No Matter Where You Live, Roe Is on the Ballot in November
The question to be asked now is: will the right’s victory at the Supreme Court come back to haunt them in November?
My impression is that this decision has broken through the indifference many people have to what goes on at the nation’s highest court. Most decisions involve incremental changes. This, I feel, is different.
Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux at Five Thirty Eight says we’re entering a new era:
In some corners of the abortion-rights movement, there’s a sense that Roe gave Americans a false sense of complacency. And it’s true that for better or worse, a veil is being lifted. We’re not heading for another 10 years of the slow removal of abortion access — we’re about to see what happens when half the country takes away a right many people took for granted.
Some initial polling provides evidence that opinions are shifting in the electorate.
On a day where the GOP’s spin machine was cranking out stories about a million people shifting their voter registration away from the Democratic party (shifts in registration are not unusual in primary years) and the Politico’s of the world were pounding the drum of ‘Dems in disarray,’ polls from CBS News/YouGov and NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist tell a different story.
From the New York Times:
Abortion-rights supporters could take heart over what appeared to be broad public disapproval of Friday’s ruling. A CBS News/YouGov poll conducted immediately after the court handed down its decision shows that Americans considered it a “step backward” for the nation by more than a 20 percentage-point margin.
Nearly 60 percent of Americans and two-thirds of women disapproved of the ruling, the poll said. Fifty-eight percent said they would approve of a federal law making abortion legal.
NPR cites the fact that 78% of Democrats say the court's ruling makes them more likely to vote this fall, a three to one advantage over Republicans who feel similarly motivated.
The most dramatic shift in sentiment came when people were asked their preferences on generic congressional races. There is an unprecedented 10 point shift in people who say they are more likely to vote for a Democrat in the fall from a similar survey done in April.
Here’s Kerry Eleveld at Daily Kos:
While increased enthusiasm among Democratic voting blocs doesn't guarantee wins, it certainly gives Democrats a fighting chance. Midterms are won and lost based on which party’s base voters turn out (rather than persuasion). Democrats need to recreate the coalition of voters of color, women, and suburban voters who gave them a House majority in 2018 in order to compete this fall. The Supreme Court’s radical ruling upending 50 years of settled law on abortion is animating that exact coalition.
Voting in midterm elections will be underway (in some states) in three months, and Democrats hope this enthusiasm shift holds into the fall.
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California’s Governor Gavin Newsom, who claims to have no interest in running for national office at this time, stepped up to the plate in a big way.
From Politico:
“I am very mindful that California can play an outsized role at this moment,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an emotional press conference on Friday. “I want folks to know, all around the rest of the country, and in many parts of the globe, that I hope we’re your antidote to fear or anxiety. Perhaps to the cynicism that many of you are feeling about fate and the future.”
Gov. Newsom signed a bill on Friday shielding California abortion providers from liability or prosecution related to out-of-state bans on abortions, and announced an agreement with Oregon and Washington leaders to establish a West Coast abortion firewall protecting providers and patients from the legal reach of other states.
He also dipped into his $25 million re-election campaign war chest to buy statewide ads on Fox stations in Florida, starting July 4. This is in keeping with earlier remarks about taking the fight over culture wars to Republican turf, something Newsom feels the national party is failing to do.
Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who helped give Newsom his start in politics in the mid-90s, said he was merely “telling it like it is.”
“He is literally echoing what lots of us think: Our party doesn’t have a message that’s registering with voters,” Brown said.
The State of California is loading up with executive moves, legislation, and a ballot measure in response to the overturning of Roe V Wade.
Already about one in six abortions in the U.S. are performed in California, and the fall of Roe means approximately 10,600 more people will travel to California each year for abortion care, with the majority coming from Texas or Arizona, according to a U.C.L.A. report.
CalMatters says California is one of only three states in the U.S. that don’t collect abortion data, including comprehensive numbers.
Yet as of today, there’s no centralized system collecting information on how many Californians are obtaining abortions here. Individual clinics and hospitals in California know how many procedures they perform, but it’s hard to get the full picture on abortions and how much they cost, Pinckney said. State officials said the new Health Care Payments Database, which tracks insurance claims, should capture abortion procedures and medication, but the information likely won’t be available until the end of next year.
In the meantime, estimating future demand for abortion services remains difficult — but that hasn’t stopped legislators from pushing forward with big-ticket budget proposals.
In a budget deal announced Sunday night, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Legislators pledged more than $200 million to improve reproductive health care in the state, including $40 million to directly subsidize the cost of providing abortions for low-income or uninsured patients.
San Diego’s Toni Atkins, the president of the state Senate, put forward a state Constitutional amendment to ensure the right to an abortion is ingrained in the state’s governing document, not just its laws. Although the state is about as abortion-friendly as you can get, the ballot measure ensuring the right to “reproductive freedom” will keep the issue in front of voters.
This is the line that would be added to the state Constitution if voters approve:
“The state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions, which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives.
Contests for state offices around the country are potential battlegrounds over the abortion issue.
Gubernatorial races in Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona will decide whether those states protect what should be a constitutional right. Democrats are betting that opposition to the court’s ruling will help them flip state legislative chambers in three states: Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire.
That’s great, and I can only hope the party’s commitment to women’s health issues extends beyond fundraising emails.
At the activist level, there were rallies in cities nationwide responding to the rollback in women’s right to choose. In New York and other cities, these actions overlapped with Gay Pride celebrations and marches.
From the Guardian:
In New York, they fell across Pride weekend honoring the achievements of the LGBTQ community, with thousands gathering downtown to simultaneously celebrate and give voice to anger. Marchers said in some cases they were both shell-shocked by the supreme court decision and happy to be celebrating, gender identities and sexual orientations that some like the court’s conservative justices might find contrary.
“It’s a similar feeling to when Trump got elected,” said film editor Oriana Soddu. Soddu said she knew the stripping of nationwide abortion rights was coming after the 2 May leak of a draft ruling saying so, but “for it to actually happen is still a shock”.
The anger, Soddu said, was toward the political system itself. “The Republicans clearly have a very strong agenda and we’ve let this happen,” she said. “My fear is they’re going to go after gay marriage” next.
While many Republican strategists are advising elected officials and candidates to deflect attention to the economy when asked about abortion, former Vice President Mike Pence is planning to make abortion a big focus of his potential 2024 campaign, calling for a nationwide ban and traveling to individual states to advocating for antiabortion legislation.
From the Washington Post:
On Friday, Pence’s organization, Advancing American Freedom, shared a video highlighting that record: Pence led efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, the reproductive health organization, while serving in Congress and signed “every pro-life bill that crossed his desk” as governor of Indiana, the video says.
“And in the White House, Mike Pence provided the guidance and advice to the president to select Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, three of the five votes making this incredible moment possible,” it continues. “Lives will be saved.”
If Republicans want to campaign behind a court decision that actually takes something from a large part of the electorate, I say bring it.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com
Lead Photo by Chris Kleponis/Sipa USA.