Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, and former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, are giving voters very different answers when it comes to any changes at the U.S. Supreme Court, shown here on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
This is one in a series of States Newsroom reports on the major policy issues in the presidential race.
WASHINGTON — Democrats have increasingly cried out for new rules for the nation’s highest court, and the 2024 presidential election reflects a clear party divide over how Supreme Court justices should behave and whether they should remain on the bench for life.
The erasure of a nearly 50-year-old national right to abortion, the granting of wide latitude for former presidents to escape criminal accountability and several ethics scandals magnified these questions. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are giving voters very different answers.
Harris’ platform calls for “common-sense” reforms that include term limits for justices and an enforceable ethics code that mirrors the rules that apply to lower federal judges.
When President Joe Biden announced his proposals for Supreme Court ethics reform roughly one week after dropping his bid for reelection, Harris issued a statement reinforcing the need to “restore confidence” in the court.
“That is why President Biden and I are calling on Congress to pass important reforms — from imposing term limits for Justices’ active service, to requiring Justices to comply with binding ethics rules just like every other federal judge. And finally, in our democracy, no one should be above the law. So we must also ensure that no former President has immunity for crimes committed while in the White House,” she said.
While Harris’ campaign did not provide additional details on her platform, Harris has a record of supporting such measures. As a senator in 2019, Harris co-sponsored a bill to enforce a uniform ethics code at every level of the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court.
Trump position
When asked for comment about Trump’s stance on enforceable ethics rules or term limits at the Supreme Court, Trump campaign Senior Advisor Brian Hughes responded: “President Trump has said that, apart from matters of war and peace, the nomination of a Supreme Court justice is the most important decision an American President can make. As president, he appointed constitutionalist judges who interpret the law as written, and he will do so again when voters send him back to the White House.”
The former president has made his opposition to change known on social media.
Nearly two weeks before Biden’s speech in July to roll out his ideas for improving the court, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the “Radical Left Democrats are desperately trying to ‘Play the Ref’ by calling for an illegal and unConstitutional attack on our SACRED United States Supreme Court.”
“The reason that these Communists are so despondent is that their unLawful Witch Hunts are failing everywhere. The Democrats are attempting to interfere in the Presidential Election, and destroy our Justice System, by attacking their Political Opponent, ME, and our Honorable Supreme Court. We have to fight for our Fair and Independent Courts, and protect our Country. MAGA2024!” he continued, randomly capitalizing words as he often does.
The Republican National Committee stated in its platform that the party unequivocally opposes any changes to the number of Supreme Court justices.
“We will maintain the Supreme Court as it was always meant to be, at 9 Justices. We will not allow the Democrat Party to increase this number, as they would like to do, by 4, 6, 8, 10, and even 12 Justices. We will block them at every turn.”
At the Economic Club of Chicago on Oct. 15, Trump appeared to accuse Democrats of wanting to add up to 25 new justices to the Supreme Court bench.
Harris’ 2024 campaign position on the Supreme Court does not include a plan to change the number of justices. During her 2020 presidential run, Harris expressed an openness to expanding the court, according to Politico and other reports. Biden, at the time, remained opposed to changes, including justice term limits.
Immunity ruling
When Trump was charged with federal fraud and obstruction crimes for his attempts to subvert the 2020 presidential election results, he escalated his appeal for presidential immunity all the way to the Supreme Court.
On July 1, the justices issued a 6-3 opinion granting former presidents criminal immunity for “core constitutional” duties and presumptive immunity for actions on the “outer perimeter” of official duties, but none for unofficial, personal acts.
Two of the justices who joined the conservative majority ruling — Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — were Trump appointees. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, also appointed during Trump’s time in the Oval Office, joined them, concurring in part.
Trump’s case was delayed for the better part of 2024, tied up in the high court process as he campaigned for a second presidency. The delay ultimately closed the door on a trial before November’s election.
The high-profile case not only highlighted the fact that Trump was being judged by his own appointees, but also that two other justices had been recently exposed in ethics scandals involving Republican donors and appearing to show support for Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election.
In April 2023, ProPublica uncovered that Justice Clarence Thomas had been accepting luxury travel and other big ticket gifts from Republican billionaire donor Harlan Crow.
In May of this year, the New York Times published photos of an upside-down American flag flying outside the home of Justice Samuel Alito following the violent riot by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The upside-down flag, a general symbol of protest, had been adopted by Trump supporters who believed the 2020 election was stolen.
