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      ‘How dare they?’ Kamala Harris says in fiery speech on Roe’s overturn as protests mark anniversary – as it happened

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      From 4h agoVice-President Kamala Harris took the stage in North Carolina on Saturday and delivered an impassioned address on restoring nationwide reproductive freedoms following a year since the supreme court’s decision to strip them.Speaking to a crowd full of supporters including healthcare professionals and activists, Harris said:
      “How dare they? How dare they attack basic healthcare? How dare they attack our fundamental rights? How dare they attack our freedom?…
      In the midst of this healthcare crisis, extremist so-called leaders in states across our nation have proposed or passed more than 350 new laws to restrict these freedoms and the right to have access to reproductive healthcare. Right now in our country, 23 million women of reproductive age live in a state with an extreme abortion ban in effect…
      Most of us here know is that many women don’t even know they are pregnant in six weeks. Which by the way tells us most of these politicians don’t even understand how the body actually works. They don’t get it,” Harris continued.
      She went on to issue a strong warning towards Republican lawmakers in Congress, saying:
      Extremist Republicans in Congress have proposed to ban abortion nationwide. But I have news for them. We’re not having that. We’re not standing for that. We won’t let that happen. And by the way, the majority of Americans are with us.
      The majority of Americans, I do believe, agree that one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do with her body…
      The United States Congress must put back in place what the Supreme court took away.”
      It is slightly past 4pm in Washington DC. Here is a wrap up of the day’s key events:
      President Joe Biden has issued a statement to mark the one-year anniversary of the supreme court’s overturn of Roe, which he said “has already had devastating consequences.” “States have imposed extreme and dangerous abortion bans that put the health and lives of women in jeopardy, force women to travel hundreds of miles for care, and threaten to criminalize doctors for providing the health care that their patients need and that they are trained to provide.”
      Vice-President Kamala Harris took the stage in North Carolina on Saturday and delivered an impassioned address on restoring nationwide reproductive freedoms following a year since the supreme court’s decision to strip them. Speaking to a crowd full of supporters including healthcare professionals and activists, Harris said: “How dare they? How dare they attack basic healthcare? How dare they attack our fundamental rights? How dare they attack our freedom?”
      A handful of Democratic lawmakers have pledged their support on Saturday to protect and fight for reproductive rights as the country marks first anniversary of Roe’s overturn. “House Dems are working hard to stop these extremists and restore reproductive freedom. Together we will win,” wrote Hakeem Jeffries, House minority leader. US representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland tweeted: “Pro-choice America won’t rest until we restore women’s freedom as law of the land.”
      As reproductive rights activists protested against the end of Roe v Wade, anti-abortion leaders celebrated one year since the landmark decision was overturned. Speaking at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference in Washington, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, framed the end of Roe as just the beginning of right-wing activists’ work.
      Arizona’s Democratic governor Katie Hobbs has signed an executive order that will further protect reproductive rights across the state and curtail restrictive reproductive legislation from Republicans. On Friday, Hobbs tweeted about her executive order, saying, “I will not allow extreme and out of touch politicians to get in the way of the fundamental rights of Arizonans.”
      Several reproductive rights organizations have announced their endorsement of the Biden-Harris administration in the upcoming 2024 presidential election. The organizations include Planned Parenthood, NARAL (National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) Pro-Choice America , and EMILYs List, a political action committee dedicated to electing Democratic pro-choice women into office.
      More than a quarter of registered US voters say they will only vote for candidates who share their beliefs on abortion, according to a poll released earlier this week, a total (28%) one point higher than last year. The survey, from Gallup, was released before the first anniversary of Dobbs v Jackson, by which conservatives on the supreme court removed the right to abortion that had been safeguarded since Roe v Wade in 1973.
      That’s it from me, Maya Yang, as we wrap up the blog for today. Thank you for following along.Human rights organization Amnesty International has issued a statement condemning the supreme court’s decision a year ago to strip federal reproductive right protections.Tarah Demant, the national programs director at Amnesty International USA said:
      “One year after the Supreme Court shamefully stripped millions of their rights, women, girls, and people who can become pregnant in the United States are facing an unprecedented human rights crisis.
      A patchwork of devastating laws now blankets the country. One in three women and girls of reproductive age now live in states where abortion access is either totally or near-totally inaccessible…and a climate of fear is being purposefully sewn to restrict women, girls, and people who can get pregnant from finding legal abortion care.
      “Yet despite these coordinated and vitriolic attacks on our rights, Americans continue to overwhelmingly support access to safe and legal abortion, multiple states have added new protections, and activists across states continue to advocate for their rights. Abortion is a human right and basic healthcare, and activists across the country and around the world are more determined than ever to ensure that people across the USA will be able to access this right.”
      A Planned Parenthood abortion-providing clinic in Fairview Heights, Illinois saw a 700% increase in abortion-seeking patients from out of state.According to a new report by Jezebel, Planned Parenthood said that the 700% increase in out-of-stage patients seeking abortions in their Fairview Heights clinic comes along with a 35% increase in abortion patients overall who came to the clinic in the last year.Speaking to the outlet, Yamelsie Rodriguez, president and CEO of Reproductive Health Services of St. Louis region’s Planned Parenthood branch, said that the patients coming to her clinic hail from 29 states and are “mostly from the South.”The Guttmacher Institute has categorized Illinois as a state with “protective” abortion policies. Currently, abortion is banned at fetal viability, generally 24–26 weeks of pregnancy, and state Medicaid funds cover abortions.In addition, Illinois has a shield law that protects abortion providers from investigations launched by other states.Following the overturn of Roe vs. Wade, women of color have found themselves struggling even more to access reproductive healthcare in a medical and political landscape that has traditionally failed them.The Guardian’s reproductive rights reporter Poppy Noor profiled two women, Anya Cook and Samantha Casiano, on their experiences of being denied abortions in post-Roe America.Here is the full story on Cook and Samantha’s experiences and how they reflect the harsh realities faced by countless of other women of color in America:In a video address on Saturday, New York attorney general Letitia James reaffirmed New York’s status as a safe haven for abortion seekers and promised to continue fighting for reproductive rights. James said:
      “A ban on abortions will not ban abortions. It will only ban safe abortions.
      But it’s important to know that New York is a sanctuary city and state and that we provide assistance to young women, individuals who need reproductive care…
      Here in New York, we believe in you having control over your body and we believe in providing you with healthcare.
      I will continue to fight and to use the law to protect your rights each and every day.”
