Abortion has Democrats fired up for 2024

How big an issue will abortion be in the presidential election?

“Abortion is a top priority of the 2024 campaign,” says Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Said Last year’s New York Times.

Since then, former President Trump has worked to counter the strong momentum behind his abortion rights message to voters.

His strategy for dealing with abortion is to scare voters with immigration, an issue that draws voters to him.

In 2016, it paid off. Now, he is issuing new warnings against migrants crossing the Mexican border, branding any crime committed by illegal immigrants as evidence of a nation being overrun.

To continue to raise fears about immigration, he said: ordered House Republicans to withdraw from immigration reform deal. This historic agreement may have been good news for the country, but it was bad news for President Trump’s efforts to blame the border crisis on President Biden.

Mr. Trump’s tactics are unwinnable for most voters. Since the 2022 Dobbs decision that stripped the federal government of abortion rights, voters have proven to have a strong incentive to go to the polls to protect abortion rights.Trump has recently attempted to avoid this issue. suggest A ban on abortion after 16 weeks of pregnancy may be a compromise. But in a country where a majority of voters support abortion rights, the idea of ​​a ban is not a winner.

Even that Trump strategy took a hit last month, when the Alabama Republican Party reminded voters that the far right was going far beyond Dobbs. They want to dig deeper into controlling family decisions regarding childbirth. Conservatives on the Alabama Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision that equated frozen embryos with infants and made it a crime to damage or destroy them.

The ruling means that infertility treatments, including in vitro fertilization (IVF), are too risky for doctors and patients in the state.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a disabled military veteran who used IVF to give birth to a child, has introduced a bill that would give federal protections to the IVF process.

Alabama court ruling ‘paints women and doctors like me as criminals,’ says senator Said. Duckworth’s bill was supported in public opinion polls. A CBS News/YouGov poll last month found that 86 percent of Americans supported legalizing IVF.

That didn’t stop Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Mississippi), a Trump supporter, from speaking out. blocking Senator Duckworth’s pro-abortion bill.

Supported by a majority of House Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) life in concepttion methodwhich effectively bans in vitro fertilization by treating embryos as human beings.

However, the backlash against the Alabama court ruling was so intense that the Republican-controlled state legislature passed the law Protecting fertility clinics from prosecution. The important question of whether a fetus is considered a human child has not yet been addressed.

President Trump once thought he could use the economy as an issue to counter concerns about losing abortion rights. However, consumer sentiment is improving as the stock market sets new records.

President Trump’s only bet now is to use a large turnout of right-wing voters fueled by immigration to counter motivated Democrats at the polls.

The problem with this strategy is that voters in conservative and liberal states have made pro-abortion rights campaigns a deciding issue since the Supreme Court ended federal protections for abortion.

This was the biggest issue in the 2022 midterm elections, and was meant to thwart the promised “red wave” of Republican victory.last year Virginia voters gave Democrats a majority She took office in the state Legislature after Republicans supported a 15-week ban on abortions.

And this year, abortion rights May be on the ballot in some states There, activists are pushing to make abortion access a right in the state constitution. Some of these states, including Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania, will be critical to the outcome of the race for the White House.

This includes states with large Republican voters, such as Kansas and Ohio. 6 states They have already voted to approve state constitutional protections for abortion. In fact, voters have historically supported abortion rights every time it’s been on the ballot.

In a Wall Street Journal/NORC poll last November, 55% said pregnant women should have abortions for any reason.especially Michigan voters in February FOX News poll, the economy ranked as the top issue. But among Democrats, 51% said abortion was a “very important” driving issue for their 2024 vote.

In Wisconsin, Fifty-five percent of Democrats responded to the Fox poll. They say abortion is a top issue of “extreme” importance to them.

between North Carolina Democratic Partyabortion was tied to the economy, second only to medical care, at 55%.

Democrats were content to protect abortion rights. They took Roe v. Wade for granted as a cornerstone of American life that could never be overturned.

Now, as conservative courts begin to equate fetuses with people and some states deny abortions to women with medical emergencies, Democrats are now being reminded of their mistakes.

President Trump is trying to cloud the abortion fight by loudly demonizing immigrants. The only way it will work is if a large part of the country buys into the immigration hype.

Juan Williams is a writer and political analyst for Fox News Channel.