All parties have denied any wrongdoing, and Alito declined to recuse himself from Trump’s 2020 election subversion case, and another case brought by a Jan. 6 defendant.
The call for a new ethics code
While the Thomas and Alito scandals attracted the most attention, observers of the court say many of the justices’ actions raise ethics questions.
Gabe Roth, founder of the nonpartisan nonprofit Fix the Court, said “no justice has totally behaved ethically.”
Roth cited transgressions by both conservative and liberal justices: socializing with litigants who argue before the court, the use of government resources to promote a personal book and instances of justices not recusing themselves from cases in which they appear to have a stake.
“It hasn’t been to the scale of the things that ProPublica uncovered, but no justice is fully pure when it comes to ethics issues, which is not to say that they’re all corrupt or they’re all compromised by any means. It’s just more, to me, a fact that the whole institution needs to focus more on ethical leadership,” Roth said.
ProPublica published numerous stories in 2023 detailing gifts Thomas never disclosed, as well as a luxury fishing expedition Alito took with a Republican billionaire who argued before the court.
The Supreme Court currently polices itself with its own code of conduct and maintains justices already follow rules that apply to lower federal judges.
Congressional Democrats have introduced several bills aiming to impose ethics rules on the justices and limit life-time appointments, for example to 18 years.
A bill led by Senate Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island passed the Democratic-led Senate Committee on the Judiciary in July 2023.
The legislation aimed to mandate an enforceable ethics code, tighten recusal and gift disclosure requirements, and establish a complaints process similar to that of the lower courts.
An attempt at unanimous consent passage on the Senate floor in June was blocked by Senate Judiciary’s top Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
“Let’s be clear, this is not about improving the court, this is about undermining the court,” Graham said on the floor.
Roth said no matter who wins the presidency and which party takes control of the Senate, the longtime fight for an ethics overhaul and term limits at the high court will continue — and that it shouldn’t be partisan.
“If they’re done right, it doesn’t favor one party or another or one ideology or another. It’s a bit weird that one side is saying they don’t love ethics right now,” Roth continued. “I don’t get it.”
The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which was issued electronically, is seen on June 24, 2022 in Washington, D.C. The court’s decision overturned the landmark Roe v Wade case and erases a federal right to an abortion. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
This is one in a series of States Newsroom reports on the major policy issues in the presidential race.
WASHINGTON — This year’s election marks the first time voters are casting ballots for president since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion and made reproductive rights a pivotal issue for many voters.
Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trump have spoken about reproductive rights and abortion access numerous times during the last few months.
Trump’s stance has evolved during his bid for the White House. He now contends he wouldn’t sign legislation implementing nationwide abortion restrictions and wants regulation left up to the states.
Harris has consistently said a nationwide law guaranteeing access would ensure the choice is left up to women, not politicians.
“I pledge to you, when Congress passes a bill to put back in place the protections of Roe v. Wade, as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law,” Harris said during the September presidential debate.
Trump patted himself on the back during the same debate for nominating three justices to the Supreme Court who later ruled with their conservative colleagues that the Constitution didn’t provide the privacy rights that two former high court rulings said insulated women’s choices about abortion.
“I did something that nobody thought was possible,” Trump said about nominating the three justices. “The states are now voting. What she says is an absolute lie. And as far as the abortion ban, no, I’m not in favor of (an) abortion ban. But it doesn’t matter because this issue has now been taken over by the states.”
Harris had just said that Trump would sign a nationwide abortion ban if elected and cited Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump administration released by the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation. Trump and his campaign have repeatedly tried to distance themselves from the document and many of its proposals.
Many politicians have misrepresented the Supreme Court’s ruling two years ago as sending abortion regulation back to the states. What the conservative justices wrote was that ending Roe v. Wade meant the “authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”
That, of course, includes Congress and the president.
Trump position varies
Trump’s stance on abortion hasn’t always been linear or consistent. He told Republicans earlier this year that they should avoid discussing the topic in order to win elections, while also courting organizations that view him as one avenue to ending abortion outright.
Trump got himself into hot water with several anti-abortion organizations and conservative Republicans in April when he announced he didn’t want Congress to take action on a nationwide law.
Trump had previously said he would support a 16-week nationwide ban. He reiterated in his April announcement that he supported exceptions to state abortion bans in cases of rape, incest and the life of the pregnant patient.
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser released a statement following Trump’s April announcement that she was “deeply disappointed.”