      Barbara Lee, a US representative from California since 1998, has pledged to continue fighting for reproductive rights in light of the first anniversary of Roe’s overturn.“I’m going to keep fighting for every person who finds herself in the same situation I was once in: pregnant, out of options, and forced to take extreme measures,” Lee tweeted.Lee, a longtime champion of women’s rights, is the author of the EACH Woman Act which would repeal the discriminatory Hyde Amendment that has restricted many women’s access to reproductive healthcare, her website said.Singer Demi Lovato has released a new song inspired by the first anniversary of Roe v Wade’s overturn.Lovato titled the pro-choice song “Swine,” which was released on Thursday.
      “It’s been one year since the Supreme Court’s decision to dismantle the constitutional right to a safe abortion, and although the path forward will be challenging, we must continue to be united in our fight for reproductive justice.
      I created ‘SWINE’ to amplify the voices of those who advocate for choice and bodily autonomy. I want this song to empower not only the birthing people of this country, but everyone who stands up for equality, to embrace their agency and fight for a world where every person’s right to make decisions about their own body is honored,” Lovato wrote in an Instagram caption.
      The music video features Lovato in front of men who appear to represent supreme court justices as she leads a revolt.
      “My life, my voice/My rights, my choice/It’s mine, or I’m just swine,” she sings. “My blood, my loins/My lungs, my noise/It’s mine, or I’m just swine,” she sings.
      Here are some images coming through the newswires as people across the country attend rallies marking the one-year anniversary of Roe’s overturn:Chelsea Clinton has also chimed in on first anniversary of the supreme court’s decision that stripped federal protections of reproductive rights from women, saying that she’s “really f**king angry.”In an interview at Aspen: Health in Aspen, Colorado, NBC host Kristen Welker asked the daughter of former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton on her thoughts about the supreme court’s decision.Clinton replied:
      “I’m really f**king angry and I am — and that is an uncomfortable place to be because of the historical women tropes that so often have been used to kind of silence and diminish women and our voices, not just in this country but throughout human history. But I’m really angry because we know that women have died.”
      Vice-President Kamala Harris took the stage in North Carolina on Saturday and delivered an impassioned address on restoring nationwide reproductive freedoms following a year since the supreme court’s decision to strip them.Speaking to a crowd full of supporters including healthcare professionals and activists, Harris said:
      “How dare they? How dare they attack basic healthcare? How dare they attack our fundamental rights? How dare they attack our freedom?…
      In the midst of this healthcare crisis, extremist so-called leaders in states across our nation have proposed or passed more than 350 new laws to restrict these freedoms and the right to have access to reproductive healthcare. Right now in our country, 23 million women of reproductive age live in a state with an extreme abortion ban in effect…
      Most of us here know is that many women don’t even know they are pregnant in six weeks. Which by the way tells us most of these politicians don’t even understand how the body actually works. They don’t get it,” Harris continued.
      She went on to issue a strong warning towards Republican lawmakers in Congress, saying:
      Extremist Republicans in Congress have proposed to ban abortion nationwide. But I have news for them. We’re not having that. We’re not standing for that. We won’t let that happen. And by the way, the majority of Americans are with us.
      The majority of Americans, I do believe, agree that one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do with her body…
      The United States Congress must put back in place what the Supreme court took away.”
      A handful of Democratic lawmakers have pledged their support on Saturday to protect and fight for reproductive rights as the country marks first anniversary of Roe’s overturn.“House Dems are working hard to stop these extremists and restore reproductive freedom. Together we will win,” wrote Hakeem Jeffries, House minority leader.“A year after SCOTUS’ disastrous Dobbs decision, I’m highlighting that districts like mine – and Black women in particular – are hurting the most,” said US representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas’s 30th district.
      “My district is 40% Black and majority women. It’s the people I represent that are hurt by life-saving medical care the most … North Texas has the highest rate of hospitalization due to pregnancy complications in the entire state … For all their talk about protecting babies, let me ask you this: What happens to the already born children of a mother who dies from pregnancy complications because she can’t get the treatment she needs during an ectopic pregnancy? Who’s protecting them?” Crockett added.
      US representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland tweeted: “Pro-choice America won’t rest until we restore women’s freedom as law of the land.”Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois echoed similar sentiments, saying:
      “Let’s be honest: Republicans’ anti-choice agenda is not about protecting life. If it was, perhaps they would help us tackle our maternal mortality crisis or do something–anything–to help end gun violence. But they don’t. Because it’s not about saving lives. It’s about control…
      Look, I know that a lot of us are tired from the seemingly endless fight to protect our most basic human rights. But we have to do more. Congress has to do more.”
      House Democrats also joined the pledges as they released compilation of various members promising to protect reproductive freedoms:As reproductive rights activists protested against the end of Roe v Wade, anti-abortion leaders celebrated one year since the landmark decision was overturned.Speaking at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference in Washington, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, framed the end of Roe as just the beginning of right-wing activists’ work.
      “We are at the starting line,” Dannenfelser said. “We have just begun. We have just begun a journey to start saving lives.”
      More people are feeling backed into a corner after the supreme court struck down the nationwide right to abortion last year, with many turning to birth control. In one of our latest features in our ‘A year without Roe’ series, Ema O’Connor explores the way that people’s relationships with birth control have evolved over the past year.O’Connor reports:Dr Rachel Neal, an OB-GYN working out of Atlanta, Georgia, said she has seen a trend toward LARCs nationally over the past six years, in part due to Trump’s presidency, as well as medicaid expansion and more insurance plans covering long term contraceptives. But in the past year Dr Neal has also seen an increased skepticism about any methods – including many birth control pills and IUDS – that pause or stop menstruation altogether. Before Roe was overturned, Dr Neal said that patients often saw not getting their periods as a positive side effect because they didn’t have to deal with cramps or spend money on tampons.
      “Now they’re uneasy towards methods that cause them to have no periods because they want to … prove to themselves that they’re not pregnant,” Dr Neal said.
      For the full story, click here:President Joe Biden has issued a statement to mark the one-year anniversary of the supreme court’s overturn of Roe, which he said “has already had devastating consequences.”
      “States have imposed extreme and dangerous abortion bans that put the health and lives of women in jeopardy, force women to travel hundreds of miles for care, and threaten to criminalize doctors for providing the health care that their patients need and that they are trained to provide.
      Yet state bans are just the beginning. Congressional Republicans want to ban abortion nationwide, but go beyond that, by taking FDA-approved medication for terminating a pregnancy, off the market, and make it harder to obtain contraception. Their agenda is extreme, dangerous, and out-of-step with the vast majority of Americans.
      My administration will continue to protect access to reproductive health care and call on Congress to restore the protections of Roe. vs. Wade in federal law once and for all.” More

