abortion rights - Global pulse News
  • Here’s the landscape 2 years after the Supreme Court reversed a nationwide right to abortion

    Here’s the landscape 2 years after the Supreme Court reversed a nationwide right to abortion

    Judges, state legislators and citizens are choosing the future of abortion in the U.S. 2 years after the Supreme Court jolted the legal status quo with a judgment that reversed Roe v. Wade.

    The June 24, 2022, ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Company triggered legal action, demonstration and various claims — putting the concern at the center of politics throughout the nation.

    Abortion is now prohibited at all phases of pregnancy, with restricted exceptions, in 14 Republican-controlled states. In 3 other states, it’s disallowed after about the very first 6 weeks, which is in the past numerous understand they are pregnant. The majority of Democratic-led states have actually done something about it to secure abortion rights, and end up being sanctuaries for out-of-state clients looking for care.

    That’s altered the landscape of abortion gain access to, making it more of a logistical and monetary experience for numerous in conservative states. However it has actually not minimized the general variety of treatments done every month throughout the U.S.

    Here’s what to understand about the state of abortion rights in the U.S. now.

    Restricted abortion gain access to triggers more out-of-state travel

    Prohibits in Republican-led states have actually triggered many individuals looking for abortions to take a trip to get care.

    That equates into greater expenses for gas or airplane tickets, hotels and meals; more logistics to determine, consisting of childcare; and more day of rests work.

    A brand-new research study by the Guttmacher Institute, which promotes for abortion gain access to, discovered that out of simply over a million abortions supplied in centers, healthcare facilities and medical professionals’ workplaces, more than 161,000 — or 16% — were for individuals who crossed state lines to get them.

    More than two-thirds of abortions performed in Kansas and New Mexico were for out-of-staters, especially Texans.

    Given that Florida’s six-week abortion restriction started in May, many individuals needed to take a trip further than in the past, because throughout the Southeast, many states have restrictions.

    Low-income clients and those doing not have legal consent to be in the nation are most likely to be not able to take a trip. There can be long lasting expenses for those who do.

    In Alabama, the Yellowhammer Fund, which formerly assisted homeowners spend for the treatment has actually stopped briefly doing so because dealing with hazards of lawsuits from the state.

    Jenice Water fountain, Yellowhammer’s executive director, stated she satisfied a lady just recently who took a trip from Alabama to surrounding Georgia for an abortion however discovered she couldn’t get one there due to the fact that she was somewhat too far into her pregnancy. So she then went to Virginia. The journey eliminated her lease cash and she required assistance to stay housed.

    “We’re having individuals utilize every penny that they need to leave state, or utilize every penny they need to have another kid,” Water fountain stated.

    It’s normally supplied with tablets instead of treatments

    Almost two-thirds of recognized abortions in 2015 were supplied with tablets instead of treatments.

    One report discovered that tablets are recommended by means of telehealth and sent by mail to about 6,000 individuals a month who reside in states with abortion restrictions. They’re sent out by medical service providers in states with laws meant to secure them from prosecution for those prescriptions. The laws in Colorado, Massachusetts, New York City, Vermont and Washington particularly secure medical service providers who recommend the tablets to clients in states with restrictions.

    The growing prominence of tablets, which were utilized in about half of all abortions prior to the Dobbs judgment, is a frontier in the most recent chapter of the legal battle.

    The U.S. Supreme Court this month all turned down an effort by abortion challengers who were looking for to reverse or roll back the U.S. Fda’s approval of mifepristone, one of 2 drugs normally utilized together for medication abortions. The concern is most likely to return.

    Abortion is on the 2024 tally

    In this governmental election year, abortion is an essential concern.

    Securing gain access to has actually become an essential style in the projects of Democrats, consisting of President Joe Biden in his reelection quote. Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate, has actually stated states need to choose whether to limit abortions. He likewise recommended states might restrict birth control usage however altered his tune on that.

    “We acknowledge this might be the last Dobbs anniversary we commemorate,” Kelsey Pritchard, a representative for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America stated in an interview, keeping in mind that if Democrats win the presidency and restore control of both chambers of Congress, a right to abortion might be preserved in the law.

    The concern will likewise be put straight before citizens in a minimum of 4 states. Colorado, Florida, Maryland and South Dakota have tally steps this year asking citizens to authorize state constitutional modifications that would secure or broaden access to abortion. There are efforts to put concerns about abortion gain access to on the tallies this year in Arkansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska and Nevada, plus a legal difficulty of a court judgment that knocked a New york city determine off the tally.

    There’s likewise a push for a tally step in Arizona, where the state Supreme Court this year ruled that an 1864 abortion restriction might be implemented. With the assistance of some Republican politicians — Democrats in the Legislature had the ability to reverse that law.

    Typically, abortion rights broaden when citizens are choosing. In the 7 statewide abortion policy-related votes because 2022, citizens have actually agreed abortion rights supporters in every case.

    It’s still as much as the courts — consisting of the Supreme Court

    The Dobbs judgment and its after-effects generated a bunch of legal concerns and claims challenging almost every restriction and constraint.

    A lot of those concerns handle how exceptions — which enter play much more frequently when abortion is disallowed previously in pregnancy — need to use. The concern is frequently raised by those who wished to be pregnant however who experienced deadly issues.

    A group of ladies who had major pregnancy issues however were rejected abortions in Texas took legal action against, declaring the state’s restriction is unclear about which exceptions are enabled. The all-Republican Texas Supreme Court disagreed in a May judgment.

    The Supreme Court likewise heard arguments in April on the federal government’s suit versus Idaho, which states its restriction on abortions at all phases of pregnancy can encompass ladies in medical emergency situations. The Biden administration states that breaks federal law. A judgment on that case might be released at any time.

    On the other hand, restrictions have actually been postponed by judges in Iowa, Montana, Utah and Wyoming.

  • The anti-abortion motion is making a huge play to prevent person efforts on reproductive rights

    The anti-abortion motion is making a huge play to prevent person efforts on reproductive rights

    CHICAGO (AP) — Reeling from a string of beats, anti-abortion groups and their Republican allies in state federal governments are utilizing a range of techniques to counter proposed tally efforts planned to secure reproductive rights or avoid citizens from having a say in the fall elections.

    The strategies consist of efforts to get signatures eliminated from effort petitions, legal promotes contending tally procedures that might puzzle citizens and monthslong hold-ups brought on by suits over tally effort language. Abortion rights supporters state much of the techniques construct off ones evaluated in 2015 in Ohio, where citizens ultimately passed a constitutional change verifying reproductive rights.

    The techniques are being utilized in one type or another in a minimum of 7 states where efforts focused on codifying abortion and reproductive rights are proposed for the November tally. The battles over scheduled statewide tally efforts are the most recent indication of the deep departments produced by the U.S. Supreme Court’s choice 2 years ago to end a constitutional right to abortion.

    This previous week, the court released a judgment in another significant abortion case, all maintaining access to a substance abuse in the bulk of U.S. abortions, although battles over mifepristone stay active in lots of states.

    The stakes for the proposed tally efforts are high for both sides.

    Where Republicans manage the legislature and enact rigorous abortion limitations, a statewide residents effort is typically the only opportunity for securing access to abortion and other reproductive rights. Citizens have actually either preserved abortion rights or reversed efforts to limit it in all 7 states where the concern has actually been on the tally given that 2022.

    In South Dakota, legislators passed an expense enabling locals to withdraw their signatures on citizen-led petitions. This introduced a detailed effort by anti-abortion groups to revoke a proposed abortion rights tally step by motivating endorsers to withdraw signatures.

