The strategy was successful in the 2022 parliamentary elections, will it be the same in the presidential election? Joe Biden wants to make it clear before the election that a victory for Donald Trump would completely destroy abortion rights in the United States.
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“The vice president and I are fighting to protect women's freedom of choice in the face of the Republicans' dangerous, extreme and incoherent projects,” the 81-year-old Democrat said in a press release issued on Monday, the anniversary of the famous jurisprudence. Roe v. Wade” about voluntary abortions.
Kamala Harris, the president's nominee for the November presidential election, begins a national tour Monday dedicated to defending abortion rights.
First stop: Wisconsin (Northeast), one of the “swing states,” those undecided states that will play a key role in November.
On Tuesday she will meet with Joe Biden for a meeting on the same topic in Virginia, not far from Washington.
The Democratic campaign team simultaneously releases several press releases and a clip in which Austin Dennard, a mother from Texas (South), talks about the “worst nightmare a woman can have.”
This gynecologist explains that after learning that the child she was carrying was not viable, restrictions in Texas forced her to terminate her pregnancy in another state.
She looks into the lens and accuses: “It’s because of Donald Trump.”
“Roe v. Wade”
And more specifically, because of the role the former president played at the end of Roe v. Wade,” the Supreme Court ruled in June 2022.
On January 22, America marks the 51st anniversary of the 1973 ruling that established a constitutional right to voluntary abortion throughout the country.
This right was destroyed a year and a half ago. The Supreme Court, which became very conservative after Donald Trump's appointments, ruled that the right to abortion was not guaranteed in the Constitution and that the American states had jurisdiction in the matter.
Since then, about twenty of them have banned or severely restricted voluntary abortions.
Donald Trump, the overwhelming favorite in the Republican primary, recently said he was “proud” to have contributed to the legal turnaround.
And Kamala Harris wants to use this statement from the 77-year-old tycoon against him.
“Proud that doctors can be thrown in prison? Proud that young women today have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers? the vice president exclaims, according to excerpts shared ahead of her speech on Monday.
Abortion remains a historical fault line in the United States, even polls show that a majority of Americans now support abortion rights.
This allowed Joe Biden to limit the damage during the fall 2022 legislative midterm elections.
The American president wants to assume that he will benefit from the same dynamic in November.
Kamala Harris
This offensive will also be a test of the campaign strength of Kamala Harris, the first woman and first African American in office, who has been plowing the ground for several weeks and with whom the American press has not yet treated kindly. .
The 59-year-old Democrat, who is crushed by Republican opposition at the slightest opportunity, recently received a rare and undoubtedly unintentional compliment from a Fox News columnist.
“What Kamala is doing (in terms of campaigning for abortion rights) is having a strong impact on young women,” a former spokeswoman for Donald Trump, Kayleigh McEnany, commented on the conservatives' favorite channel.
Abortion access “will be an important issue in states where it is not yet guaranteed,” believes Melissa DeRosa, a strategist close to the Democratic Party.
“In states where people believe that this right is already protected (…), they will think more about economic issues, immigration, crime…”, however, she predicts.
It also remains to be seen to what extent the issue will mobilize abortion opponents who refuse to give up in November.
Several thousand protesters took to the streets of Washington in the snow on Friday, chanting: “Abortion kills.”