“Saying the issue is ‘back to the states’ cedes the national debate to the Democrats who are working relentlessly to enact legislation mandating abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy,” Dannenfelser wrote. “If successful, they will wipe out states’ rights.”
About a month later, in May, Trump, Dannenfelser, President of the Family Research Council Tony Perkins and South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham had a “terrific meeting,” according to a statement released afterward.
Then, this summer, Trump muddied the waters on his abortion stance yet more, when he spoke to an organization in June that describes abortion as the “greatest atrocity facing” the United States that should be “eradicated entirely.”
“These are going to be your years because you’re going to make a comeback like just about no other group,” Trump said to The Danbury Institute’s inaugural Life & Liberty Forum. “I know what’s happening. I know where you’re coming from and where you’re going. And I’ll be with you side by side.”
Then, most recently, Trump posted on social media during the vice presidential debate in early October that he would veto any nationwide abortion restrictions.
Trump wrote in all capital letters that he “would not support a federal abortion ban, under any circumstances, and would, in fact, veto it, because it is up to the states to decide based on the will of their voters (the will of the people!).”
Trump added that he didn’t support access to abortion during the seventh, eight or ninth months of pregnancy, nor did he support killing babies, which is already illegal.
During 2021, about 93% of abortions took place within the first 13 weeks of gestation, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed by the Pew Research Center.
Another 6% of abortions took place between 14 and 20 weeks with the remaining 1% taking place after 21 weeks gestation, according to the data.
“Almost half of individuals who obtained an abortion after 20 weeks did not suspect they were pregnant until later in pregnancy, and other barriers to care included lack of information about where to access an abortion, transportation difficulties, lack of insurance coverage and inability to pay for the procedure,” according to analysis from KFF Health.
Harris position
Harris has repeatedly criticized Trump for celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision to end Roe v. Wade and said during the presidential debate that state restrictions have harmed women in innumerable ways.
“Trump abortion bans that make no exception even for rape and incest,” Harris said. “Understand what that means — a survivor of a crime, a violation to their body, does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next. That is immoral.
“And one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.”
Harris has called for Democrats to eliminate the Senate’s legislative filibuster to ease the passage of a bill that would restore nationwide abortion protections.
That Senate rule requires at least 60 lawmakers vote to advance legislation before that bill can move on to a simple majority passage vote. It is different than the so-called talking filibuster, when one senator, or a group of like-minded lawmakers, talk on the floor for hours to delay a vote.
Democrats would have to maintain their majority in the Senate against long odds to actually carve out an exception to the legislative filibuster, in order to pass a bill restoring Roe v. Wade. Democrats would also need to regain control of the House of Representatives.
A divided Congress, or a few Democrats objecting to rule changes in the Senate, would hinder Harris’ efforts to sign nationwide abortion protections.
Democrats tried to pass legislation through the Senate that would have provided nationwide protections for abortion when they had unified control of government in 2022, but were blocked by the filibuster.
Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Arizona independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema later introduced a bipartisan bill that would have had a similar result, but it wasn’t scheduled for a floor vote.
The legislation of two years ago likely would again fail to advance if Democrats sweep in the November elections, unless they carved out an exception in the Senate filibuster.
Swing state voters
Harris’ and Trump’s stance on abortion access will likely play a role in determining which candidate wins the Electoral College in crucial swing states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Democrats are optimistic that abortion access ballot questions in 10 states will bolster Harris’ chances through increased voter turnout and higher spending by reproductive rights organizations.
While many of the referendums are in solidly blue or red states, the proposals in Arizona and Florida could affect turnout and motivation.
Louis Jacobson, senior columnist at Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, wrote earlier this month that a key question on Election Day will be whether “abortion-rights advocates extend their perfect 7-for-7 record since Roe v. Wade was overturned.”
Voters will decide on numerous other ballot questions as well, including recreational cannabis, increases in the minimum wage and ranked-choice voting.
In an earlier post about the abortion ballot questions, Jacobson and Samantha Putterman wrote that “(e)very post-Roe measure has been on the ballot during a relatively low turnout election—either the November midterm, a primary ballot, or an off-year election.”
“Any measure that makes the ballot in 2024 will face voters in November of a presidential year, when turnout is far higher,” they wrote. “This has the potential to hurt abortion rights backers, because moderate and liberal voters have recently flexed their electoral muscles more when turnout is low.”
Public opinion polls conducted by the Pew Research Center for the past three decades have consistently shown support for keeping abortion legal outpacing support for making the procedure illegal in most or all cases.