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      in Elections

      Biden Warns That Republicans Are Not Finished on Abortion

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      A year after the end of Roe v. Wade, Biden administration officials are working with a limited set of tools, including executive orders and the bully pulpit, to galvanize supporters on abortion rights.Minutes after the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade last summer, a group of West Wing aides raced to the Oval Office to brief President Biden on the decision. As they drafted a speech, Mr. Biden was the first person in the room to say what has been his administration’s rallying cry ever since.Passing federal legislation, he told the group, was “the only thing that will actually restore the rights that were just taken away,” recalled Jen Klein, the director of the White House Gender Policy Council.But if the prospect of codifying Roe’s protections in Congress seemed like a long shot a year ago, it is all but impossible to imagine now, with an ascendant far-right bloc in the House and a slim Democratic majority in the Senate.Instead, with the battle over abortion rights turning to individual states, officials in the Biden administration are working with a limited set of tools, including executive orders and the galvanizing power of the presidency, to argue that Republicans running in next year’s elections would impose even further restrictions on abortion.“Make no mistake, this election is about freedom on the ballot,” Mr. Biden said Friday at a Democratic National Committee event, where he collected the endorsements of several abortion rights groups.On Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris was set to deliver a speech in North Carolina marking the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate the constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years. Ms. Klein, who recalled refreshing news websites on the day the decision came down last June, said that she was “shocked but not surprised” by the court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.She added that “efforts to really take extreme action do not represent the majority of opinion of where people are on this.”The White House has argued that Mr. Biden is reaching the legal limits of his powers through executive actions. On Friday, his latest executive action in response to the Dobbs decision ordered federal agencies to look for ways to ensure and expand access to birth control.Mr. Biden previously has issued a memorandum to protect access to abortion medication at pharmacies and taken action to protect patients who cross state lines to seek care. The Justice Department has taken legal action against some states restricting abortion. And the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion-pill drug mifepristone was quickly challenged in the courts. (In April, the Supreme Court issued an order to preserve access to the pill as litigation continues.)The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee will make abortion a primary focus of the president’s re-election effort.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesAs the White House has clarified its message around abortion rights, framing the fight as one in support of privacy, safety and civil rights, so has the president. Mr. Biden, a Catholic who attends mass almost every week, has struggled throughout his career with defending abortion rights. Since Roe was overturned, he has grown more outspoken.“I think that he is somebody who really has his own personal views, and has also been quite clear that Roe v. Wade was rightly decided,” Ms. Klein said.Recent polling shows that a majority of Americans may feel similarly. A USA Today/Suffolk University poll conducted earlier this month found that one in four Americans said that restrictive abortion bans enacted at the state level have made them more supportive of abortion rights. Another poll, conducted by PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist, said that 61 percent of American adults support abortion rights.Some activists suspect that some Republican presidential candidates are paying attention to the polling. Mike Pence, the former vice president and presidential candidate, said on Friday that he would support a 15-week national ban on the procedure. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina has also backed such a ban.Other candidates have avoided a definitive stance. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a six-week abortion ban into law in his state, though he has not said whether he would support a national ban.“It was the right thing to do,” Mr. DeSantis said Friday of signing the law.The G.O.P. primary front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, takes credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, but he has so far also resisted embracing a federal ban.As the G.O.P. field assembles, the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee will make abortion a primary focus of the president’s re-election effort. Earlier this month, the Biden campaign launched an advertisement campaign focused on battleground states, including the funding of billboards in Times Square that will highlight Republican efforts to restrict abortion access.The Democratic National Committee is also encouraging local Democrats to press Republicans to specify what their position is on national bans, believing it will help contrast Mr. Biden’s approach with extremist positions, according to a D.N.C. official.Inside the White House, Ms. Klein said officials are tracking court cases in individual states and bringing abortion-rights activists together to compare notes on which policies have succeeded.Still, activists are wary that court victories can be short-lived and do not take away the threat of a wider abortion ban the way legislation would.In recent months, administration officials have regularly highlighted the stories of women who have been denied emergency medical care when suffering pregnancy loss.Ms. Harris, who has made several trips and delivered speeches in defense of abortion rights, has frequently introduced medical care providers at her events to bolster the argument that the decision to end a pregnancy is a private one and not to be toyed with by local politicians.Vice President Kamala Harris, displaying a map showing abortion access, has emerged as a strong voice in the administration on abortion rights.Oliver Contreras for The New York TimesJill Biden, the first lady, has also been enlisted in the effort. On Tuesday, she hosted a group of women in the Blue Room of the White House and asked them to share their stories. One of the women, Dr. Austin Dennard, a physician in Texas, said she was forced to travel out of state for an abortion when her fetus was diagnosed with anencephaly, a condition that causes a baby to be born without parts of the brain and skull.Another, a Houston-based Democratic campaign worker named Elizabeth Weller, had gone into labor at 18 weeks and was directed to go home until she developed an infection so severe that a hospital ethics panel allowed a doctor to end the pregnancy.“Joe is doing everything he can do,” the first lady told the group.Mini Timmaraju, the president of the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America, agreed that the Biden administration is “doing everything they can,” but she said the limitations are real.“We have to give them a pro-choice majority Congress,” she said. “That’s it. They’ve done everything they can up until that point, but without the support of Congress, they are limited and we are limited in what we can do.” More

