PHOENIX – Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is just one of several senior Biden administration officials milling around the Grand Canyon State this month as part of a campaign to highlight the upcoming two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
Haaland spoke to a group of activists at a coffee shop in Phoenix’s midcentury modern Melrose neighborhood, praising the president alongside state Sen. Priya Sundareshan and Oscar de los Santos, the state House Democratic deputy minority leader.
“As President Biden always says, don’t compare him to the Almighty, compare him to other gods,” Haaland said jokingly.
Monday marks the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and put abortion policy back primarily in the hands of the states, creating a wide variety of policies across the country.
Abortion has become a hot-button issue for Arizona Democrats. Still, the big question remains: Will it be able to garner support from undecided voters and other lesser candidates in the race? On the Republican side, the primary has been largely about immigration and economic policy.
Biden won the state by about 10,000 votes in 2020, but Trump won it in 2016, defeating Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
“We want to ensure that all Americans have more freedoms than their parents had,” Haaland said.
The secretary of state is expected to campaign Saturday morning with Rep. Greg Stanton, D-N.Y., as Democrats in Congress support enshrining Roe into federal law if Biden is re-elected by a united Congress. Early Friday, Haaland spoke to participants of the “Women for Biden-Harris” rally in Flagstaff, northern Arizona.
To mark the anniversary on Monday, an even bigger figure is set to visit Silicon Valley: Vice President Kamala Harris.
Governor Harris, First Lady Jill Biden and the president have visited Arizona in recent months, and The Washington Post reported that at a senior citizen awareness event last week, Harris rebuked people who had concerns about the president’s age and his suitability for a second term in the White House.
Arizona has become the epicenter of the post-Roe abortion debate, making it a natural focus for the Biden campaign. While it has a 15-week law that bans abortion in most circumstances after the 15th week, a proposition on the November ballot is likely to ask whether allowing abortion up to “fetal viability” should be a state constitutional right. Opponents of the effort argue that the proposed language in the amendment would allow abortions after 23-25 weeks, raising other issues.
“Let me be clear: we have a chance to protect the right to reproductive freedom in our state constitutions this November, but we also have to protect this right at the national level, and that includes the White House,” Sundareshan said.
Arizona made headlines in the spring when the state Supreme Court ruled 4-2 that its near-total ban on abortion, enacted in 1984 and re-enacted in 1977, could remain in effect after the 15th week. After weeks of heated debate on Capitol Hill, the state Legislature and Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs repealed the near-total ban just before the old law was set to take effect.
If voters pass the ballot measure, it would nullify a 15-week law signed by former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey in early 2022.