    The South Dakota secretary of state in Might identified as a “fraud” numerous telephone call from an anti-abortion group the workplace implicated of “impersonating” federal government authorities.

    “It appears that the calls are attempting to push citizens into asking that their name be eliminated from the Abortion Rights petitions,” the workplace stated in a declaration.

    Adam Weiland, co-founder of Dakotans for Health, the company behind the proposed step, stated this becomes part of “a managed, arranged effort throughout states.”

    “Individuals wish to vote on this concern, and they don’t desire that to occur,” he stated of anti-abortion groups. “They’re utilizing whatever they can to avoid a vote on this concern.”

    An Arkansas “Decrease to Sign” project intensified this month after a conservative advocacy group released the names of the paid canvassers for an abortion rights tally step effort. Arkansans for Limited Federal government, the group behind the tally step effort, knocked the relocation as an intimidation method.

    In Missouri, Republicans and anti-abortion groups have actually opposed efforts to bring back abortion rights through a constitutional change at every action in the procedure.

    Republican Chief Law Officer Andrew Bailey stonewalled the abortion-rights project for months in 2015. Then the secretary of state, Republican politician Jay Ashcroft, attempted to explain the proposition to citizens as enabling “unsafe and uncontrolled abortions up until live birth.” A state appeals court in 2015 ruled that Ashcroft’s phrasing was politically partisan and tossed it.

    However Ashcroft’s actions and the legal fight cost the abortion-rights project numerous months, obstructing its advocates from gathering countless citizen signatures required to put the change on the tally.

    Once the legal fights were settled, abortion challengers introduced a “decrease to sign” project focused on warding off the abortion-rights projects’ signature-collecting efforts. At one point, citizens were sent out texts incorrectly implicating petitioners of attempting to take individuals’s individual information.

    Republican legislators looked for to advance another tally step to raise the limit for modifying the Missouri Constitution, partially in hopes of making it more difficult to enact the abortion-rights proposition.

    Both anti-abortion efforts stopped working, and the abortion-rights project in Might kipped down more than double the needed variety of citizen signatures. Now it’ i approximately Ashcroft’s workplace to validate the signatures and certify it for the tally.

    On the other hand, opposition groups in Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Nebraska have actually attempted to develop their own tally changes to codify existing abortion limitations, though these efforts stopped working to collect sufficient signatures in Florida and Colorado.

    Jessie Hill, a law teacher at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland who functioned as an expert to the Problem 1 project that codified abortion rights in Ohio, stated she had actually alerted about the possibility of contending tally procedures that might puzzle citizens.

    While efforts to keep abortion off the tally follow a comparable plan to what she saw in Ohio in 2015, Hill stated she is carefully viewing brand-new efforts throughout the nation.

    “The anti-abortion side is still attempting to determine what the formula is to beat these tally procedures,” Hill stated.

    A technique file dripped last month reveals Arizona Republicans thinking about numerous contending procedures to preserve abortion limitations into the state constitution. Possible petition names consist of the “Protecting Pregnant Women and Safe Abortions Act,” the “Arizona Abortion and Reproductive Care Act” or the “Arizona Abortion Security Act.”

    The file clearly information how the alternative procedures might damage a proposition from reproductive rights groups intending to codify abortion rights through practicality, generally around 23 weeks to 24 weeks into pregnancy.

    “This dripped file revealed a strategy to puzzle citizens through one or numerous contending tally procedures with comparable titles,” stated Cheryl Bruce, project supervisor for Arizona for Abortion Gain Access To.

    In Nebraska, anti-abortion groups are countering a prepared tally effort to secure reproductive rights with 2 of their own.

    Allie Berry, project supervisor of the Nebraska Protect Our Rights project, which is planned to secure reproductive rights, stated the contending procedures are developed to trick and puzzle citizens. She stated the project is working to inform citizens on the distinctions in between each of the efforts.

    “If you’re needing to turn to deceptiveness and confusion, it reveals that they understand that a lot of Nebraskans wish to secure abortion rights,” she stated.

    One counter effort introduced by anti-abortion activists in May looks for to prohibit abortion at all phases of pregnancy. Called “Now Select Life,” the petition would give embryos “personhood.”

    Another introduced in March would not go that far however rather looks for to codify the state’s existing 12-week abortion restriction into the state constitution while providing legislators the capability to pass more limitations in the future.

    The petition, called Protect Women and Kid, has actually been backed by the nationwide anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and others in the state.

    Sandy Danek, executive director of Nebraska Right to Life, called the petition a “sensible option step.” She stated as “as time goes on and we continue to inform,” the company will intend to limit abortion even more.

    “I see this as an incremental procedure that we’ve been dealing with for 50 years,” she stated.

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    Associated Press author Summer season Ballentine in Jefferson City, Missouri, added to this report.

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    The Associated Press gets assistance from numerous personal structures to boost its explanatory protection of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy effort here. The AP is entirely accountable for all material.

  • The Senate filibuster is a difficulty to any nationwide abortion expense. Democrats are campaigning on it

    The Senate filibuster is a difficulty to any nationwide abortion expense. Democrats are campaigning on it

    CHICAGO (AP) — Sen. Tammy Baldwin, dealing with a hard reelection battle in among the races that will figure out control of Congress, has actually made safeguarding reproductive rights a foundation of her project, and she wants to back that up by promising to alter the Senate filibuster guidelines if Democrats keep control of the chamber.

    The Wisconsin Democrat stated taking that action is required to make sure that females in every state -– not the federal government -– can choose on their own whether to have an abortion. As part of her project, she cautions that Republicans may likewise target the filibuster to enforce a nationwide abortion restriction if they dominate in November.

    “Republican politicians have actually revealed time and once again that they will stop at absolutely nothing in their pursuit of managing females’s bodies – and I think them,” she stated.

    Democratic incumbents and oppositions running for the Senate this year state they wish to bring back a nationwide right to abortion, and numerous, like Baldwin, honestly state they would support suspending the filibuster to do so. It’s ended up being an essential talking point as they attempt to profit from the across the country fight over abortion rights that has actually typically assisted Democratic prospects given that the Supreme Court reversed constitutional securities 2 years back.

    Republicans have actually slammed Democrats for wishing to alter the guidelines and are emphatic they would refrain from doing so if they win the presidency and Senate.

    Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, 2 popular Republican advocates of abortion rights, have actually presented legislation indicated to codify the securities that had actually been developed by Roe v. Wade. In a declaration, Collins stated she “will oppose any effort to deteriorate the legal filibuster” by either celebration.

    Senate guidelines need 60 votes to end dispute over an expense, successfully making it the minimum variety of votes required to pass legislation, as a way to supply an examine the bulk. In an age of polarization and political gridlock, this number, rather than an easy bulk in the 100-member Senate, has actually been an obstruction for the celebration in power to promote its program on concerns such as ballot rights and migration.

    However whichever celebration has control of the Senate can alter the guidelines and take exceptions to the filibuster with just an easy bulk vote. That action has actually been described as the “nuclear alternative” in the couple of times it has actually been used.

    Democrats, under then-Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, did this for all judicial elections however the Supreme Court in 2013, when Democrat Barack Obama was president and Republican politicians had actually consistently obstructed Democratic candidates. GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky stated Reid would be sorry for that choice – and Republicans later on altered the filibuster guideline for Supreme Court candidates when they reclaimed control.

