“My view on this has been very clear. It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term. It’s whether a child should be allowed to live even though those circumstances of the child’s birth is inconvenient or a problem to the society.”
This is absurd! Trump VP Pick JD Vance calls rape an "inconvenience"
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) July 15, 2024
When asked about not allowing women to have an abortion when they are the victims of rape or incest, his response is disgusting. It's as if he's a character from the Handmaids Tale.
“My view on this has been… pic.twitter.com/Fv8nbhfsbI
Clearly, Trump has decided to just say “fuck it, I’m going for it.” He thinks he can just bulldoze his way into the White House with little resistance because Biden whiffed in the debate.
We’ll see about that. A lot more women than men vote in every election. Even more will vote this time.
From Jessica Valenti’s newsletter “Abortion Every Day”
A recent poll from Axios/Ipsos, for example, that shows that 81% of Americans believe abortion “should be managed between a woman and her doctor, not the government.” And this is huge: 4 in 5 Americans don’t want pregnancy to be legislated. That includes over half of Republicans!
We’ve seen multiple polls showing the same thing: Americans want abortion to be legal.(Check out research from PerryUndem for more evidence of this massive and growing support.)
There’s also broad support for mifepristone and misoprostol access amid the political attacks seeking to ban the medication. Polls show 7 in 10 Americans support abortion medication (including one from Fox News), which underscores how much Americans support medication access, regardless of party affiliation.
That’s because Americans increasingly understand that pregnancy is too complicated to legislate. A poll commissioned by Planned Parenthood, for example, found that the messages resonating most with voters are those emphasizing that medical decisions should be made by patients and doctors, not politicians, and those highlighting how wholly unqualified politicians are to have a say.
This support translates to elections, too: Abortion rights have won every time they’ve been on the ballot since Dobbs. Polls also show that 2 in 3 Americans would vote to codify abortion rights into their state constitutions—including nearly half of Republicans. And voters overwhelmingly reject efforts to brand abortion restrictions as ‘middle-ground compromises’ (like their proposal for a national 15-week ban).
All of this terrifies Republicans. That’s why anti-abortion legislators in multiple states are trying to stall or stop abortion rights ballot measures—even if it means undoing democracy in the process. They’ve tried to raise ballot measure standards and written false or misleading language in ballot summaries; they’ve attempted to get the courts to reject abortion rights amendments and have their Attorney Generals to upend the iniative process. And they’re working with anti-abortion groups throughout that process.
All of which is to say, the anti-abortion movement relies on the myth that abortion is just a matter of disagreement, rather than the truth: public officials are upending democracy to bring a landscape of devastation throughout our healthcare system that harms the lives of millions across the country.
And that’s more than a matter of numbers.
Vance on the ticket is going to supercharge the abortion rights movement which is already highly organized. I thought Trump was smarter than this. But I suspect he was so thrilled with Vance’s tweet blaming Biden for the shooting on Saturday that it tipped the balance. It certainly didn’t hurt him. I guess Trump forgot about the abortion problem which, up until now, he’s been acutely aware could hurt him. He’s cocky. But this race is still very, very close.