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      in US Politics

      Republicans scramble to limit electoral backlash against abortion bans

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      In the months since the supreme court voted to overturn Roe v Wade last year, the effects of the court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization have become clear. Over a dozen states across the country have passed legislation limiting or outright banning access to abortions, severely restricting reproductive rights for millions of people and threatening to imprison abortion providers.But as Republicans have pushed through these bills, voters have also taken every opportunity to rebuke them in elections – leading to defeats in midterms and emerging as one of the GOP’s largest vulnerabilities.After initially celebrating victory in their nearly five-decade campaign to end the constitutional right to abortion, Republicans now find themselves scrambling to simultaneously lessen their electoral losses and defend unpopular anti-abortion policies. Reproductive rights are set to be a key issue in the general election next year, with implications from the presidential campaign all the way down the ballot. While the GOP has not stopped passing anti-abortion bills, including in South Carolina and North Carolina last month, it has begun to worry about the price that it is paying for them.“As Republicans we need to read the room on this issue,” the South Carolina Republican representative Nancy Mace, who supports anti-abortion policies, said on ABC News in April. “We’re going to lose huge if we continue down this path of extremities.”Polling after the Dobbs decision showed that a majority of Americans disapproved of the court overturning Roe, with a Pew Research Center survey from last July showing that nearly six in 10 adults opposed the ruling. Pew’s survey also showed a majority of Americans in the largely conservative states where abortion bans were set to take place also disapproved of the decision. A separate NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll from April this year found support for abortion access around an all-time high, and notably showed that about one-third of Republicans mostly supported abortion rights.The electoral implications of Republicans’ post-Dobbs anti-abortion push began to reveal themselves early on, when heavily conservative Kansas voted no in a referendum last August on whether the state should remove abortion rights from its constitution.“The vote in Kansas sends a decisive message that Americans are angry about the efforts to roll back their rights and won’t stand for it,” Sarah Stoesz, then the president of Planned Parenthood for the region, said after the vote.Despite the warning from the Kansas contest, Republican leaders still believed they would capitalize on President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings and concern over inflation to sweep back into power in a “red wave” during midterm elections. That never materialized, and instead Republicans underperformed as an energized Democratic base came out to vote. Michigan Democrats flipped the state legislature for the first time in nearly 40 years, Pennsylvania Democrats secured victories against anti-abortion candidates and, ballot measures in five states, including Kentucky and Montana, all resulted in voters choosing to support abortion rights.Following the midterms, Republican leaders realize that they have a problem. The Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, appeared on Fox News Sunday in April to discuss the issue, saying that abortion had played a major role in key swing states and that party candidates needed to face the issue “head on”.“Many of our candidates across the board refused to talk about it, thinking, ‘Oh we can just talk about the economy and ignore this big issue,’ and they can’t,” McDaniel said.But Republicans have struggled to find a consistent line on abortion, with lawmakers divided over what level of restrictions they would put on reproductive rights. Republican leaders’ opinions range from insisting on total abortion bans to cutting access off at 15 weeks of pregnancy to washing their hands of the issue and saying it is up to states to decide.Presidential candidates have similarly found themselves caught between different factions of the party and voter interests. Donald Trump reportedly told allies that he views a federal abortion ban as a losing proposition for the election and his campaign spokesperson has said Trump believes bans should be left up to states, threatening a rift with evangelical voters that have been a large part of his base.Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is currently Trump’s most prominent challenger, has taken a harder line and signed a six-week abortion ban in April – causing one major Republican donor to halt his funding to DeSantis. Other candidates have vacillated over taking a specific stance, including Nikki Haley who last month refused to name the specific number of weeks into pregnancy she would limit abortion.Influential and deep-pocketed Christian conservative groups have further complicated the dynamic, insisting that without Roe to stop them Republican politicians should pass strict abortion bans. Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, a major anti-abortion non-profit and political organization, vowed to campaign against Trump if he would not support a 15-week abortion ban.Meanwhile, Democrats have been centering abortion access in speeches and campaigns. Vice-President Kamala Harris told a crowd at Howard University that “this is a moment for us to stand and fight” in an April speech, while the Democratic senator Dick Durbin chaired a Senate judiciary committee hearing that same month titled “The Assault on Reproductive Rights in a Post-Dobbs America”.Democrats also secured a huge victory in Wisconsin earlier this year when the liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz won a seat on the state supreme court. Protasiewicz, who openly discussed her personal support for abortion during the campaign, defeated a conservative opponent who had accepted $1m in campaign donations from an anti-abortion political action committee.Protasiewicz’s win ended a 15-year conservative majority on the court, and could mean that liberal justices overrule an 1849 law banning abortion which went into effect in the state when Roe was overturned. More

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      in Elections

      Biden Denounces Abortion Bans, Warning That Privacy Is Next

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      The president sought to galvanize supporters a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade as Democrats hope the issue helps them win next year’s elections.President Biden denounced on Friday new restrictions on abortion imposed in Republican-led states in the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and warned that the right to privacy, which has been the foundation for other rights like same-sex marriage and access to birth control, could be at risk next if Democrats do not win next year’s elections.Marking Saturday’s anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision eliminating a national right to abortion for women, Mr. Biden decried its “devastating effects,” telling an abortion rights rally that women had been deprived of basic health care and noting that some leading Republicans, not content to leave the issue to the states as they had long advocated, are now seeking a national ban on the procedure.“They’re not stopping here,” said Mr. Biden, who was joined at the rally by his wife, Jill Biden, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff. “Make no mistake, this election is about freedom on the ballot.”The president collected the endorsement of the nation’s leading abortion rights groups, Emily’s List, Planned Parenthood Action Fund and NARAL Pro-Choice America. While the endorsement was hardly a surprise, the early timing underscored the role that Democrats believe abortion rights will play in next year’s election.Polls show that support for legalized abortion has risen since the Dobbs decision. Democrats argue that it helped them avoid a Republican wave during last year’s midterm elections — “you all showed up and beat the hell out of them,” as Mr. Biden put it — and could be critical to retaining the White House and recapturing the House next year. Republicans are at odds with each other over how much to emphasize the issue, with some worried that it will only hurt them in a general election. But some progressive activists have privately expressed frustration that Mr. Biden has not made it more of a public priority until now.Abortion has long been an uncomfortable issue for Mr. Biden, who has cited his Catholic faith as his views have shifted over the years. While a young senator, he declared that the Supreme Court had gone “too far” in the Roe decision and later voted for a constitutional amendment allowing states to individually overturn the ruling before reversing himself. He supported the so-called Hyde amendment prohibiting the use of federal funds for abortion, including through Medicaid, until the 2020 campaign, when he changed his mind under pressure from liberals in his party.By contrast, Ms. Harris has unabashedly joined the battle for abortion rights since Roe was reversed, becoming by all accounts the administration’s most passionate and effective voice on the issue. At Friday’s event, Laphonza Butler, president of Emily’s List, praised Mr. Biden’s team as “the most pro-choice administration we’ve ever seen” but reserved her most effusive words for Ms. Harris.The rally on Friday, organized with the Democratic National Committee, was part of a series of messaging efforts by the Biden team around the anniversary of the Dobbs ruling. Earlier this week, Dr. Biden hosted a session with women from states that have imposed limits on abortion to highlight the consequences even for those not seeking to end a pregnancy. On Saturday, Ms. Harris will deliver an address on abortion rights in Charlotte, N.C.Mr. Biden’s allies on Capitol Hill on Friday also called attention to the issue. House Democrats led by Representative Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts introduced legislation to require insurance coverage to include abortion care, shield patients and providers from criminal charges, and affirm a legal right to abortion and miscarriage care. The bill has no chance of passing the Republican-controlled House but was meant as a signal to supporters.As he has over the last year, Mr. Biden sought to expand the debate to other privacy-related concerns, ideological ground where he is more comfortable, as he cast Republicans as extremists beyond the question of abortion. The White House announced Friday that in his third executive action in response to the Dobbs decision, he was ordering federal agencies to look for ways to ensure and expand access to birth control.“The idea that I had to do that — I mean, no, really, think about it, think about it,” he told supporters. “I know I’m 198 years old but all kidding aside, think about that. I never, ever thought I’d be signing an executive order protecting the right to contraceptives.”He boasted that he had done more to put women in positions of power than any of his predecessors. In addition to making Ms. Harris the first woman to serve as vice president, he noted that he is the first president to have a majority-woman cabinet, pointed to his appointment of Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court and said that he had installed more Black women to federal appeals courts than all of the previous presidents combined.“Look, we made so much progress,” Mr. Biden said. “We can’t let them take us backwards.” More