The 2024 survey showed that 63% of people want abortion legal in most or all cases while 36% believe it should be illegal in all or most cases.
People attend a "Fight4Her" pro-choice rally in front of the White House at Lafayette Square on March 29, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Astrid Riecken/Getty Images)
We knew what would happen when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
We knew women would be denied access to abortion in many states, including here in Wisconsin. We knew patients would be forced to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to get care. We knew there would be people who would be forced to stay pregnant against their will. We knew doctors would be put in impossible positions, knowing they had the skill and knowledge to help their patients but fearing incarceration and the loss of their careers due to state laws.
In Wisconsin, abortion was suspended immediately after Roe was overturned due to an 1849 law that prosecutors threatened to use to ban abortion in the state. This forced 9 in 10 people to travel out of state for care, putting people’s health and lives at risk. Fortunately, 15 months later, after thousands of Wisconsin women were denied care, a Dane County judge ruled that Wisconsin’s pre-Roe statute does not ban abortion. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin has resumed providing abortion care, but women’s health has suffered, confusion remains, and the threats to reproductive care and freedom continue in the Legislature, Congress and the courts.
Today, 21 states have banned abortion, and 29 million women and people across the gender spectrum who are of reproductive age are living under those bans. That number includes 44% of all women of reproductive age, and 55% of Black women.
And we knew women would die because of these bans. We didn’t know how many, or where, or who they would be. But now we have names. Two women — both Black women, both mothers — in Georgia died in 2022, in the first months without a federal constitutional right to abortion. According to Georgia’s Department of Public Health maternal mortality review committee, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller died preventable deaths, as a direct result of Georgia’s abortion ban.
Women and families have been telling their stories everywhere anyone will pay attention — on social media, on national television, in local newspapers. They are telling the world that abortion is essential health care, that women, trans and nonbinary people are suffering under these bans. They’re reminding us that access to sexual and reproductive health care is not a luxury to be awarded to the few: it is essential if we call ourselves a free country.
The stories are piling up, some of them heartbreaking, some of them enraging, some of them achingly familiar to our own experiences or those of people we love. After all, one in four women will have an abortion in their lifetime, which means weallknow someone who has had an abortion, whether they’ve shared that story or not.
And we know what will happen if politicians against reproductive freedom take power this election. We know because they’ve already shown us what they will do, and they continue to pursue additional restrictions on our freedom to access needed information and health care.
Our democracy and basic human rights are on the ballot in November. What we can do is vote.
We can elect leaders who will protect our right to make our own decisions about our bodies. Because there is no politician, of any party, who is more qualified, at any point in pregnancy, to make decisions about your pregnancy than you and your doctor.
And people know this. Nearly 80% of Americans believe the decision whether to have an abortion should be left to a woman and her doctor, rather than regulated by law.
Every ballot cast in every election is a nudge toward a different future. Those nudges, taken together, determine the path our country will follow. The moral arc of the universe only bends toward justice and freedom if we all pull together.
So fight for the future you want, the future we all deserve. Vote for freedom.
Medication abortion has become the most common method of abortion since the 2022 Dobbs decision ended the federal right to abortion. (Getty Images)
Researchers whose anti-abortion-funded studies were used to argue for restrictions on medication abortion — and then were retracted on methodological grounds — are now taking legal action against academic publisher Sage, which pulled their papers in February.
Represented by conservative law firms Consovoy McCarthy and Alliance Defending Freedom, the latter of which sued the Food and Drug Administration over abortion drugs in 2022, the researchers claim Sage’s retractions were unjustified and politically motivated and have led to “enormous and incalculable harm” to their reputations. They asked the Ventura County Superior Court in California to compel Sage to arbitrate with the researchers.
“Sage punished these highly respected and credentialed scientists simply because they believe in preserving life from conception to natural death. These actions have caused irreparable harm to the authors of these articles, and we are urging Sage to come to the arbitration table — as it is legally bound to do — rescind the retractions and remedy the reputational damage the researchers have suffered at the hands of abortion lobbyists,” said ADF senior counsel Phil Sechler in the recent announcement.
A representative for Sage declined to comment on the pending litigation.
A representative for the anti-abortion think tank Charlotte Lozier Institute, which employs the petitioning researchers, declined to comment. The nonprofit serves as the research arm of the influential Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which works to elect federal and state anti-abortion lawmakers.
The three studies at the center of the dispute were published in the journal “Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology,” between 2019 and 2022. Two of them featured prominently in a federal lawsuit aimed at restricting abortion pills, which the U.S. Supreme Court rejected this summer but continues to make its way through the lower courts.
