Since Illinois Rep. Dan Lipinski lost the primary for his House seat in March, the Democratic Party has no remaining anti-abortion members in Congress. It’s a milestone representing the end of a long-term shift that has seen the party adopt reproductive rights as a core issue. (The anti-abortion Louisiana Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards is an extreme outlier among elected officials.) Nearly all the Democratic presidential candidates engaged in full-throated defenses of abortion and called for an expansion of abortion access. As the GOP has increasingly tried to restrict abortion on a state-by-state basis, polls have found that most voters disapprove of such hard-line stances, making a pro-choice stance seem perhaps more attractive to Democratic politicians.
As Democrats have embraced pro-choice politics, the country’s two major abortion-rights groups stepped up their spending to historic levels in 2020, with Planned Parenthood pledging to spend $45 million and NARAL pledging $35 million, all of which went toward electing Democrats and targeting races in swing states. That tracks with recent history: Planned Parenthood Votes, the organization’s major PAC, increased its spending nearly threefold to about $22 million in 2016, and that number didn’t drop in 2018 even though it wasn’t a presidential election year.
What this reflects is the attitude among reproductive rights advocates that abortion could be outlawed by Republicans if they remain in power. The appointment of more conservative Supreme Court justices could have led to a greater chance of overturning Roe v. Wade (a bridge the current conservative majority on the court has not yet crossed, though it remains a possibility), as well as the ongoing stripping of federal money from Planned Parenthood. (In 2019, the women’s health organization announced it was turning down $60 million in federal funding because of a rule change that would have required it to stop referring low-income women to doctors who perform abortions.) Beyond that, Republicans have enacted a host of restrictions on when, where and by whom an abortion can be performed.
Some of these restrictions are the product of legislation, but others have come in the form of ballot measures. One such measure, Colorado’s Proposition 115, is illustrative of how the battle over reproductive rights plays out. That proposition, backed by a collection of anti-abortion groups, would have banned all abortions after 22 weeks. It’s a policy that many red states have adopted; Coloradans, however, had previously rejected the idea, and it took extra time for the abortion restrictions to collect enough signatures for a ballot measure. Still, Planned Parenthood affiliates spent over $2 million to oppose Proposition 115, contributing to its eventual 17-point defeat. That was clearly worth it—the movement couldn’t afford to risk such a crushing blow in a relatively progressive state.
Abortion rights groups, like the rest of the left, spent a sizable amount of time and more than $3 million attacking Donald Trump directly. One illustrative ad from NARAL linked Trump’s failures to contain the COVID pandemic to his assault on abortion, claiming that in both instances, the president took anti-science and anti-woman stances.
NARAL and Planned Parenthood also spent heavily on the Senate, with Planned Parenthood Votes contributing around $4 million in ads targeting Senate races in Maine, Arizona, North Carolina and Montana.
What did they get for their money? Though the Senate remains controlled by Republicans (pending the January special elections in Georgia), Joe Biden's victory will at least stop the appointment of right-wing judges and result in a rolling-back of the Trump administration’s anti-abortion rules. The question now is whether he’ll go further. It was only during the campaign that Biden came out against the Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of federal funds on abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is in danger.
But without the Senate, Democrats can't do all they want to advance reproductive rights. Democrats will not likely be able to move forward with the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that has been repeatedly introduced and which would prevent states from passing onerous restrictions on abortion access. They will also not be able to codify Roe v. Wade into law, which would (at least in theory) prevent a still-conservative Supreme Court from abolishing abortion rights at a stroke. The fight for the right to an abortion remains a bitter one where each side advances inch by inch, dollar by dollar.
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