Abortion rights, always a polarizing issue in American politics, became an electoral tinderbox in 2022 after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision to create a federal right to abortion access. Democrats have seized upon the issue of women’s bodily autonomy, notably in the 2024 presidential election, in part because it could motivate the critical bloc of suburban women voters in swing states.
The prospect of women not having access to abortion was theoretical in many voters’ minds until the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which set in motion a domino effect of widely varying laws about abortion in the states. As of June, 14 states had enacted total bans on the medical procedure, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research organization that supports abortion access.
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Other states have enacted restrictions at various stages in pregnancy. The end result of all of the laws is many American women traveling to receive reproductive care, more than 171,000 in 2023, according to the institute. ProPublica reported on Sept. 16 that two Georgia women died after being unable to access legal abortion and timely medical care there, including a 28-year-old single mother who traveled to another state to obtain a prescription for a medical abortion, but then had rare complications because the fetal tissue was not fully expelled from her body.
Care that is routinely provided in such situations was significantly delayed, resulting in Amber Nicole Thurman getting a sepsis infection that caused her blood pressure to plummet and her organs to fail, according to the ProPublica report. Twenty hours later, after doctors decided to operate, her heart stopped. A state committee focused on pregnancy-related fatalities concluded that her death was “preventable.”
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris weighed in the day after the report was published, saying that such tragedies are the direct result of former President Trump’s Supreme Court appointees who voted to strike down Roe.
“This young mother should be alive, raising her son, and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school,” the vice president said in a statement. “In more than 20 states, Trump Abortion Bans are preventing doctors from providing basic medical care. Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to ever have children again. Survivors of rape and incest are being told they cannot make decisions about what happens next to their bodies. And now women are dying. These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions.”
There have also been multiple reports of woman suffering miscarriages and other medical emergencies who struggled to get care.
The ‘execution’ of babies
Republicans, including Trump, have claimed that Harris and running mate Tim Walz support allowing babies to be killed after they are born. Trump repeated that false assertion during the September presidential debate.
“It’s an execution,” Trump said, claiming that Democrats support allowing babies to be killed in the final months of pregnancy and after they are born.
It is illegal to kill babies after they are born in every state, and extremely rare late-term abortions typically occur because the baby’s health is severely compromised and the baby is not viable, or because of threats to the health of the woman.
Abortions after 21 weeks, considered late-term pregnancies, account for less than 1% of abortions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 80% of abortions occur in the first nine weeks of pregnancy, and 6% occur during the second trimester.
A federal abortion ban
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, questions immediately arose about whether Congress would enact legislation protecting abortion access across the nation or a federal measure prohibiting such rights.
Trump has vacillated on whether or not he would sign a federal abortion ban, but he has said that he would support a federal prohibition after a certain length of pregnancy. The former president has also stated that Americans broadly support the issue being decided by the states, which is decisively refuted by all reliable public polling.
“Look, this is an issue that’s torn our country apart for 52 years,” Trump said during the debate. “Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican … they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote, and that’s what happened.
“Each individual state is voting. It’s the vote of the people,” Trump said.
Harris argues that Trump is untrustworthy on the issue, and she vocally supports federal legislation allowing abortions until a fetus could survive outside the uterus, and later if required for medical reasons. The first White House official to visit an abortion clinic, Harris has called Trump’s actions on abortion “unconscionable.”
“It’s insulting to the women of America,” Harris said. “Understand what has been happening under Donald Trump’s abortion bans. Couples who pray and dream of having a family are being denied IVF treatments. What is happening in our country, working people, working women who are working one or two jobs who can barely afford child care as it is, have to travel to another state, to get on a plane, sitting next to strangers to go and get the healthcare she needs.”
The importance of Supreme Court appointees
A president’s power to reshape the Supreme Court took on greater importance when Trump narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016. Senate Republicans refused to even consider President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the seat of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia after Scalia died in February 2016 — nine months before the election.
That set the stage for Trump to fill Scalia’s seat and two others — the last of his picks, Amy Coney Barrett, was confirmed just a week before the 2020 election — paving the path to Roe being overturned, which the former president frequently boasts about.
“Now it’s not tied up in the federal government,” Trump said. “I did a great service in doing it. It took courage to do it, and the Supreme Court had great courage in doing it, and I give tremendous credit to those six justices” who voted to overturn the landmark abortion ruling.
Harris has lashed out at Trump for appointing the justices who supported overturning federal protection for abortion rights.
“Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade — and they did exactly as he intended,” she said.
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