    That permitted Republican politician Donald Trump, while in the White Home, to put 3 conservative justices on the court, consisting of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was verified about a week before the 2020 election. She assisted form the court bulk that reversed Roe v. Wade.

    While neither celebration has actually presumed regarding alter the guidelines for legislation, numerous Democrats in Senate races this year have actually enthusiastically supported doing so, specifically to secure abortion rights.

    “If NASA had the guidelines of the United States Senate, the spaceship would never ever leave the launchpad,” Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly stated in an interview this month with NBC News. “So sometimes, at the proper time — I believe this is among them -– I would think about altering those guidelines to make certain that females can get the healthcare they require.”

    Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey stated “he has actually been on the record for many years” that the guidelines need to be altered and still supports that position. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar has actually consistently required removing the filibuster to secure abortion and ballot rights given that Roe v. Wade was reversed.

    Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who formerly served one term in your home and is the leading Democratic Senate prospect in Florida, stated in an NBC News interview this month that she is “quite in favor of stopping briefly the filibuster and ballot for a female’s right to select to codify Roe v. Wade.”

    Her challenger, Republican politician Sen. Rick Scott, railed versus Mucarsel-Powell’s assistance for stopping briefly the filibuster. He did not discuss whether he would support stopping briefly the filibuster to limit abortion nationally however has actually staunchly protected it in the past, calling it “an important and required guideline to secure minority celebration rights.”

    “Should it be ‘stopped briefly’ to pass the Green New Offer? What ready to stack the Supreme Court or remove the Electoral College?” Scott stated in a declaration to The Associated Press that referenced his challenger. “Should we eliminate it completely or just pause it when (Senate Bulk Leader) Chuck Schumer informs her to? Be sincere with individuals of Florida about where you fix a limit on ‘stopping briefly’ democracy, Congresswoman.”

    It’s not simply Democratic legislators and prospects. In 2022, President Joe Biden stated he supported a carve-out to the filibuster to codify abortion rights, a concept warded off by 2 moderates who chose versus running for reelection this year, Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, a Democrat turned independent.

    Political specialists state there may be heavy pressure from anti-abortion groups to raise the Senate filibuster if the GOP gains complete control in Washington, however nationwide companies have actually de-emphasized the concern, a minimum of openly.

    When asked last month in a Time publication interview if he would ban an expense that would enforce a federal restriction, Trump did not respond to straight. Rather, he stated “there will never ever be that possibility” due to the fact that Republicans, even if they reclaim the Senate in November, would not have the 60 votes required to get rid of a filibuster and bring the expense to a vote.

    Kristi Hamrick, representative for Trainees for Life, stated steering around the filibuster is not a “sensible circumstance” due to the fact that the group has actually not seen collaborated efforts underway to do so. Rather, she stated if Trump is chosen, the group would press him to think about taking administrative actions to limit abortion, consisting of prohibiting the mailing and online sale of abortion tablets.

    Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, stated the company has actually never ever taken a position on the concern and rather implicated Biden of being “intent on preventing the filibuster.”

    Democrats and abortion rights groups state they are hesitant Republicans would not try to raise the filibuster guideline for a federal restriction.

    Mini Timmaraju, president of the nationwide abortion rights company Reproductive Flexibility for All, stated the GOP and anti-abortion forces “are prepared to utilize every tool in their tool kit to prohibit abortion across the country, which consists of preventing the filibuster.”

    Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, D-Mich., likewise alerted of a nationwide restriction if Republicans win the presidency and Congress.

    “We cannot rely on anything that Donald Trump states when it concerns abortion,” Whitmer stated just recently. “So nobody must take any convenience in the reality that yes, he desires an abortion restriction however he won’t get it due to the fact that he doesn’t believe we’ll have 60 votes in the Senate. Baloney.”

    Trump has actually voiced conflicting views on the guideline, depending upon whether his celebration managed the Senate. In 2017, his very first year as president, he required an end to the filibuster to move his program forward, consisting of reversing the healthcare law enacted under Obama and constructing a border wall. However in 2021, a year after he lost his reelection quote and with Democrats managing Congress, he stated eliminating the filibuster would be “disastrous for the Republican politician Celebration.”

    A number of high-ranking members of the Senate GOP — consisting of Sens. John Thune of South Dakota, John Cornyn of Texas and John Barrasso of Wyoming — have actually stated they are strongly versus raising the filibuster. Thune and Cornyn are going to change McConnell when he steps down from management after the November election.

    Sen. Jim Lankford, R-Okla., stated this previous week that GOP senators have actually gone over the concern throughout personal conferences, which he and others have actually stated they desire guarantees from those running for leader that they will not alter the guidelines.

    “It is something distinctively American to be able to have a location in federal government that both sides need to belong of,” Lankford stated.

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    Associated Press author Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington added to this report.

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    The Associated Press gets assistance from numerous personal structures to boost its explanatory protection of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy effort here. The AP is exclusively accountable for all material.

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  • Democrats hope abortion issue will offset doubts about Biden in Michigan

    Democrats hope abortion issue will offset doubts about Biden in Michigan

    LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Two women campaigning for President Joe Biden after facing medical emergencies because of abortion restrictions in their states visited Michigan on Tuesday to highlight what they say are the risks to women’s health since federal abortion protections were overturned.

    Democrats are aiming to make abortion rights a central issue in the 2024 election in the battleground state, hoping it will appeal to undecided voters and some members of the party who don’t like how Biden has handled the Israel-Hamas war.

    “For all of us across the country, in all 50 states, our rights are on the line this election,” said Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who went into premature labor, developed sepsis and nearly died after she was initially refused an abortion.

    By her side Tuesday in Lansing was Kaitlyn Joshua, a Louisiana woman who said restrictive abortion laws prevented her from getting medical help for a miscarriage.

    Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved a citizen-led ballot initiative that codified abortion rights in the state’s constitution in the 2022 midterms after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade. The ballot initiative sparked record turnout, particularly among young voters, leading to Democrats’ largest gains in decades.

    The party is hoping to re-create that success this year but has encountered troubling trends within its base. Wayne County, which includes Detroit and has the largest Democratic voting base in the state, has become the epicenter for opposition to Biden’s handling of the latest war between Israel and Hamas, and some have said they would sit the election out.

    Biden and state Democrats hope emphasizing the threat to abortion rights, an issue proven to unify the party here, can help preserve the coalition that won him the state in 2020. The president and his proxies say a national ban on abortion is possible if former President Donald Trump is reelected, pointing to Trump’s judicial nominations that paved the way for the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022.

    “I am terrified for women of reproductive age who live in all these states where we have seen bans,” said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who also took part in the Lansing event. “And I’m also terrified for women of reproductive age here in Michigan based on what could happen if we have the wrong person as president.”

    Republicans, including Trump, are struggling to figure out how to talk about the issue, if at all. In an interview published last week by Time magazine, Trump said it should be left to the states whether to prosecute women for abortions. Some Republicans in Michigan, including U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers, have said that the issue of abortion rights has been settled in Michigan, and that it’s no longer on the ballot.

    Zurawski and Joshua, who last month traveled to North Carolina and Wisconsin to campaign for Biden, joined similar small events in Detroit and Grand Rapids on Tuesday to share their stories with state lawmakers, local officials and voters.

    The Biden campaign considers both women’s stories to be potent firsthand accounts of the growing medical peril they say many women face because of abortion restrictions pushed by Republicans. Recent events featuring other surrogates for Biden, including Vice President Kamala Harris and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, have also centered on abortion rights.