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      in US Politics

      Biden puts abortion rights at center of campaign on Roe reversal anniversary

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      Joe Biden on Friday put reproductive rights squarely in the middle of his 2024 re-election campaign as the US president hosted a rally based around defending abortion rights, notched three high-profile endorsements from groups dedicated to the issue, and announced an executive order aimed at boosting access to contraception.The moves came in stark contrast to the Republican field of candidates, many of whom were attending the Faith & Freedom Coalition annual conference in Washington DC.Abortion has become a tough issue for Republicans because most Americans support the right to an abortion after the conservative-dominated US supreme court last year axed the federal right to terminate a pregnancy.Nonetheless, former vice-president Mike Pence on Friday doubled down on his hardline stance in a speech calling for national restrictions on abortion – a position seen as unlikely to win much wide support. Pence’s former boss Donald Trump will address the same conference on Saturday and has in recent weeks sought to take a less extreme stance.Biden and the Democrats, meanwhile, are on the attack on abortion, pointing out the huge loss of reproductive freedoms for millions of women since the US’s highest court overturned the landmark Roe v Wade decision that had protected abortion freedoms.Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris on Friday were being endorsed by Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Naral Pro-Choice America and Emily’s List. The groups are throwing their early support behind the re-election effort in part to highlight the importance of the issue for Democrats heading into the election year, the groups’ leaders told the Associated Press.“I think that President Biden has been an incredibly valuable partner, along with Vice-President Harris, in fighting back against the onslaught of attacks that we have seen,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Action Fund.Biden and fellow Democrats have already seen the power of the issue: a majority of Americans want legalized abortion nationwide. In the lead-up to the 2022 midterm elections, many political pundits dismissed the issue, but it was among the top concerns for voters, who consistently rejected efforts to restrict abortion in the states when given the chance.Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said the president and the vice-president were proud to have earned the support of the groups. Since the decision last year by the supreme court, “we have seen the horrifying impact that the extreme Maga agenda has on women’s health,” she said, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.Biden has said he will work to protect reproductive health care, including enshrining abortion rights in federal law. He is expected to convey that message in remarks on Friday at a rally with the first lady, Jill Biden, Harris and the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff.Meanwhile, Biden’s executive order aims to strengthen access to contraception, a growing concern for Democrats after some conservatives have signaled a willingness to push beyond abortion into regulation of contraception. In 2017, nearly 65% – or 46.9 million – of the 72.2 million girls and women age 15 to 49 in the US used a form of contraception.In a statement, Biden highlighted reproductive health as a top priority of his administration in the wake of the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling from the conservative-led court that reversed Roe v Wade.“Contraception is an essential component of reproductive health care that has only become more important in the wake of Dobbs and the ensuing crisis in women’s access to healthcare,” Biden said.Biden is seeking to strengthen access to “affordable, high-quality contraception and family planning services”, the statement added. It’s his third executive order on reproductive health care access since the Dobbs ruling.The measures include expanding access and services through Medicaid, improving coverage of contraception through Medicare and seeking ways to compel private health insurance companies to provide contraception and family planning services as needed.The consequences of restricting abortion access in America have quickly moved beyond ending an unwanted pregnancy into miscarriage and pregnancy care in general.Women in states with tight restrictions are increasingly unable to access care for pregnancy-related complications. Doctors facing criminal charges if they provide abortions are increasingly afraid to care for patients who aren’t sick enough yet to be considered treatable.Over the last year 22 US states have passed either a ban or highly restrictive policies on abortion. Other states, though, have expanded access to abortion care. The Biden administration has brought together leaders from all 50 states to talk strategy on how to expand access and work together to help people in more restrictive states.Most of the states with severe abortion restrictions are also states that have a high maternal mortality rate and higher rates of stillbirth and miscarriage. Black women are disproportionately affected – they are more than three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The Associated Press contributed to this story More

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      Pence tells Republicans to take hard line on abortion despite electoral liability

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      Speaking one year since the US supreme court removed the federal right to abortion, Mike Pence said candidates for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination should stand firm on the electorally unpopular issue and take a hard line on bringing in national limits.“For me, for our campaign, we’re going to stand where we’ve always stood, and that is without apology for the right to life,” the former congressman, Indiana governor and vice-president to Donald Trump told Politico.Later, addressing the Faith & Freedom conference in Washington, Pence said every Republican candidate “should support a ban on abortions before 15 weeks, as a minimum nationwide standard”.Claiming this was a “reasonable and mainstream standard”, Pence said: “American abortion policy has more in common with China and North Korea than it does with the nations of Europe – and it is time for that to change.”In response, Shwetika Baijal, spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Votes, a political group associated with the women’s health provider, accused the former vice-president of “spew[ing] harmful anti-abortion rights rhetoric”.The ruling which removed the right to abortion, Dobbs v Jackson, was released on 24 June 2022.Since then, Democrats have enjoyed electoral success through painting Republicans as threats to women’s right to control their own bodies. Polling consistently returns majorities in favour of abortion rights. On Friday, Navigator, a progressive firm, said 60% of voters now identify as pro-choice.Other candidates for the Republican nomination have struggled to define their stances on the issue. Many observers suggest the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, the closest challenger to the frontrunner, Trump, would face problems in a general election given his signing of a six-week ban.DeSantis has avoided the subject, but, speaking to Politico, Pence was far from coy. Abortion, he said, would help decide “whether or not we’re going to continue to be a party grounded in conservative principles … or whether our party is going to shy away from those core traditional principles”.Pence also claimed recent Republican reverses had a “common denominator [that] has not to do with the issue of abortion. Rather, where candidates were focused on … re-litigating the past[,] we did not fare well.”Politico called that a “veiled reference” to Trump’s lies about electoral fraud in his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, culminating in the January 6 attack.“Pence brought up Trump several times unprompted,” the site said, “though never by name – arguing that Trump’s suggestion that the Dobbs ruling undercut the GOP in 2022 was ‘wrong’ and hitting back at Trump for criticizing DeSantis’s six-week ban as ‘too harsh’.”In contrast to the evangelical Pence, Trump is a known womaniser who in 2016 dodged a question about whether he had ever been “involved with anyone who had an abortion”.“Such an interesting question,’” Trump told the New York Times. “So what’s your next question?’Trump still dominates the 2024 race, even while under state and federal indictments, the former over a payoff to a porn star, the latter over his retention of classified records. He was also found liable for sexual assault, against the writer E Jean Carroll.“In my announcement speech,” Pence told Politico, “I articulated my concern that my former running mate and other candidates … are backing away from an unwavering commitment to the right to life.“It’s not consistent with the kind of principled leadership I believe Republicans are looking for in the cause of life.”Politico said Pence dodged questions on whether DeSantis’s ban was too harsh and whether House Republicans should pass a nationwide ban of the sort he called for on Friday.Claiming he stood for “compassion”, Pence told the site he would fund “crisis pregnancy centres” and make adoption more affordable.Asked what he would say to women who believe conservatives want to control their bodies, Pence said he hoped they “hear my heart”.In her statement, Baijal of Planned Parenthood Votes said: “Public opinion will not change. The overwhelming majority of Americans support abortion rights and do not want politicians in their doctor’s office.“[Pence’s] GOP primary rivals seem to understand this and are desperately trying to avoid talking or answering questions about abortion. But Pence keeps boastfully sharing his extreme anti-abortion agenda out loud.” More