States Newsroom was the first to report last year that Sage had opened an investigation after pharmaceutical sciences professor Chris Adkins contacted the journal with concerns that the researchers had misrepresented their findings. In the 2021 paper, the researchers looked at Medicaid data in 17 states between 1999 and 2015 and tracked patients who had had a procedural or a medication abortion and counted each time they went to an emergency department in the 30 days following those abortions. Their finding that emergency room visits within 30 days following a medication abortion increased 500% from 2002 to 2015 was frequently cited by plaintiffs and judges in the FDA case and used to conclude that the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone is dangerous. But Adkins and other public health experts told States Newsroom that the researchers inflated their findings, and appeared to conflate all emergency department visits with adverse events.
These concerns prompted Sage to re-examine the peer review process and to identify that one of the initial peer reviewers was an associate scholar with the Charlotte Lozier Institute. The publisher then enlisted a statistician and two reproductive health experts to newly peer review all three articles.
“Following Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines, we made this decision with the journal’s editor because of undeclared conflicts of interest and after expert reviewers found that the studies demonstrate a lack of scientific rigor that invalidates or renders unreliable the authors’ conclusions,” Sage said announcing the retractions, which notes that the experts found that the papers had “fundamental problems with the study design and methodology,” “unjustified or incorrect factual assumptions,” “material errors in the authors’ analysis of the data,” and “misleading presentations of the data.”
In a petition to compel arbitration filed late last week, the studies’ lead author James Studnicki and nine co-authors argue that Sage has delayed arbitration in violation of California contract law. They say they’ve had difficulty publishing new research since the retractions. As examples, the petition notes that in March a free online archive and distribution server for unpublished, non-peer-reviewed manuscripts refused to post one of the petitioners’ manuscripts and that in April a journal rejected the same manuscript, “citing similar pretextual reasons that HSRME used in its retraction.”
“These rejections are just the tip of the iceberg but reveal the enormous and incalculable harm that Sage’s retraction has inflicted on the Authors’ reputations and their ability to publish research and scholarship,” reads the court petition. “As scientists, the Authors’ credibility is their lifeblood, but Sage has destroyed the Authors’ hard-earned professional reputations.”
Studnicki, Charlotte Lozier’s vice president and director of data analytics, was on the editorial board of “Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology” until last fall, but the journal’s editor-in-chief dismissed him after the journal and Sage decided to retract the papers. The blog Retraction Watch reports that the journal is no longer accepting new submissions.
Medication abortion has become the most common method since the 2022 Dobbs decision ended the federal right to abortion.
Despite claims by the Charlotte Lozier Institute that medication abortion is unsafe, when administered at 9 weeks gestation or less, the FDA-approved regimen has a more than 99% completion rate, a 0.4% risk of major complications, and around 30 reported associated deaths over 22 years. Common symptoms include heavy bleeding and cramping, diarrhea, and nausea, and sometimes medical intervention is necessary to avoid infection. ProPublica recently reported on two women in Georgia who suffered rare complications of medication abortion, but whose deaths were ruled preventable and were attributed to the state’s near-total abortion ban.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022 ended federal abortion rights. (Sofia Resnick/States Newsroom)
Editor’s note: This five-day series explores the priorities of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as they consider the upcoming presidential election. With the outcome expected to be close, these “swing states” may decide the future of the country.
7 States + 5 Issues That Will Swing the 2024 Election
Dr. Kristin Lyerly’s placenta detached from her uterus when she was 17 weeks pregnant with her fourth son in 2007. Her doctor in Madison, Wisconsin, gave the devastated recent medical school graduate one option: to deliver and bury her dead child. But she requested a dilation and evacuation abortion procedure, knowing it would be less invasive and risky than being induced. And she couldn’t fathom the agony of holding her tiny dead baby.
But Lyerly’s doctor declined, giving her a direct window into the many ways Americans lack real choice when it comes to their reproductive health decisions. At the time of this miscarriage, Lyerly was getting a master’s degree in public health before beginning her residency. She was able to get a D&E at the same hospital by a different doctor. As an OB-GYN, she soon would learn how much abortion is stigmatized and limited throughout the country, but also regularly sought after and sometimes medically necessary, including among her many conservative Catholic patients in northeastern Wisconsin.