    Since winning full legislative control in 2022, Michigan Democrats have struck down the state’s 1931 abortion ban, prohibited Michigan companies from firing or retaliating against workers for receiving an abortion and lifted regulations on abortion clinics.

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  • Missouri and South Dakota Move Toward Abortion Rights Ballot Questions

    Missouri and South Dakota Move Toward Abortion Rights Ballot Questions

    Two more states with near-total abortion bans are poised to have citizen-sponsored measures on the ballot this year that would allow voters to reverse those bans by establishing a right to abortion in their state constitutions.

    On Friday, a coalition of abortion rights groups in Missouri turned in 380,159 signatures to put the amendment on the ballot, more than double the 172,000 signatures required by law. The Missouri organizers’ announcement followed a petition drive in South Dakota that announced on Wednesday that it, too, had turned in many more signatures than required for a ballot amendment there.

    Both groups are hoping to build on the momentum of other states where abortion rights supporters have prevailed in seven out of seven ballot measures in the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had established a constitutional right to abortion for nearly five decades.

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    Groups in about 10 other states have secured spots on the ballot for abortion rights measures or are collecting signatures to do so. Those include Arizona and Nevada, swing states where Democrats are hoping that voters who are newly energized around abortion rights will help President Joe Biden win reelection.

    South Dakota and Missouri are reliably Republican states. But their bans are among the strictest in the nation, outlawing abortion except to save the life of a pregnant woman.

    Missouri, where post-Roe polls show that a majority of voters want abortion to be legal in all or most cases, appears to offer abortion rights groups the bigger chance of success. But both measures face significant hurdles.

    Republicans who control the Missouri legislature are pushing another ballot question that would appear before voters in August and make it harder for future ballot amendments to succeed.

    That measure would raise the threshold for victory, requiring not only a majority of voters statewide but a majority of voters in five out of the state’s eight congressional districts. Abortion rights supporters fear the requirement would allow a minority in rural areas that tend to oppose abortion rights to vote down the amendment.

    Missouri legislators are expected to vote on that measure before their session ends this month. State officials will also have to decide whether the abortion rights measure appears on the primary election ballot in August, when turnout tends to be light, or in the general election in November.

    The state’s Republican leaders have attempted to keep the measure from going before voters for more than a year. The secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, attempted to change the language of the ballot measure in ways that could have inflamed fears that it would lead to dangerous and unregulated abortions; supporters of the measure successfully sued to block him.

    The amendment in Missouri is similar to ones passed in Ohio and Michigan. It would establish “the right to make and carry out decisions about all matters relating to reproductive health care,” including abortion. The Legislature could regulate abortion after the point when, “in the good faith judgment” of the treating health care professional, the fetus could survive outside the uterus without “extraordinary medical measures.”

    In South Dakota, getting the signatures certified could be a challenge because Republican legislators passed a law in March allowing signers to withdraw their support. Backers of the amendment collected about 55,000 signatures, 20,000 more than needed, but anti-abortion groups are working to collect enough reversals to keep the measure off the ballot.

    The amendment effort in South Dakota has been largely driven by one group, Dakotans for Health. Planned Parenthood and other usual allies of abortion rights have declined to support the effort. The groups say that the ballot amendment leaves open the possibility that the legislature could continue to regulate abortion so heavily that the amendment would allow, in the words of the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, “abortion in name only.”

    The South Dakota amendment would prohibit the state from regulating “a pregnant woman’s abortion decision and its effectuation” during the first trimester, but would allow regulations on the procedure during the second trimester only in ways that are “reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman.” In the third trimester, the state could regulate and even ban abortion, as long as the ban included exceptions for the “life or health of the pregnant woman.”

    South Dakota is one of a handful of states where polls show that less than a majority of voters — 47% in a recent survey — believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. (The other states in that same survey were North Dakota, Arkansas, Idaho and Utah.)

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  • Democratic Senate hopeful proposes ‘pausing’ filibuster for abortion and voting rights

    Democratic Senate hopeful proposes ‘pausing’ filibuster for abortion and voting rights

    MIAMI — Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, the leading Democratic candidate to take on Florida Sen. Rick Scott this fall, said she would support pushing aside the Senate filibuster in order to pass a handful of policy measures, including federal protections for abortion.

    “Democracy is 50-plus-one, and for certain issues, I am very much in favor of pausing the filibuster and voting for a woman’s right to choose to codify Roe v. Wade,” the former Miami-area congresswoman said in an interview Wednesday, following a press conference addressing the implementation of Florida’s six-week abortion ban.

    Mucarsel-Powell said she would also support undoing the filibuster, which requires 60 Senate votes to advance most legislation, to pass federal voting rights protections and gun control measures.

    Pressed on whether she would support completely removing the filibuster without the possibility of reinstalling it, Mucarsel-Powell demurred.

    “I have to think about that,” she said, adding that the filibuster has “been there for quite some time” and she would “need to understand the implications” before deciding on whether to permanently remove it.

    Mucarsel-Powell’s statement comes amid broader Democratic efforts to link their 2024 campaigns and abortion rights, both in terms of federal policy platforms and the abortion rights ballot measures that will go before voters in a number of states this fall, including Florida. And while Democratic performance has slid in Florida in recent years, a number of polls there have shown broad support there for abortion rights, even as state Republicans enacted a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, one of the stricter limits nationwide.

    But Democrats’ attempts to eliminate the Senate filibuster have come up short in recent years.

    Eliminating the filibuster was a rallying cry for a number of Democratic Senate candidates in 2020. But the party took the chamber by only a narrow margin, and Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona were key players in blocking fellow Democrats’ efforts to remove the barrier in the early years of the Biden administration.

    Manchin and Sinema, who later left the party and became an independent, have both since announced they will not seek re-election in 2024. That might help tip the Senate back into Republican control, but it also means any future Democratic majority might be more amenable to rules changes to eliminate the current 60-vote threshold for most legislation.

    For example, Rep. Ruben Gallego, the Democrat seeking to succeed Sinema in Arizona, has signaled support for reforming procedure.

    Mucarsel-Powell has put a laser focus on abortion rights in the weeks since Florida’s state Supreme Court voted to allow a referendum to go before voters this fall that, if passed, would put Roe v. Wade-era protections into the state constitution.

    “We have an amendment on the ballot at the same time,” she said, adding that voters will “have an opportunity to make sure that extremists like Rick Scott, someone that supports this extreme abortion ban, doesn’t get reelected.”

    Sen. Rick Scott. (Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images file)

    Sen. Rick Scott. (Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images file)

    “If we pass this amendment here in the state of Florida, but he gets re-elected, he goes back to the Senate and pushes an abortion ban at the federal level,” she continued.

    Recently, Scott has offered mixed signals on the issue of abortion. In the span of a few days in April, the senator said he believes there is “consensus” around 15-week restrictions, but he also said in an interview with Spectrum News that he would have signed the state’s new six-week ban into law if he were still the governor.

    Scott’s campaign said that he does not favor national legislation on abortion.

    “Everyone knows that Senator Rick Scott supports the right to life. Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell does not,” Scott campaign spokesman Will Hampson said in a statement.

    “Floridians agree that there should be some reasonable limits placed on abortion. Senator Scott has been very clear where he stands: No national bans, with the consensus at 15 weeks with limitations for rape, incest and life of the mother,” he added.

    This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

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  • Biden blames Trump for Florida’s 6-week abortion ban, says women nationwide face health crisis

    Biden blames Trump for Florida’s 6-week abortion ban, says women nationwide face health crisis

    TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday blamed Donald Trump for Florida’s upcoming abortion ban and other restrictions across the country that have imperiled access to care for pregnant women, arguing Trump has created a “healthcare crisis for women all over this country.”