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      A year after Roe’s fall, fears of US abortion bans become reality

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      The day the constitutional right to abortion ended in the US, Americans faced an unusual moment of regression. The current generation now has fewer constitutional rights than their parents and their grandparents.What has happened since then has been almost unfathomable.Many states have passed bans restricting access to abortion care. Most are full bans, which prevent abortion at any stage of pregnancy, with limited or no exceptions. In Georgia, abortion is banned after six weeks of pregnancy, when most people do not yet know they are pregnant. In some other states, abortion is severely restricted; Nebraska, Arizona, Florida, Utah, and North Carolina have bans that begin at 12, 15, 18 and 20 weeks of pregnancy, respectively.Data suggests far fewer people have been able to get legal abortions since Roe was overturned, despite the need for abortion going up before 2022. WeCount, an effort to track abortion access post-Roe by the Society of Family Planning, calculated 66,000 fewer abortions took place in states that banned abortion between June last year and March this year. Although some states saw increased abortion rates, they did not offset the losses. As a recent WeCount report put it: “People in states with abortion bans were forced to delay their abortion, to travel to another state, to self-manage their abortion, or to continue a pregnancy they did not want.”Preliminary data suggests many have managed their abortions through pills procured online. For others, in real terms, the loss of the constitutional right to abortion now means traveling hundreds of miles, across multiple state borders if they want an abortion. The existing inequalities along race and income lines in the US have only widened.The impact of Roe being overturned will probably be felt worst among people of color, who are more likely to live in restrictive states and more likely to need abortions. Wealthier pregnant people can travel and get abortions, but those who can’t face worse economic outcomes.“An already bad situation has gotten worse,” said Kelly Baden, a public policy expert at the Guttmacher Institute. “Accessing abortion in a state like Louisiana was already hard before the Dobbs decision. But now, abortion is banned in Louisiana and every state that touches its borders. That means having to cross one, two, three, four borders before accessing abortion safely for people from that state.”Further, a huge national court case that could block access to mifepristone, a crucial pill used in more than half of all US abortions, is ongoing. Blocking access to that drug would be yet another win for the anti-abortion movement, making medication abortion hard to access all over the US, not just in states with bans.In the majority opinion overturning Roe vs Wade, written by Justice Samuel Alito, he called Roe “egregiously wrong from the start”. Stating that the constitutional federal right to abortion had “enflamed debate and deepened division”, he ended with a call to leave abortion decisions up to the states.“It is time to heed the constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” Alito wrote.The decision led to all-time low trust in the supreme court, whose approval rating dropped to below 40% by September 2022. Recent numbers suggest the court’s approval ratings have steadied once again, though the country remains changed.Instead of returning the question of abortion to the states, battles – theoretical ones, at least for now – have ensued. Pro-choice and anti-abortion states are increasingly trying to extend the reach of where their authority lies.Massachusetts, California, Colorado and New Jersey are some of the states that have enacted shield laws protecting people who travel to their states for abortions and providers who provide them; Vermont aims to protect medication abortion access, regardless of what happens in the national mifepristone case. Idaho, meanwhile, recently passed a law criminalizing anyone helping a minor travel out of state for abortion care, and Texas has threatened legal repercussions for companies that help people travel out of state for abortion.Pregnant people continue to be jailed for their conduct during pregnancy, which was already happening long before Roe was overturned.This week, Pregnancy Justice, a charity that advocates on behalf of women who are criminalized in pregnancy, released data suggesting at least 41 cases of women criminalized in their pregnancies since Roe was overturned. The cases were across 14 states, with more than half of them being in Alabama. The organization suspects those numbers are a huge undercount.What stands out to Pregnancy Justice the most over the last year is how commonplace the language of pregnancy criminalization has been since Roe was overturned.“Since Dobbs, we’ve seen increasingly alarming rhetoric in abortion-hostile states, lifting the veil on their true intentions: control and criminalization,” said Pregnancy Justice’s acting executive director, Dana Sussman. “The Alabama attorney general threatened to prosecute people for abortion under the chemical endangerment law. A South Carolina bill sought to make abortion punishable by death. And a Kentucky bill proposed homicide charges for having an abortion.“Whether these bills pass or not is almost irrelevant because the confusion and fear still remain. And as we’ve long said, this is not just about abortion. Once you become pregnant, you become vulnerable to state control.”The Dobbs decision has also had a seismic impact on the US healthcare system. Doctors have fled restrictive states, with lasting impact on maternal and other routine care. In Idaho, one hospital had to stop delivering babies completely, because the state’s total abortion ban has made it too hard to attract doctors. Dozens of abortion clinics have closed their doors; and hundreds of miles have opened up between patients and essential healthcare.Despite medical exceptions allowing abortions in cases of rape, incest, medical emergencies and pregnancies incompatible with life in many states, there are still countless cases where pregnant people have been denied miscarriage care, life-saving care, and other vital health services – all of which continue to make headlines.But there are also rays of hope. As a national election looms, the public are making it clear that they do not support abortion bans. In every state where the public has had a chance to directly vote on abortion restrictions since Roe was overturned – whether in states that are purple, blue or ruby red – people have voted to protect abortion.“From Kansas, to the Wisconsin special election, to the midterm election, there’s a real recognition now, even among anti-abortion lawmakers, that perhaps they might experience some political blowback for this,” said Baden.Legislators who have been clear on their abortion stances have seen repercussions at the ballot box. And as a result, the Republican party is having to soften its messaging.That’s why Lindsey Graham has floated a 15-week abortion ban on the national stage, and why in places like North Carolina and Nebraska, 12-week bans have been floated as compromises.“It’s this false idea that, really, what the American public wants is different kinds of abortion bans,” said Baden. “It is about politics and maintaining a shred of what they think will be credibility come next election season. And hopefully voters won’t fall for that.” More

