Democrats, Biden to remind voters abortion is on the ballot
On the 51st anniversary of the Roe decision—and the second since the Supreme Court overturned it—abortion rights politicians plan to keep the issue front and center.
👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! It’s Monday, January 22, 2024. I’m Michael Jones and you’re reading the Once Upon a Hill, an independent newsletter bringing you fresh reporting and unique insights on congressional politics and how federal policy affects diverse communities.
Today is the 51st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that protected the constitutional right to abortion care—and the second since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the 2022 high court ruling that overturned Roe.
Since then, more than 40 percent—21 states—have banned or restricted abortion care and just last week House Republicans passed two anti-abortion measures endorsed by the SBA List, the political arm of the SBA Pro-Life America and the National Right to Life. (One of the bills would obscure the reproductive rights available to college students’ and another that would allow states to fund so-called crisis pregnancy centers with dollars dedicated to children and families in need.)
Democrats plan to flood the zone today to energize base voters around an issue that’s proven potent in the year-and-a-half since Dobbs and to be a motivating factor ahead of the 2024 election. I’ve got a deeply reported big-picture landscape on how congressional Democrats, the White House and Biden campaign have and will commemorate the day.
But first things first:
⇢ It’s over for DeSantis: Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Sunday afternoon suspended his $150 million presidential campaign and kissed former President Donald Trump’s ring in a four-minute-plus video that showcased same awkwardness that turned voters off on the trail.
The writing was on the wall when his campaign canceled his Sunday Show appearances and removed all the events from the events calendar on his website on Saturday. A scathing NBC News inside look at the failed campaign that published hours before the announcement didn’t help the 45-year-old who now returns to the Sunshine State with little political capital and an uncertain future in public service.
Related: “DeSantis was supposed to save the GOP from Trump, not endorse him”
⇢ LaLota endorsed Trump: Speaking of endorsements of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) one of 17 Republicans representing districts President Joe Biden won in 2020, also threw his support behind Trump over the weekend.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee wasted little time pouncing on the endorsement, which it said aligns LaLota, a self-branded moderate Republican, with the most far-right members of the party. “Nick LaLota’s Trump endorsement not only cements his standing with MAGA extremists: it sets off a ticking clock until his fellow vulnerable New York Republicans inevitably join him,” DCCC spokesperson Ellie Dougherty said in a statement.
⇢ ICYMI: In my latest Courier column, I wrote about when House Republicans find out they won’t get everything they asked for decide no one else will get anything either.
I also wrote about Shomari Figures a former Obama administration aide and congressional staffer who raised $250,000 in the first nine weeks of his campaign to become Alabama’s second Black member of Congress.
Figures is in the thick of a competitive primary, but the early numbers represent an impressive haul for a candidate who’s relatively unknown on the national stage in a state without much of a Democratic money machine.
“Those who tell the stories rule the world”
That’s the quote that came to mind last Friday as I listened to Lizzie Fletcher and Shontel Brown—two House Democrats representing Texas and Ohio districts respectively—explain the human suffering two high-profile residents of their states have endured.
In the Lone Star State, Kate Coxfiled the first public lawsuit since Roe against Texas for the right to an emergency abortion after her fetus was diagnosed with a genetic disorder that could cause death in the womb or lead to death days after birth.
The lawsuit said Cox was at risk of several life-threatening conditions, which led to a Texas judge ruling Cox qualified for a medical exemption from Texas’s six-week abortion ban.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton threatened to prosecute doctors if they performed an abortion on Cox and appealed the lower court ruling to the state’s supreme court. The Texas high court paused the judge’s ruling and ultimately unanimously ruled against Cox, who left Texas to obtain an abortion.
“I do think it’s important for people to hear these stories and to understand the real-life implications of these laws,” Fletcher told me. “Stories [are] the most useful way for people to see how it could be themselves, their sisters, mothers, aunts, daughters—this can happen to and does happen to everyone.”
In Brown’s home state, Brittany Watts made national headlines after a municipal judge allowed a case by city prosecutors to go forward that charged the 34-year-old with abuse of corpse following a miscarriage in the toilet. Watts visited an area hospital twice in the days leading up to her miscarriage but left each time without treatment. A grand jury decided last month that Watts wouldn’t be charged.
“It just goes to show the extent and the ridiculousness of the laws that the state legislature is trying to impose and how important it is for us to really codify Roe and enshrine it into law,” Brown told me.
Brown noted that Ohio is also the state where a 10-year-old rape victim had to flee to Indiana to have an abortion.
“So, again, we are no stranger to the oppression and suppressive tactics of our Republican colleagues here in the state of Ohio,” she added.
Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state held a briefing last week to hear from and ask questions of panelists about the state of abortion rights.
The event was powerful, and Murray reaffirmed Democrats’ commitment to using every available legislative tool to make the case for restoring and expanding abortion access nationwide. But it also underscored the absence of their most powerful tool: The votes in Congress to render the need for such convenings obsolete.
The Harris factor
Vice President Kamala Harris has been a saving grace for the president, an 80-year-old white man and devout Catholic whose complicated history with abortion politics has been well-documented.
After a shaky first two years as Biden’s second-in-command under the type of scrutiny that alluded her predecessors, she’s found her footing as the administration’s top messenger on abortion rights. She’s held more than 50 convenings in 20 states while bringing together hundreds of state legislators, state attorneys general, health care providers, faith leaders, students and advocates, according to the White House. The issue naturally fits into the vice president’s portfolio due not only to her personal identity but her her command of the cultural, social, cultural and religious nuances that laminate the debate.
