By the end of 2022, many political analysts had come to two conclusions about the midterm elections: the Republicans had not picked the best candidates and the electoral impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade y Planned Parenthood v. Casey. With the latter in mind, Joe Biden fully embraced abortion as one of the central issues of his re-election campaign.
Because of his Catholicism, the president rarely uses the word “abortion” in public, but it seems that this tendency will be modified once the campaign events begin.
“I think it’ll continue to be a really galvanizing issue, and we’ll continue to find ways to make it front and center,” Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, told POLITICO, something they will be able to exploit as more Republican states pass legislation on the issue.
In the same vein, Ron Klain, former Chief of Staff of the Biden Administration, stated that abortion “is going to be an important issue in the 2024 campaign.”
“You’re going to have a Democrat, Joe Biden, who has stood up for a woman’s right to choose and is pushing for federal legislation to restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land against a Republican who obviously has a very different point of view,” he said, later adding that Democrats will contrast with “MAGA Republicans who are trying to roll back those freedoms.”
US President Joe Biden touted the 'fight to protect' abortion rights during a Women's History Month event at the White House pic.twitter.com/JRV0GVygGi
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 23, 2023
The message would revolve around the promise to codify Roe v. Wade, a ruling that SCOTUS overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization with John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett voting for, and Stephen Breyer, Elena Keagan and Sonia Sotomayor voting against.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division. It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” Alito wrote in the majority opinion.
The ruling was issued on June 24, 2022, and since then, Democrats have embarked on a promise to codify Roe, something Biden will insist on in his presidential campaign.
To keep the issue from fizzling over time, the Democratic National Committee has a six-figure advertising strategy, including digital ads and billboards in states such as New York, Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and Washington DC.
Specifically, one of the billboards illustrates the Biden-Harris administration with a tone-on-tone inscription: “NO to Republican Abortion Bans! YES to a Women’s Right to Choose!”. Another design features some Republican candidates, Mike Pence, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott, for whom they chose the following caption, “Trump and MAGA REPUBLICANS WANT TO BAN ABORTION NATIONWIDE.”
The White House has already planned several events leading up to the first anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling, and they have the support of Mini Timmaraju, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
In her view, abortion “will be a major, if not the major, issue driving the 2024 election.” “The vice president and the president are really intent to keep abortion up front and center of the campaign,” she concluded.
