It has been two years since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, yet the surge in back-alley abortion deaths never materialized. Of course, that isn’t stopping Kamala Harris and Jill Biden from stumping in the swing states, pushing the “dangerous” reversal of Roe v. Wade as the administration’s top priority. Frankly, it’s the only priority that Democrats have against Republicans – except for 34 felony convictions handed down from the state of New York to the GOP presumptive nominee.
Mrs. Biden was in Pittsburgh and the rural area of Lancaster on June 23. Harris campaigned on Monday in Arizona and in Maryland on the 24th, the second anniversary of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
Not to downplay former President Trump’s ongoing legal battles, but the Democrats can’t, with any honesty, brag about accomplishments except being against any abortion ban. And even one important issue such as this will likely won’t help the president much after a disastrous first debate.
The Biden Pro-Abortion Push
According to Pew Research, for women age 15-44, “there were 28.6 abortions per 1,000 non-Hispanic Black women in 2021; 12.3 abortions per 1,000 Hispanic women; 6.4 abortions per 1,000 non-Hispanic White women; and 9.2 abortions per 1,000 women of other races.” Numbers for 2023 are actually up since the Supreme Court decision.
Yet the Biden campaign is planning to hold more than 50 events in battleground states and conservative enclaves to reach voters emotional or sympathetic to no-holds-barred abortion access in America, at any point during a pregnancy. Earlier this week, the vice president referred to the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision on June 24, 2022, as a “premeditated” strike by Trump after successfully installing Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Of course, Justices are supposed to be blind to politics and interpret – not create – the law of the land.
Harris hammered the point home at a campaign event in Maryland. “Trump has not denied much less shown remorse for his actions,” she said. “Instead, he quote ‘proudly’ takes credit for overturning Roe. My fellow Americans, in a court of law, that would be called an admission in the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America. Donald Trump is guilty.”
“Two years ago today, Donald Trump’s Supreme Court majority ripped away the fundamental freedom for women to access the health care they need and deserve,” President Joe Biden said in a statement, while sequestered at Camp David for debate prep. He added that “the consequences have been devastating.”
Before the rescinding of Roe in 2022, 1,603 facilities in the US provided abortions, including clinics, hospitals, and physicians’ offices. After the decision, the Guttmacher Institute released this data from 2023:
“The Monthly Abortion Provision Study show that an estimated 1,037,000 abortions occurred in the formal health care system in 2023, the first full calendar year after the US Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade. This represents a rate of 15.9 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age, and is an 11% increase since 2020, the last year for which comprehensive estimates are available. It is also the highest number and rate measured in the United States in over a decade.”
If women no longer have the right to abort – “health care,” Harris calls it – then didn’t the rates trend in the wrong direction?
The Pride of Life
Trump is proud of his part in the selection of Supreme Court Justices who eventually did overturn Roe. He is in favor of states’ rights in the abortion issue, and he has also said if federal regulation came across his desk as a national ban, he would not sign it. Last weekend, Trump addressed evangelical voters at the Faith & Freedom Coalition in Washington. “We have also achieved what the pro-life movement fought to get for 49 years, and we’ve gotten abortion out of the federal government and back to the states,” he said.
Since the 2022 ruling, 20 Republican-led states have amped up restrictions on abortion, which damaged the midterm election for the GOP. And perhaps with other conservative states, restrictions will change the landscape and local availability of the procedure. Most Americans do not agree with a complete ban – more of a timeline from conception and exceptions to every rule as judged by a physician.
