The Quickie: It's Abortion. Stupid.
For Immediate Release: Nov. 10, 2022
Welcome to “The Quickie” — Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s daily tipsheet on the top health care & reproductive rights stories of the day. You can read “The Quickie'' online here.
In today’s Quickie: Anti-abortion politicians in disarray, Americans united behind abortion rights!
Right now, the anti-abortion Republicans are in panic mode, fighting internally, and running an autopsy on what went wrong. Let’s save them some time: It’s abortion and our fundamental freedoms, stupid. It’s not that complicated. The overwhelming majority of Americans support access to safe and legal abortion and the GOP nominated extreme anti-abortion candidates.
Don’t just take our word for it:
“We certainly emphasized the economy and inflation, and they were beating me over the head on abortion,” he said. “That’s the thing that beat me,” said [defeatedRep. Steve] Chabot, an antiabortion candidate who had authored a 2003 law known as the partial-birth abortion ban."
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“Abortion also was seen as reining in GOP gains, as defending access to the procedure was a potent motivator for many independents and Democrats, according to polling and members of both parties. During the primaries earlier in the year, many Republican candidates made comments in debates and interviews about limiting or outlawing abortions. Later, after the Supreme Court overturned the right to an abortion, Democrats had ready-made clips for negatives ads.”
“It was a driving force for a retired banker in San Antonio, an artist in Racine, Wis., an event planner in Miami Beach. It motivated college students and retirees, men and especially women. Even those who might usually skip a midterm election had been compelled to make time to cast a ballot.
Across the nation, voters felt an obligation to weigh in on what, for many, was a vital matter: abortion rights.
“Abortion was my main, core issue,” said Urica Carver, 41, a registered Republican from Scranton, Pa."
“Every single poll, no matter what office you were running in, no matter who the electorate is, no matter what state you were in — whether it was a South Dakota Senate race or a congressional race or a state [legislative] race — showed that abortion was the best-testing argument,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said.
That hope was confirmed when Kansans voted Aug. 2 by an 18-point margin to keep protections for abortion. Two weeks later, Democrats won a statewide special election in Alaska, followed by a special election in New York’s Hudson Valley, outperforming even President Biden’s margins in 2020.”
“Thompson also said a key stumble for Michels was his handling of the fallout of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which put back into effect a statewide abortion ban.”
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PPAF PRESIDENT DISCUSSES MIDTERM SUCCESSES: Last night, President of Planned Parenthood Action Fund Alexis McGill Johnson joined MSNBC’s The ReidOut to discuss the impact of the midterm elections on the future of reproductive rights. She highlighted the overturn of Roe and subsequent abortion bans in several states as one of the key motivators for voter turnout:
“That is the contrast we were able to draw so clearly during this election cycle. Not only were many of these states, these 18 states banning access to abortion so quickly post-Dobbs, they’ve also introduced other extreme measures like right to travel across state boundaries. So literally saying a state could hold you hostage in your state so that you couldn’t get the health care that you need. And I think that actually really made the difference.”
She emphasized the importance of continuing to have conversations about abortion access and encouraging people to vote to protect bodily autonomy:
“Even in a state with as heartbreaking as a loss in North Carolina, to not have Cheri Beasley coming into the Senate, I do think that her ability to raise this issue and have this conversation is what made that race as close as it was and made it competitive. I think we need to continue to demonstrate and draw these contrasts with these candidates who have been very clear that they’re going to sign up for a national ban and do things that are even more extreme. People just do not want government making these decisions for them.”
See part of Alexis’s interview here.
