing a raw tv ad and criticizing Trump as he sought to position the issue at the center of his re-election campaign.
“I am determined,” Biden said, “to restore the federal protections of Roe v. “Wade.”
If you were to come up with two candidates for the first presidential election since the fall of Roe, neither side of the abortion divide would likely come up with the exact candidate they have. They are both white men. They are both old. And neither has always said what their respective side of the debate wants to hear, although Biden’s change on the Hyde Amendment is not as marked a change as Trump’s turn over the “pro-choice” years. to “pro-life.”
So the week’s events, with the Arizona Supreme Court ruling Tuesday upholding an 1864 law that banned nearly all abortions, offered a window into a strange moment that for both of them had been a long time coming.
Now it is Biden, a Catholic who has openly expressed his personal misgivings on the issue, making abortion more central to a presidential campaign than any major party candidate in history, while Trump, a former president who is generally happy to take credit for having rolled back the right to abortion, he is trying to avoid it.
And neither of them will be able to control where the issue goes from now on, which will depend on court rulings, referendums and decisions by state legislatures.
“The people who are driving the agenda and the headlines are not necessarily people from Biden’s world or Trump’s world,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who studies the history and politics of abortion. “They’re kind of prisoners of the moment.”
A U-turn on Roe and a withdrawal of a national ban
The week began with a series of illusions on Trump’s part. After naming three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe, sending the contentious abortion debate back to the states and unleashing a firestorm of abortion-related political fights across the country, he sought to lower the temperature on the subject, well, leaving the issue in the hands of the states.
The Arizona ruling immediately revealed the political dangers of that strategy. Republicans across the state, including Senate candidate Kari Lake and at least two congressmen seeking re-election, criticized the ruling. The Biden campaign quickly moved to portray Trump as responsible for eliminating national abortion protections in Roe that had prevented old laws like that from taking effect.
“That will be taken care of,” Trump told reporters Wednesday as he arrived in Georgia ahead of a fundraiser. “I’m sure the governor and everyone else will come to their senses.” (Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)
Meanwhile, Trump’s allies on the religious right were deeply disappointed by what they see as a radical shift. His alliance with Trump had always been uneasy: Trump called himself “pro-choice” in the late 1990s, but in 2011 he had completely changed his position and called himself “pro-life.” She won evangelical support during her 2016 presidential run by promising to appoint anti-abortion judges.
“The Scriptures advise us, actually in Psalm 146, not to trust princes, kings or candidates,” said F. Brent Leatherwood, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which is the political wing of the Southern Congress. Baptist Convention. “These are unreliable and inconsistent people.”
Personal misgivings, but a long defense of Roe
It used to be Biden who was accused of modulating his position on abortion above politics, frustrating activists on both sides of the issue.
“Joe Biden complains a lot and then usually votes against us,” a senior Planned Parenthood official told the Wall Street Journal in 1986. In the same article, a National Right to Life official complained that he had “made a political judgment that it should be more pro-abortion.”
For much of his career, Biden supported the Hyde Amendment but also voted in favor of Roe. Over the years, she has repeatedly spoken of his discomfort with the procedure, including at a fundraiser in February.
“I am a practicing Catholic,” Biden said, according to a transcript provided by the White House. “I don’t want an abortion on demand, but I thought Roe v. Wade was right.”
Comments like that, as well as her well-documented reluctance to use the word “abortion,” have frustrated advocates working on the issue.
“Whatever inner thoughts and feelings he may have personally about it, he is the president of the United States,” said Kellie Copeland, executive director of Pro-Choice Ohio. “People are suffering because they cannot access abortion. I should say it directly and clearly.”
Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said the president had long fought to protect abortion rights and questioned the comparison between Trump and Biden. “For more than 50 years, Joe Biden has fought to protect Roe and women’s right to choose. As a senator, he repeatedly voted to protect Roe, and as president, he has used all of his executive authority to fight extreme MAGA abortion bans,” Hitt said.
Biden’s leftward shift on abortion rights may lag some members of his party, but it reflects decades of commitment to the issue, according to my colleague Lisa Lerer, who along with Elizabeth Dias is writing a forthcoming book appearance on the downfall of Roe.
Biden, Lisa said, has probably thought more deeply about abortion than any president in the modern era.
What Democrats learned in Alabama
This week’s news put abortion squarely at the center of elections across the country, and Democrats see the issue as an advantage to them in November. TO recent victory in Alabama could offer them a plan to make reproductive rights central to their campaigns. I asked my colleague mayan king to tell us what he learned after a recent reporting trip to that district.
Marilyn Lands, 65, a licensed therapist in Huntsville, Alabama, publicly shared her own abortion story from more than 20 years ago in the early weeks of her campaign in a special election for Congress. But then, after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos in test tubes were considered children, jeopardizing access to the in vitro fertilization procedure, Lands decided to make her campaign entirely about reproductive rights.
Only 6,000 people turned out for the race, less than 15 percent of the Huntsville electorate. But Lands defeated the Republican-held seat. Here are two takeaways from his victory:
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Moderate and conservative voters were important, but the Democratic base was crucial. Lands’ victory was bolstered by Democratic turnout in predominantly black corners of his Huntsville district. His enthusiasm, the Alabama Democratic state party chairman said, was a major factor in his 25-point victory.
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The first-person stories made a big difference. Lands did not share her abortion story during her first campaign in 2022, as she and her team felt the shock of the overturning of Roe v. Wade would be enough to move voters. But after sharing it publicly before the special election, she allowed him to reach voters who otherwise wouldn’t have had much interest in her race. Many, she said, were conservatives who felt the government had overextended its role in women’s health.
“Many people have disconnected. And I think maybe now they’ll tune back in because they see it can happen,” Lands told me of his victory in an interview at his Huntsville home last week. “We have captured a moment.”
—Mayan King
