It’s been two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in their Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, and President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are using the anniversary to center the 2024 campaign on the fight for reproductive rights. They’re part of a larger push by congressional Democrats and advocacy groups to reinstate federal reproductive rights and protect access to birth control and in vitro fertilization.
“Two years ago today, Donald Trump’s Supreme Court majority ripped away the fundamental freedom for women to access the healthcare they need and deserve,” Biden said in a statement released Monday. This led to “devastating” consequences including “extreme and dangerous abortion bans,” Biden said.
“Donald Trump is the sole person responsible for this nightmare,” Biden continues. “For him, these cruel state bans are a ‘beautiful thing to watch’—and they’re just beginning.”
He reiterated that message in a video Monday. “For MAGA Republicans, [overturning] Roe is just the beginning,” Biden says in the video. “They’re going to try to ban the right to choose nationwide. They’re coming for IVF and birth control next. We’re up against extremism.”
That’s not all from the Biden campaign. Recently, it announced an organizing push “to mobilize volunteers and to communicate to battleground voters about all that’s at stake in this election for reproductive freedom,” and plan to hold “over 35 events in the battlegrounds and across the country organized around the Dobbs anniversary.”
The events will include “women who have been directly impacted by Trump’s MAGA abortion bans like Amanda Zurawski, Kaitlyn Joshua, Dr. Austin Dennard, Latorya Beasley, Kaitlyn Kash, Lauren Miller, and more.” These are a few of the victims of the Dobbs decision: women who were denied abortions even while in septic shock, who were forced to carry a dying fetus, and who were denied access to in vitro fertilization treatments because of harsh new state laws.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the primary committee to elect House Democrats, is also marking the anniversary this week, starting with a targeted campaign against five swing-district Republicans—Reps. Michelle Steel of California, Nick LaLota and Brandon Williams of New York, Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania—who all praised the end of Roe.
“Over the next five months, we will ensure the American public does not forget that it was House Republicans who praised Donald Trump’s Supreme Court for ending reproductive freedom as we know it,” a DCCC spokesperson told Axios.
Biden and congressional Democrats will be joined by a new coalition of reproductive-rights groups that’s pledging to spend $100 million in the 2024 campaign to restore and expand federal abortion rights. The coalition, Abortion Access Now, announced a national, 10-year campaign to shape reproductive-rights policy and to lobby and campaign for those policies with lawmakers and the public.
“Dobbs was a really devastating outcome, but we’re going to win back our rights much faster than they think,” Mini Timmaraju, the president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, told Politico. “We’re not going to let the anti-abortion extremists define this moment. We’re coming for them and we’re going to make sure that they become increasingly irrelevant.”
That starts with Democrats taking back the House, and keeping the Senate and White House. Please give $10 to each of these Daily Kos-endorsed candidates today!
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