    Biden’s campaign events at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa placed the president in the epicenter of the latest battle over abortion restrictions. The state’s six-week abortion ban is poised to go into effect May 1 at the same time that Florida voters are gearing up for a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution.

    Biden said that millions of women are facing “pain and cruelty.” “But it’s not inevitable. We can stop it. When you vote, we can stop it.”

    The president is seeking to capitalize on the unceasing momentum against abortion restrictions nationwide to not only buoy his reelection bid in battleground states he won in 2020, but also to go on the offensive against Trump in states that the presumptive Republican nominee won four years ago. One of those states is Florida, where Biden lost to Trump by 3.3 percentage points.

    On Tuesday, he chronicled increasing medical concerns for women in the two years since the Supreme Court ended federal abortion protections.

    “There was one person who was responsible for this nightmare,” Biden said. “And he’s acknowledged it and he brags about it — Donald Trump.”

    Biden said Trump, who has publicly waffled on his abortion views, and of late has said abortion is a matter for states to decide, is concerned voters will now hold him accountable.

    “Folks, the bad news for Trump is that we are going to hold him accountable,” Biden said.

    At the same time, advocates on the ground say support for abortion access cuts across parties. They’re intent on making the issue as nonpartisan as possible as they work to scrounge up at least 60% support from voters for the ballot initiative.

    That could mean in some cases, Florida voters would split their tickets, backing GOP candidates while supporting the abortion measure.

    “I think that normal people are aware that a candidate campaign is really different than a ballot initiative,” said Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for Floridians Protecting Freedom, which gathered signatures to put the abortion question before voters. “You can vote for your preferred candidate of any political party and still not agree with them on every single issue.”

    Brenzel continued, “This gives voters an opportunity to have their message heard on one policy platform.”

    On the same day the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the ballot measure could go before voters, it also upheld the state’s 15-week abortion ban. That subsequently cleared the way for the new ban on the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy, which is often before women know they are pregnant, to go into effect next week.

    Organizers of the abortion ballot measure say they collected nearly 1.5 million signatures to put the issue before voters, although the state stopped counting at just under a million. Roughly 891,500 signatures were required. Of the total number of signatures, about 35% were from either registered Republican voters or those not affiliated with a party, organizers said.

    State Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat, said if the abortion ballot initiative becomes branded as a partisan effort, “it just makes it more challenging to reach 60%.” Eskamani, who worked at Planned Parenthood before running for political office, said she is encouraging the Biden administration to focus broadly on the impact of a six-week ban and let the ballot measure speak for itself.

    “At the end of the day, the ballot initiative is going to be a multimillion-dollar campaign that stands very strongly on its own,” Eskamani said.

    Trump’s campaign did not respond to a question on whether the former president, a Florida voter, would oppose or support the ballot measure. In an NBC interview last September, Trump called Florida’s six-week ban “terrible.” But he has repeatedly highlighted the three conservative-leaning justices he chose for the high court who cleared the way to overturn Roe.

    Republicans were dismissive of the Biden campaign and the broader Democratic Party’s efforts to use abortion as a political cudgel, arguing that other issues will matter more with voters in November.

    “Floridians’ top issues are immigration, the economy and inflation; in all three areas Joe Biden has failed,” said Evan Power, the chairman of the state Republican Party. “Instead of coming to talk to Floridians about manufactured issues, he should get to work solving the real issues that he has failed to lead on.”

    Still, Trump and other Republicans are aware that voter backlash against increasing restrictions could be a serious liability this fall.

    Abortion-rights supporters have won every time the issue has been put before voters, including in solidly conservative states such as Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio. Last month, a Democrat in a suburban state House district in Alabama flipped the seat from Republican control by campaigning on abortion rights, weeks after in vitro fertilization services had been paused in the state.

    Nikki Fried, the chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, said Florida will be a competitive state on the presidential level “because of the extremism that has come out of Florida.” No Democrat has won the state on the presidential level since 2012, but state party officials have found some glimmers of political change in vastly smaller races, such as the open Jacksonville mayor’s race last May that saw a Democrat win in what was once a solidly Republican city.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said at a news conference before the visit that the abortion amendment was written in a way to deliberately mislead voters, an argument that the state Supreme Court disagreed with when it approved the ballot language.

    “All I can tell you is Floridians are not buying what Joe Biden is selling and in November we’re going to play an instrumental role in sending him back to Delaware where he belongs,” he said.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee and Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this report.

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  • Growing majority of Americans want Congress to restore Roe v. Wade protections

    Growing majority of Americans want Congress to restore Roe v. Wade protections

    A full 54% of Americans (and 56% of registered voters) now want Congress to pass “a law that keeps abortion as legal and accessible as it was nationwide under Roe v. Wade,” according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

    That is the highest level of public support for making Roe the “law of the land” since Yahoo News and YouGov started asking about the issue in spring 2022. In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, dismantling 50 years of nationwide protection for abortion and paving the way for individual states to curtail or ban the procedure.

    In contrast, just 30% of Americans (and 33% of registered voters) would oppose federal legislation designed to restore the half-century status quo under Roe, which protected abortion rights until 22 or 23 weeks of pregnancy — the point of “viability,” at which a fetus can survive outside the womb.

    The new Yahoo News/YouGov survey of 1,746 U.S. adults, which was conducted from April 11 to 15, highlights the political risks facing anti-abortion Republicans ahead of the 2024 election if they continue to push for hard-line state bans.

    Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, 14 states have banned abortion entirely, while another seven have banned the procedure at an earlier stage of pregnancy — ranging from six to 18 weeks — than previously allowed under Roe.

    Political analysts say Republican candidates have repeatedly lost otherwise winnable races as a result.

    How Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban factors in

    The growing support for codifying Roe in Congress may reflect the latest developments in the states.

    Shortly before the Yahoo News/YouGov poll went into the field, Arizona’s highest court reinstated a long-dormant 1864 state law banning all forms of abortion from the moment of conception, except when necessary to save the life of the woman.

    After reading a brief description of the Arizona ban, including its lack of exceptions for rape or incest and its potential two-to-five-year prison sentences for doctors who perform the procedure, 57% of Americans say they oppose reinstating it, according to the survey — while just 25% say the opposite.

    Likewise, 56% of Americans oppose and just 26% favor “more states passing abortion bans like Arizona’s.”

    Among registered voters, opposition to Arizona’s abortion ban is even higher. A full 62% say they’re against it, and a nearly identical 60% say other states shouldn’t pass similar laws. Only about a quarter of voters say they favor the Arizona ban (25%) and want other states to follow suit (27%).

    The implications for a Trump-Biden rematch in 2024

    After considering a 15-week national abortion ban of his own, former President Donald Trump announced in April that he would leave it up to individual states to make their own rules if he were reelected in November.

    “Whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” he said in a video.

    In response, President Biden’s campaign accused Trump of effectively “endorsing every single abortion ban in the states, including abortion bans with no exceptions.”

    Biden has repeatedly emphasized the need to restore the “protections of Roe v. Wade in every state” by passing legislation in Congress — something that requires clear-cut Democratic majorities.

    “You can do it,” Biden told supporters in January. “Give me a Democratic House of Representatives and give me a bigger … Democratic Senate, and we will pass a new law restoring the protections of Roe v. Wade, and I will sign it immediately.”