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      How a Year Without Roe Shifted American Views on Abortion

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      New and extensive polling shows public opinion increasingly supports legal abortion, with potential political consequences for 2024.For decades, Americans had settled around an uneasy truce on abortion. Even if most people weren’t happy with the status quo, public opinion about the legality and morality of abortion remained relatively static. But the Supreme Court’s decision last summer overturning Roe v. Wade set off a seismic change, in one swoop striking down a federal right to abortion that had existed for 50 years, long enough that women of reproductive age had never lived in a world without it. As the decision triggered state bans and animated voters in the midterms, it shook complacency and forced many people to reconsider their positions.In the year since, polling shows that what had been considered stable ground has begun to shift: For the first time, a majority of Americans say abortion is “morally acceptable.” A majority now believes abortion laws are too strict. They are significantly more likely to identify, in the language of polls, as “pro-choice” over “pro-life,” for the first time in two decades.And more voters than ever say they will vote only for a candidate who shares their views on abortion, with a twist: While Republicans and those identifying as “pro-life” have historically been most likely to see abortion as a litmus test, now they are less motivated by it, while Democrats and those identifying as “pro-choice” are far more so.For More Democrats, Abortion Is a Litmus TestThose who say they will vote only for a candidate who shares their view on abortion

      Source: GallupBy Molly Cook EscobarOne survey in the weeks after the court’s decision last June found that 92 percent of people had heard news coverage of abortion and 73 percent had one or more conversations about it. As people talked — at work, over family Zoom calls, even with strangers in grocery store aisles — they were forced to confront new medical realities and a disconnect between the status of women now and in 1973, when Roe was decided.Many found their views on abortion more complex and more nuanced than they realized. Polls and interviews with Americans show them thinking and behaving differently as a result, especially when it comes to politics.“This is a paradigm shift,” said Lydia Saad, director of United States social research for Gallup, the polling firm. “There’s still a lot of ambivalence, there aren’t a lot of all-or-nothing people. But there is much more support for abortion rights than there was, and that seems to be here to stay.”Gallup happened to start its annual survey of American values just as the court’s decision in the case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, leaked last May. That was when the balance began to tilt toward voters identifying as “pro-choice.” And when the question was divided into whether abortion should be legal in the first, second or third trimester, the share of Americans who say it should be legal in each was the highest it has been since Gallup first asked in 1996.The New York Times reviewed polls from groups that have been asking Americans about abortion for decades, including Gallup, Public Religion Research Institute, Pew Research, Ipsos, KFF and other nonpartisan polling organizations. All pointed to the same general trends: growing public support for legalized abortion and dissatisfaction with new laws that restrict it.Polls show that a majority of Americans now believe abortion laws are too strict.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesPollsters say the biggest change was in political action around abortion, not necessarily in people’s core views. Polls regarding whether abortion should be legal or illegal in most or all cases — long the most widely-used metric — have remained relatively stable, with the percentage of voters saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases slowly ticking up over the past five years to somewhere between 60 percent and 70 percent.And generally, most Americans believe abortion should be limited, especially in the second and third trimesters — not unlike the framework established by Roe.But there were sudden and significant jumps in support for legalized abortion post-Dobbs among some groups, including Republican men and Black Protestants. Polling by the Public Religion Research Institute found that the percentage of Hispanic Catholics saying abortion should be legal in all cases doubled between March and December of last year, from 16 percent to 31 percent. And the share of voters saying abortion should be illegal in all cases dropped significantly in several polls.That largely reflected the dramatic change in abortion access. Fourteen states enacted near-total bans on abortion as a result of the court’s decision. News stories recounted devastating consequences: Women denied abortions despite carrying fetuses with no skull; a 10-year-old pregnant by rape forced to cross state lines for an abortion; women carrying nonviable pregnancies who could not have an abortion until they were on the brink of death.“While Roe was settled law, you kind of didn’t have to worry about the consequences,” said Mollie Wilson O’Reilly, a writer for Commonweal, the Catholic lay publication, and a mother of four. “You could say, ‘I think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances,’ if you didn’t really have to think about what it would mean for that to happen.”Raised in the church and still active in her parish, Ms. O’Reilly, 42, embraced its teachings that abortion was equivalent to murder, as part of a broader church doctrine on the protection of life that also opposes capital punishment and mistreatment of migrants.Her evolution to supporting abortion rights started two years ago when she had a miscarriage that required emergency dilation and curettage; only when she saw her chart later did she realize the term was the technical name for abortion. “When people have the idea that abortion equals killing babies, it’s very easy to say, ‘Of course I’m against that,’” she said. “If you start seeing how reproductive health care is necessary to women, you start to see that if you’re supporting these policies that ban abortion, you’re going to end up killing women.”“While Roe was settled law, you kind of didn’t have to worry about the consequences,” said Mollie Wilson O’Reilly, a writer for Commonweal, the Catholic lay publication, and a mother of four.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesShe wrote about her experience and joined other Catholic women, largely writers and professors, in publicizing an open letter to the Catholic church, declaring that “pro-life” policies centered on opposition to abortion “often hurt women.” They called on the church and elected officials to embrace “reproductive justice” that would include better health care and wages for pregnant women and mothers.Ms. Wilson O’Reilly now believes decisions on abortion should be up to women and their doctors, not governments. It’s impossible to draw a “bright line” around what exceptions to the bans should be allowed, she said.Still, she doesn’t call herself a “pro-choice Catholic”: “I think you can hold the view that a developing life is sacred and still not feel that it is appropriate or necessary to outlaw abortion.” In a poll by KFF, the health policy research firm, a plurality of Americans — four in ten — and more among Democrats and women, said they were “very concerned” that bans have made it difficult for doctors to care for pregnant women with complications. Gallup found Americans more dissatisfied with abortion laws than at any point in 22 years of measuring the trend, with new highs among women, Catholics and Protestants saying the laws are “too strict.”A Pew poll in