This afternoon, Harris will kick off a nationwide tour in Wisconsin, a swing state crucial to President Biden’s path to victory and the latest state to introduce a new 14-week abortion ban.
“Women in Wisconsin have lived in a state of chaos and uncertainty ever since Donald Trump paved the way to overturn Roe v. Wade,” she said in a statement released by the Biden campaign. “If Donald Trump is reelected, he’ll try to gut abortion care in every state across the country and he has the plans to do it.”
The tour, dubbed “The Fight for Reproductive Freedoms”, is a sequel to the “Fight For Our Freedoms” circuit that took Harris to college campuses across eight states to speak directly to young leaders about their most pressing issues, including reproductive freedom. During her first stop on the latest tour in Waukesha County, the vice president is expected to highlight the harms of bans like the new Wisconsin measure and empower voters to resist these attacks on their fundamental freedoms at the ballot box this November.
While Harris is on the road, the president will convene the fourth meeting with his Reproductive Healthcare Access task force to hear directly from physicians who are on the frontlines of the fallout from the overturning of Roe.
“Because of Republican elected officials, women’s health and lives are at risk,” Biden said in a statement this morning. “In states across the country, women are being turned away from emergency rooms, forced to go to court to seek permission for the medical care they need, and made to travel hundreds of miles for health care.”
During the task force meeting, agencies will announce new actions to protect reproductive rights, including improving access to birth control, educating patients and health care providers of their rights and protecting access to medication abortion. To be clear, these are relatively marginal efforts enforced through executive authority that can be reversed by the next Republican president and require congressional action to become law.
Big 4 rally, women’s focused campaign ad
Biden, Harris, and their spouses—First Lady Dr. Jill Biden and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff will travel to Northern Virginia tomorrow to hold a campaign rally to continue to raise awareness on the impact of Republican-led abortion bans and the stakes of the 2024 election.
On Sunday, the campaign also released a 60-second ad featuring an OB/GYN in Texas and mom of three who was forced to flee the state when she learned that a planned pregnancy put her life at risk.
“This ad serves as a sobering reminder to women across the country of the devastating legacy of Donald Trump’s presidency—and a warning of his plans, if elected, to take this anti-abortion crusade even further by using every agency and tool of the federal government to limit women’s access to reproductive health care,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.
The ad will air over the next week in swing states and on national broadcast TV during the season premiere of The Bachelor and on cable channels viewed by suburban women and younger voters like HGTV, TLC, Bravo, Hallmark, Food Network and Oxygen. The spot will also air during the NFL conference championship games between the AFC’s Baltimore Ravens and Kansas City Chiefs and NFC’s Detroit Lions and San Francisco 49ers, where women are estimated to make up over 40 percent of the viewership. (A 30-second version of the ad will run on digital platforms too.)
The anti-abortion movement’s pro-woman pivot
The theme of this past Friday’s annual March for Life rally was “Pro-Life: With Every Woman, For Every Child,” as the anti-abortion movement attempts to focus attention away from statewide restrictions to abortion care and support from national politicians for a federal ban towards calls to expand the social safety net with housing, child care and health insurance for new moms.
“As they march on Washington today, they are not about life and there are a lot of inconsistencies, very hypocritical in nature,” Brown told me. “They’d like to see babies born, but they certainly don’t present or put forth laws that would help them have a better quality of life.”
Fletcher agreed that the compassionate reframing of the movement’s values and priorities is belied by its actions.
Texas is one of ten states that haven’t expanded Medicaid and she said pointed to the high correlation between those states and their restrictive abortion laws.
Beyond the anti-abortion bills House Republicans passed last week, Fletcher pointed to the protracted appropriations process where conservative members have introduced policy riders that restrict access to abortion care, nutrition assistance and family planning resources.
“Their votes do not say what they're saying to try to get on the right side of this issue because what they know is that the American people are not with them,” she said. “The American people do not support these laws. And that’s true across the country.”
HAPPENINGS
All times Eastern
The House is out.
9 a.m. President Biden will receive his daily intelligence briefing.
9:35 a.m. Vice President Kamala Harris will leave Washington, DC to travel to Milwaukee, arriving at 11:30 a.m.
1:15 p.m. The vice president will speak about abortion rights at International Union of Painters and Allied Trades District Council 7.
10:15 a.m. The president will leave Rehoboth Beach, Delaware to return to the White House, arriving at 11:10 a.m.
1 p.m. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby and Gender Policy Council Director Jen Klein will hold a press briefing.
2:15 p.m. President Biden will meet with his Reproductive Health Care task force to mark the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.
3 p.m. The Senate will meet with a vote at 5:30 p.m. to advance the nomination of Christopher Koos to be a Director of the Amtrak Board of Directors.
4:35 p.m. Vice President Harris will leave Milwaukee to return to Washington, arriving at 6:10 p.m.
Biden’s week ahead:
Tuesday: The president, vice president, First Lady Dr. Jill Biden and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff will travel to Manassas, Virginia for a campaign event.
Saturday: President Biden will travel to South Carolina.
Sunday: The president will return to the White House.
Harris’s week ahead:
Wednesday: The vice president will travel to Manhattan Beach, California to speak at a campaign fundraiser before traveling to Los Angeles.
Thursday: Vice President Harris will travel to Sacramento, California to speak at the California State Legislature Democratic Caucus Reception before speaking at a campaign fundraiser.
Saturday: The vice president and second gentleman will travel to Las Vegas to speak at an event with Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.). Harris will speak at a campaign fundraiser before she and Emhoff return to Los Angeles.
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