    However you slice it, Biden’s stance — which, again, 56% of voters effectively support — is more popular than Trump’s. Asked “which of the following views … comes closest to your own,” just 28% of voters say that “individual states should be allowed to set their own abortion policies.” More voters say the Republican Party (48%) rather than the Democratic Party (39%) has the more extreme view on abortion. And more voters say the same about Trump (41%) than about Biden (38%) — even though Trump has tried to distance himself from the Arizona ban and others like it.

    Similarly, more voters would oppose (43%) than favor (38%) Congress passing a law that “bans abortion nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy” — and more voters say they would be likely to vote against (49%) rather than for (29%) a “candidate for major office who wants to ban most abortions that were legal under Roe v. Wade.”

    Ultimately, 57% of voters say they would prefer their own states to keep all (25%) or most (32%) abortions legal post-Roe v. Wade; only 35% would prefer that their states ban all (11%) or most (24%) abortions.

    The latest Yahoo News/YouGov poll suggests that the Arizona ban may have convinced at least some voters that the best way to ensure that the procedure remains legal is by not leaving it up to the states.

    ____________

    The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,746 U.S. adults interviewed online from April 11 to 15, 2024. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent’s most recent answer given prior to Nov. 1, 2022, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (33% Democratic, 27% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.6%.



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  • Democrats bank on abortion in 2024 as Arizona and Florida push stakes higher

    Democrats bank on abortion in 2024 as Arizona and Florida push stakes higher

    Kamala Harris’s Friday visit to Arizona was planned before the state’s top court upheld a 160-year-old law that bans almost all abortions. But the news galvanized the vice-president’s message, one that has already yielded stunning victories for liberals since Roe v Wade fell nearly two years ago.

    That message is simple: abortion bans happen when Republicans are in charge.

    Related: Abortion rights across the US: we track where laws stand in every state

    “Women here live under one of the most extreme abortion bans in our nation. … The overturning of Roe was without any question a seismic event, and this ban here in Arizona is one of the biggest aftershocks yet,” Harris said at the Tucson event. “Overturning Roe was just the opening act of a larger strategy to take women’s rights and freedoms … We all must understand who is to blame. Former president Donald Trump did this.”

    The ruling from the Arizona supreme court arrived on Tuesday, just days after a Florida supreme court ruling cleared the way for a six-week abortion ban, a decision that will cut off access to the procedure before many women even know they are pregnant. These back-to-back rulings roiled the United States, raising the already high stakes of the 2024 elections to towering new heights. Activists in both states are now at work on ballot measures that would ask voters to enshrine abortion rights in their states’ constitutions in November.

    Democrats are hopeful these efforts – and the potential threat of more bans under a Trump administration – will mobilize voters in their favor, because abortion rights are popular among Americans, and Republicans have spent years pushing restrictions. Democrats have made abortion rights a central issue of their campaigns in Arizona, which was already expected to be a major battleground, and Florida, a longtime election bellwether that has swung further to the right in recent years.

    For Joe Biden, who is struggling to generate enthusiasm among voters, turning 2024 into a referendum on abortion may be his best shot at defeating Donald Trump. But it remains an open question whether the backlash to Roe’s overturning will continue to drive voters in a presidential election year, when they may be more swayed by concern over the economy and immigration.

    “In public polls that might just ask: ‘What’s your most important issue?’ You’re going to see abortion in the middle, maybe even towards the bottom,” said Tresa Undem, a co-founder of the polling firm PerryUndem who has studied public opinion on abortion for two decades. “But when you talk to core groups that Democrats need to turn out, it’s front and center.”

    A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that Trump held double-digit leads when swing state voters were asked who would best handle the economy, inflation and immigration, but they trusted Biden more on abortion. A Fox News poll in March found that most voters in Arizona believe Biden will do a better job handling the issue of abortion, but it was less of a priority than the economy, election integrity and foreign policy.

    Related: Arizona’s abortion ban is a political nightmare for Republicans in the 2024 election

    For Biden, abortion is “the best issue for him right now”, Undem said. “All of the data I’ve seen on this upcoming election, young people are not nearly as motivated to vote as they were in 2020. And so in places like Arizona, the total ban – and I don’t make predictions ever – I do think it is going to turn out young people, especially young women.”

    The Biden campaign has released two abortion-focused ads this week, including one that features a Texas woman who was denied an abortion after her water broke too early in pregnancy. (She ended up in the ICU.) Indivisible, a national grassroots organization with a local presence in states across the country, said volunteer sign-ups to knock on doors in Arizona spiked 50% following the state supreme court’s ruling. Its members in Arizona are helping to organize rallies in support of reproductive rights as well as events to collect signatures for the ballot measure.

    When Roe fell, abortion rights’ grip on voters was far from guaranteed. Mitch McConnell, Senate Republicans’ longtime leader and an architect of the conservative supreme court majority that overturned Roe, brushed off outrage over its demise as “a wash” in federal elections. Although most Americans support some degree of access to the procedure, anti-abortion voters were more likely to say the issue was important to their vote than pro-abortion rights voters.

    The fall of Roe changed that. Anger over Roe was credited with halting Republicans’ much-promised “red wave” in the 2022 midterm elections, while pro-abortion rights ballot measures triumphed, even in crimson states such as Kansas and Kentucky. Last year, when Virginia Republicans tried retake control of the state legislature by championing a “compromise” 15 week-ban, they failed. Democrats now control both chambers in the state.

    “When Republicans offer compromises, I think a lot of voters are inclined not to see those as what the Republican party really wants long-term but what the Republican party thinks is necessary to settle for in the short term,” said Mary Ziegler, a University of California at Davis School of Law professor who studies the legal history of reproduction. “They know that Republicans are aligned with the pro-life movement and the pro-life movement wants fetal personhood and a ban at fertilization.”

    In the hours after the Arizona decision, several Republican state lawmakers and candidates with long records of opposing abortion rushed to denounce the near-total ban (which has not yet taken effect). The Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake, who once called abortion the “ultimate sin” and said Arizona’s impending near-total abortion ban was “a great law”, attempted to clarify her position on the issue in a meandering, five-minute-plus video. The ban she once favored – which passed in 1864, before Arizona even became a state or women gained the right to vote – is now “out of line with where the people of this state are”, Lake said.

    “The issue is less about banning abortion and more about saving babies,” she said, as instrumental music swelled against images of pregnant women and pregnancy tests. She repeatedly stressed the importance of “choice” – language associated with people who support abortion rights – while simultaneously invoking the value of “life”.

    Lake also emphasized that she “agrees with President Trump” on abortion. Over the course of his campaign, Trump has alternated between taking credit for overturning Roe – since he appointed three of the justices who ruled to do so – toying with the idea of a national ban, and insisting that states can decide their own abortion laws, as he did in a video this week.

    Related: Florida just crushed abortion rights. But it also created a tool to fight back | Moira Donegan

    In that video, released on Monday, Trump declined to endorse a federal ban on the procedure, after months of teasing his support. On Wednesday, Trump criticized the Arizona law and predicted that state lawmakers would “bring it back into reason”. Florida’s six-week ban, he suggested, was “probably, maybe going to change”. He reiterated his criticism on Friday, posting on his social media platform that the Arizona supreme court went “too far” in upholding an “inappropriate law from 1864” and calling on the Republican-led state legislature to “ACT IMMEDIATELY” to remedy the decision. “We must ideally have the three Exceptions for Rape, Incest, and Life of the Mother,” he wrote. (The 1864 ban only includes an exception to save the life of the pregnant person.)

    “He’s simply trying to have it, I think, both ways,” Ziegler said of Trump.