April concluded that views on abortion law increasingly depend on where people live: The percentage of those saying abortion should be “easier to get” rose sharply last year in states where bans have been enacted or are on hold because of court disputes.In South Carolina, which recently banned abortion at six weeks of pregnancy, Jill Hartle, a 36-year-old hairdresser, had only ever voted Republican. She called herself “pro-choice,” she said, but did not think about how that collided with the party’s opposition to abortion, even though she considered herself an informed voter, and her family talked politics regularly.She became pregnant shortly before the court’s decision to overturn Roe. At 18 weeks, anatomy scans determined that the fetus had a heart defect that kills most infants within the first two weeks of life, one that Ms. Hartle knew well because it had killed her best friend’s child.At the time, her state’s legislature was debating a ban. “The first words the doctor said were, ‘There are things I can discuss with you today that I may not be able to discuss with you tomorrow or in a week because our laws are changing so rapidly in South Carolina,’” she said.Ms. Hartle and her husband ended up traveling to Washington for an abortion.Jill Hartle, center, hugs a Republican lawmaker after describing her experience having an abortion during a legislative committee hearing in South Carolina.Joshua Boucher/The State, via Associated PressPeople, she said, told her she could not be a Christian and have an abortion; others said what she had was “not an abortion” because her pregnancy was not unwanted. After she recovered, she started a foundation to fight against what it calls the “catastrophic turnover” of Roe and to help other women find abortions. She began testifying against proposed bans and campaigning for Democratic candidates.“I want to tell people it’s OK to vote against party lines,” she said. South Carolina legislators passed the state’s ban in May, over the opposition of a small group of female legislators, both Republican and Democrat. Polls show that the state’s voters oppose the ban, but as in many states, legislative districts are gerrymandered and seats often go uncontested, so Republican lawmakers are often more concerned about a primary challenge from the right than a general election fight. Groups that oppose abortion rights emphasize that most Americans want restrictions on abortion — and indeed, just 22 percent of Americans in Gallup’s poll said abortion should be legal in the third trimester.“People will react to a once-in-a-generation event. That’s true, and it should be a wake-up call for Republicans,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which was founded to help elect lawmakers who oppose abortion rights. Republicans, she said, have to paint Democratic candidates as the extremists on abortion: “If they don’t, they may very well lose.”A coalition of Republicans and evangelicals has waged a four-decade campaign to end abortion, but the number of Americans identifying as evangelical has declined sharply. And polls on abortion suggest political dynamics may be shifting.High proportions of women ages 18 to 49, and especially Democrats, say they will vote only for candidates who support their views on abortion. On the flip side, Republicans are less enthusiastic. The Public Religion Research Institute found that the share of Republicans who think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases and who said they would vote only for a candidate whose view matched their own had dropped significantly, to 30 percent last December from 42 percent in December 2020.“That’s a direct effect of Dobbs,” said Melissa Deckman, the chief executive of PRRI and a political scientist. “Does it mean that suddenly Republicans will change their minds about abortion? No, partisans vote for partisans,” she said. “But this is an issue of salience and turnout.”John Richard, a 73-year-old disabled Vietnam veteran who lives in the swing district of Bucks County, Pa., said he had always voted Republican until he became a “Never Trumper.” The court’s decision in Dobbs made him go so far as to switch his voter registration to Democrat.“If my daughters came to me and said they want an abortion, I’d try and talk them out of it,” Mr. Richard, a retired supermarket manager, said. “But I don’t think anyone has the right to tell you how to control your own body. I fought in a war for that. I didn’t do that for no reason.”“It’s not enough anymore to ask what people think about abortion, because to them abortion is part of a larger set of concerns about the country,” said Tresa Undem, who conducts polls for businesses as well as Democratic-leaning groups.Jenn Ackerman for The New York TimesAsked in polls to name their biggest concern, most people still don’t say abortion. But in polls and in interviews, many relate abortion rights to other top concerns: about dysfunctional government, gun violence, civil rights and income inequality.“It’s not enough anymore to ask what people think about abortion, because to them abortion is part of a larger set of concerns about the country,” said Tresa Undem, whose firm conducts polls for businesses as well as for Democratic-leaning groups.Starting with the leak and ending after the midterm elections last year, Ms. Undem conducted three surveys that tracked engagement with the issue by how many ads people saw, conversations they had and what concerns they raised about abortion.Increasingly, people mentioned concerns about losing rights and freedoms, the influence of religion in government, threats to democracy, as well as maternal mortality and whether they want to have more children. The biggest change in polls has been the swing in who votes on abortion. In the most recent example, Gallup found that in 2020 roughly 25 percent of Democrats and Republicans alike had said they would vote only for a candidate who shared their view on abortion. The share of Democrats saying this has jumped since the leak of the Dobbs decision, to 41 percent. Among Republicans the percentage was down slightly.In San Antonio, Sergio Mata, a 31-year-old artist, said he was shocked when Texas passed a ban on abortion in 2021, and by how much anti-abortion sentiment he suddenly heard around him. As a gay man and the American-born son of Mexican immigrants, he fears that gay rights will be reversed and birthright citizenship will be taken away: “I kind of feel what will happen if my existence gets illegal.”He considers himself a Democrat, but the overturning of Roe, he said, “pushed me to be more extreme,” he said. That meant paying more attention to the news and voting in the midterm elections for the first time.Sergio Mata, a 31-year-old artist, said he was shocked when Texas passed a ban on abortion in 2021, and by how much anti-abortion sentiment he suddenly heard around him.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesIn Portland, Ore., Ruby Hill, who is Black, said she had been alarmed at the flourishing of the Proud Boys and other white supremacist groups around her. She lives not far from where two members of an extremist gang ran over a 19-year-old Black man with a Jeep in 2016. Ms. Hill, also a Democrat, said she was then redistricted into a largely white congressional district represented by a Republican.The Dobbs decision, she said, made her start recruiting supporters of abortion rights among her friends, her grandchildren and their friends, and family members in Tennessee and California and Virginia over a weekly Zoom, “so they can convince people they know to stand up for more rights before more get taken from us,” she said. “If they got away with this and they feel that nobody cares, it’s more rights they are going to proceed to take away — civil rights, voting rights, abortion, birth control, it’s all part of that one big package. If you sit on the sideline, it says that you think it’s OK.” More