    Come November, Democrats are counting on the real-world consequences of the bans overriding other concerns. “The economy is still important. Immigration is still important, but this is immediate,” said Stacy Pearson, an Arizona-based Democratic strategist.

    “A woman just wants to be in her OB-GYN’s office, having a conversation with her doctor about her medical care without concerns about whether or not old white men in cowboy hats were right in 1864,” Pearson added. “It’s nuts.”

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  • Harris hits Trump on abortion from Arizona

    Harris hits Trump on abortion from Arizona

    Vice President Kamala Harris lambasted Donald Trump on Friday as being responsible for erasing abortion rights in the country, one of her most direct attacks on the former president so far as abortion has taken center stage in the upcoming election.

    “We all must understand who is to blame. Former President Donald Trump did this,” Harris said at a campaign event in Tucson, Arizona. “During his campaign in 2016, Donald Trump said women should be punished for seeking an abortion.”

    Harris’ campaign trip to Arizona comes just days after the state’s high court upheld a 160-year-old law outlawing abortions unless the patient’s life is in danger. Harris blamed Trump in a statement following the ruling, saying, “It’s a reality because of Donald Trump, who brags about being ‘proudly the person responsible’ for overturning Roe v. Wade.”

    Trump criticized the Arizona ruling as going too far, just days after he said abortion should be left up to states to decide and that he wouldn’t support a federal ban on the procedure. He doubled down in a Truth Social post just hours before Harris’ event Friday, calling for Arizona officials “to remedy what has happened.”

    Multiple aides to the vice president have told POLITICO that Harris has been worried that Trump was going to try to moderate his position publicly. While traveling to Charlotte last week, Harris was told about the former president’s promise to release a statement about abortion this week, possibly calling for a 15-week ban.

    “She basically said, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t do the 15 weeks at all, if he tried to do something to muddy the waters. And so we need to be ready to make sure that no matter what his statement says, he’s on the hook for all the state bans that are in existence,’” said a campaign official granted anonymity to speak candidly.

    The campaign stop in the battleground state was planned prior to the court decision and was originally meant to be about student loans. But as it became clear that the decision was going to be announced, Harris told her team that it instead needed to be focused on abortion.

    For years, Harris’ abortion events have been from her official side. Friday’s appearance marked a shift to campaign events that allowed the vice president to attack Trump more directly, calling him “the architect of this health care crisis.”

    “She’s not subject to the Hatch Act and she can say whatever the heck she wants,” said one senior Harris aide granted anonymity to speak candidly. “[But] she knew we needed to pivot to more campaign style and campaign paid for events so that we could really be unencumbered in how we tell the story and how we make sure that voters understand the connection of an 1864 ban in Arizona and what that means, why that’s Donald Trump’s fault.”

    At the heart of the shift: the campaign’s concern that Trump’s attempt to moderate his position is going to work. “We’d be crazy not to be worried about that,” the Harris aide added.

    The ruling has energized local abortion rights advocates who have been working to put a ballot measure in front of Arizona voters in November. Groups such as the ACLU of Arizona and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Arizona say that they have acquired enough signatures to establish a ballot measure, according to the Arizona Republic.

    The campaign said Harris spoke to more than 100 abortion rights activists and supporters.

    “Here’s what a second Trump term looks like: More bans, more suffering and less freedom,” Harris said. “Just like he did in Arizona, he basically wants to take America back to the 1800s. But we are not going to let that happen because here’s the deal: This is 2024, not the 1800s. And we’re not going back. We are not going back.”

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  • Democrats pounce on Arizona abortion ruling and say it could help them in November’s election

    Democrats pounce on Arizona abortion ruling and say it could help them in November’s election

    PHOENIX (AP) — Democrats pounced Tuesday on an Arizona Supreme Court ruling that permits enforcement of an 1864 law effectively banning abortion in the state, blaming former President Donald Trump and Republicans and pressing for political advantage on an issue that could dominate a critical 2024 battleground.

    The ruling permits doctors or others to be prosecuted for performing an abortion at any time unless the mother’s life is in danger, with no exceptions for rape or incest. President Joe Biden ‘s campaign immediately blamed the ruling on Trump’s appointment of three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn a federally guaranteed right to an abortion.

    “The girls today and the young women do not have the rights that we once did because of Donald Trump,” said Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, a Democrat. “Donald Trump is dangerous and reckless.”

    The decision will give Arizona the strictest abortion law of the top-tier battleground states heading into November’s election. Biden and his allies are emphasizing efforts to restore abortion rights, while Trump has avoided endorsing a national abortion ban and warned that the issue could lead to Republican losses.

    In a sign of Republicans’ political bind, even Kari Lake, a staunch Trump ally and abortion opponent who is running for Senate in Arizona, said the total abortion ban “is out of step with Arizonans.” It’s a shift from two years ago when Lake praised the 1864 law. Several Republican legislators called for the law to be repealed.

    “This issue should be decided by Arizonans, not legislated from the bench,” said U.S. Rep. David Schweikert, an Arizona Republican who previously praised the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

    Trump reshaped the U.S. Supreme Court during his presidency, moving the court to the right and paving the way for the Dobbs decision in 2022 that allowed for the enforcement of state laws like Arizona’s.

    The Arizona ruling comes a day after Trump said abortion limits should be left to the states and declined to endorse a national ban after months of mixed messages and speculation.

    “President Trump could not have been more clear,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “These are decisions for people of each state to make.”

    Meanwhile, the White House announced Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Arizona later this week to discuss abortion rights.

    Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes, who was elected by just 280 votes in 2022, attributed her victory to backlash over the Dobbs decision. She said Tuesday’s ruling will again spur independents and Republicans who support abortion rights to vote for Democrats.

    “If past is prologue, this is going to have a deep and lasting impact on politics in Arizona,” Mayes said.

    Of the other major expected battlegrounds in the Biden-Trump rematch, Georgia outlaws abortions after about six weeks, while Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania all allow abortions up to 20 weeks or later.

    Voters have consistently backed abortion rights when the question is put directly to them, including in conservative states such as Kansas and Kentucky. The issue is credited with helping Democrats exceed expectations in the 2022 midterm elections.

    In Arizona, the political fallout of Tuesday’s ruling could be extensive. Biden has put abortion rights at the center of his campaign, as has Democratic Senate candidate Ruben Gallego. It will intensify efforts by abortion rights advocates to put a ballot measure in front of voters that would restore the right to an abortion.

    “This will supercharge signature collection,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of the progressive group Indivisible, which is involved in the effort to add an Arizona ballot measure this fall enshrining the constitutional right to abortion.

    Levin said the groups collecting signatures have already collected the 384,000 valid signatures needed by July 4. Now, he said, they’re aiming to hit 800,000 signatures by July.

    Last week the Florida Supreme Court made a decision with similar implications, allowing the state to begin enforcing a ban on most abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy, which could make the state competitive after years of increasing Republican control. The court also allowed a ballot measure to go forward letting Floridians decide whether to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution.

    The law will likely give a boost to Democrats seeking to win the legislative majority, giving them power over abortion laws in a battleground state.

    According to AP VoteCast, a broad survey of the electorate, 61% of Arizona voters in the 2022 midterm elections said abortion should be legal in most or all cases. Just 6% said it should be illegal in all cases.

    Two-thirds of midterm voters in Arizona said the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade was an important factor to their vote for that election.

    About 6 in 10 Arizona voters in that election said they would favor a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.

    The old law was first enacted among a set of laws known as the “Howell Code” adopted by the 1st Arizona Territorial Legislature in 1864, decades before Arizona became a state in 1912. Legislative researchers said it remained in the penal code in 1901 and was readopted in subsequent rewrites, including in the 1970s.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the decision will resonate in the elections this fall.

    “The American people know where the Democrats are, know where the Republicans are and this is going to be a large looming issue in the campaign,” he said.

    His counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., declined to weigh in, saying he had yet to read the court’s decision.

    But McConnell said he was certain “this whole issue is going to continue to unfold in the course of the campaign.”

    ___

    Associated Press writers Steve Peoples in New York, Linley Sanders and Lisa Mascaro in Washington, and Geoff Mulvihill in Chicago contributed to this report.

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  • Trump’s abortion statement angers conservatives and gives the Biden campaign a new target

    Trump’s abortion statement angers conservatives and gives the Biden campaign a new target

    NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump still says he’s proud that the Supreme Court justices he nominated overturned Roe v. Wade. Yet he again on Monday avoided tough questions about abortion, including whether he would support a national abortion ban should he return to the White House.

    The presumptive Republican presidential nominee tried to put to rest an issue widely seen as a general election liability. Instead, his video statement exposed the tough road ahead and inflamed leaders on both sides of the issue.

    Religious conservatives said they were deeply disappointed. Progressives said he was lying. And there’s every indication that abortion will define the 2024 election no matter what Trump does or says — in large part because Republicans in Congress and in statehouses across the country continue to fight for new restrictions.

    Here are some takeaways exploring the complicated politics of Trump’s latest statement.

    SEARCHING FOR POLITICAL SAFE GROUND

    For Trump, fights over abortion, like any other major issue, have always been about winning. And so it should not be a surprise that on Monday he avoided endorsing a ban.

    Trump has long tried to steer clear from supporting national restrictions that could be a political disaster for Republicans struggling to win back key groups — especially suburban women — who turned their backs on the GOP in recent years.

    Trump remains eager to take credit for the reversal of Roe v. Wade. He did so again in Monday’s video posted to his social media site. But even at the state level, abortion bans enacted after Roe was overturned have been deeply unpopular.

    So, Trump simply tried to punt abortion back to the states.

    “The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both. And whatever they decide must be the law of the land,” Trump said of abortion rights. “Now, it’s up to the states to do the right thing.”

    Religious conservatives, of course, have been fighting against abortion rights for decades on the grounds that abortion should be stopped at all costs — even if they pay a price at the ballot box.

    But Trump wants to win in 2024. And in his statement, he made clear that he’s trying to make the best of a bad political situation for him and his party.

    “We must win,” he said. “We have to win.”

    A TEST FOR TRUMP’S BASE

    The outrage from Democrats was expected. The fierce infighting among Trump’s GOP was not.

    “We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

    Former Vice President Mike Pence, who has declined to endorse his former running mate this year, put it this way: “President Trump’s retreat on the Right to Life is a slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans.”

    On social media, some conservatives latched onto Trump’s reference to the term “abortion rights,” arguing that such rights do not exist. Even Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a vocal Trump ally, said on X that he “respectfully” disagrees with Trump’s new position.

    As he often does, Trump went after his critics by name.

    “Lindsey, Marjorie, and others fought for years, unsuccessfully, until I came along and got the job done. Then they were gone, never to be heard from again, until now,” Trump said on social media. He added, “The Democrats are thrilled with Lindsey, because they want this Issue to simmer for as long a period of time as possible.”

    Despite the infighting, Trump’s team is making the calculation that his evangelical base, among the most loyal elements in his coalition, will have his back when it matters most. And recent history suggests he’s probably right.

    Dannenfelser and others have been pushing Trump to embrace a national abortion ban for several months. Trump, of course, has not. And still, Trump cruised to an easy victory in the GOP primary.

    He even won the Iowa caucuses, historically ruled by religious conservatives, by 30 points.

    If his waffling on abortion didn’t hurt him with the GOP base in the primary, it’s hard to see them turning against him this fall.

    BIDEN’S REELECTION MOBILIZES

    Democrats would have had more ammunition this November if Trump had publicly embraced a national abortion plan on Monday. But Biden’s party still has plenty to work with.

    Even in Monday’s statement, Trump said he was “proudly responsible” for the Roe reversal.

    Within hours, the Biden campaign released a scathing new advertisement featuring a woman who nearly died after being denied medical care due to restrictive abortion laws enacted after Roe was overturned.

    “Donald Trump did this,” the ad states as the Texas woman cries in the background.

    Prominent pro-choice groups lashed out as well, with many arguing that Trump cannot be trusted after his leading role in overturning abortion rights. Biden issued a seven-paragraph statement labeling Trump singularly “responsible for creating the cruelty and the chaos that has enveloped America” since Roe was overturned.

    “Trump is scrambling,” the Democrat said. “He’s worried that since he’s the one responsible for overturning Roe the voters will hold him accountable in 2024. Well, I have news for Donald. They will.”

    National Democrats intend to blame Trump not just for abortion bans in conservative-led states but for the restriction of fertility treatments in Alabama after the state Supreme Court ruled that embryos should be considered children and awarded legal protections.

    Biden’s campaign announced Sunday that it would hold campaign events featuring two women, one from Texas and the other from Louisiana, affected by restrictive abortion laws enacted by Republicans.

    Meanwhile, Republicans simply don’t have an effective counterargument.

    In his video, Trump repeated the GOP’s longstanding argument that it is Democrats, not Republicans, who are extreme on abortion because they support abortion rights with no restrictions. Such arguments, while debatable, have not been effective over the last two years. Conservatives have suffered stinging defeats in elections dominated by the abortion-rights debate from Kentucky to Ohio to Michigan.

    BIG QUESTIONS REMAIN

    Trump on Monday talked in more substance than we’re used to. But he hardly put the issue to rest.

    Trump will almost certainly continue to engage with the religious conservatives who condemned his position. Perhaps more importantly, he’ll also be asked to clarify key questions that he avoided altogether.

    Trump did not explicitly state whether, if elected again, he would or would not sign a national abortion ban should it reach his desk.

    While it’s unlikely such a proposal could meet a 60-vote Senate threshold, a majority of House Republicans have endorsed a national abortion ban as part of a budget proposal unveiled this spring by the Republican Study Committee.

    At the same time, Trump did not outline his position on a Florida ballot measure that would preserve abortion rights in the state constitution if approved in November. Trump, of course, is a Florida resident who will have an opportunity to cast a vote for or against the proposal.

    A new Florida law signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis will soon take effect banning abortions at six weeks of pregnancy, which is before many women realize they’re pregnant. Trump promised last week that he would issue the statement he gave Monday after being asked about the state law.

    Also left unanswered: Whether Trump supports access to the FDA-approved abortion medication mifepristone, which is widely available through the mail.

    STILL A DEFINING ISSUE

    Whether Trump’s GOP likes it or not, abortion will be a defining issue for many voters when they decide the presidency this fall.

    The Roe reversal is still fresh for many voters who have only just begun to grapple with Republican-backed abortion restrictions in their states. At the same time, voters in several states are expected to decide whether to enshrine abortion rights into state law this November.

    For now, it’s not clear exactly how many states will vote on abortion ballot measures. In some, the question is whether amendment supporters can get enough valid signatures. In others, it’s up to the legislature. And there’s legal wrangling in the process in some states.

    So far, abortion rights are definitely on the ballot in Florida, Maryland and New York. And efforts are also underway to do the same in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota.

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