And then, on June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ended federal abortion rights, prompting states such as Wisconsin to resurrect dormant abortion bans from the 19th and 20th centuries. Lyerly’s job changed overnight. She stopped working as an OB-GYN in Sheboygan and moved her practice to Minnesota. She became a plaintiff in a lawsuit over an 1849 Wisconsin feticide law being interpreted as an abortion ban, which has since been blocked.
When a congressional seat opened up in a competitive Wisconsin district this year, the 54-year-old mother of four joined the post-Dobbs wave of women running for office to restore reproductive rights, which this election cycle includes another OB-GYN and a patient denied abortion care. Lyerly’s decision to run is emblematic of the nationwide backlash against the Dobbs decision, which altered the reproductive health care landscape, with providers, patients and advocates turning to the ballot box to change the laws to restore and broaden access.
Wisconsin is among seven swing states expected to determine the country’s next president and federal leaders. And in many ways they’re being viewed as referendums on how much the right to have an abortion can move the needle in a tight presidential election.
“What we’ve seen in every election since the Dobbs decision is that abortion is at top of mind for voters — and it’s not just helping voters decide who or what to vote for. It’s actually a turnout driver,” said Ryan Stitzlein, vice president of political and government relations at national lobbying group Reproductive Freedom for All. The group is investing in down-ballot races in conservative districts such as Lyerly’s, buoyed by cash and momentum from Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ reproductive-rights-focused campaign.
Anti-abortion money is also flowing through the swing states, led by lobbying groups Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Women Speak Out PAC. Some of their messaging, adopted by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and many GOP candidates, often paints Democrats as champions of infanticide, focusing on the rarest and most controversial type of abortions, those performed in the third trimester.
But aside from that rhetoric, many Republican candidates have been quiet on an issue that for years motivated their staunchest supporters.
SBA Pro-Life America declined an interview for this story but shared a press release outlining the organization’s strategy trying to reach 10 million voters in Montana, Ohio and all of the battleground states except for Nevada. The group endorsed 28 House candidates total this cycle, and a fifth of them are in North Carolina. One of North Carolina’s endorsed candidates in a toss-up race is Republican GOP challenger Laurie Buckhout, who does not mention her abortion stance on her campaign website, and did not return a request for comment.
“Our field team is talking to persuadable and low propensity pro-life voters to urge them to cast their votes against the party that endorses abortion in the seventh, eighth and ninth months,” said SBA’s national field team director Patricia Miles in the press statement.
But throughout this election cycle, polls in the swing states have shown bipartisan support for abortion rights, especially when voters are educated about what abortion bans do. Voters in more than half of the states expected to determine the presidential winner have, to varying degrees, lost access to abortion. And abortion-rights activists across these states told States Newsroom they are determined to protect that access, or to get it back.
Arizona sees backlash after GOP upholds Civil War-era abortion ban
In Arizona, the Dobbs decision resurrected a Civil War-era ban that allowed abortions only to save a pregnant patient’s life.
Legislators repealed the law, but abortion-rights supporters fought for more certainty. This fall, Arizonans will vote on a proposed ballot measure that would protect access until fetal viability, around 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Now, two of the judges who upheld the abortion ban — Justices Clint Bolick and Kathryn King — are up for reelection, in races infused with national cash by groups such as RFA and Planned Parenthood. Also on the ballot is Proposition 137, which would give lifetime appointments to state judges. The Republican-initiated measure has garnered controversy in part because it is retroactive to this year’s election, so if approved, any retention bids would be nullified even if the majority votes to unseat the judge.
Ballot organizers turned in more than 800,000 signatures, double the required number, and overcame opponents’ legal challenges to qualify the abortion-rights ballot measure, Proposition 139. Abortion is legal up to 15 weeks of pregnancy, but there are many state restrictions that the Arizona Abortion Access Act would eliminate, such as a ban on any abortions sought for fetal genetic abnormalities and a blocked law from 2021 granting personhood status to fertilized eggs.
Recent deaths reignite controversy over Georgia’s abortion ban
This month, ProPublica reported on the deaths in 2022 of two Georgia women who suffered rare complications after they obtained mifepristone and misoprostol for early-term medication abortions. Both were trying to navigate a new state law that banned abortions at about six weeks of pregnancy and threatened medical providers with up to a decade in prison.
In one case, doctors at an Atlanta-area hospital refused for 20 hours to perform a routine dilation and curettage, a D&C, to clear the patient’s uterus when her body hadn’t expelled all the fetal tissue. In the other, a woman who had ordered the pills online suffered days of pain at home, fearful of seeking medical care. Both women left children behind.
Georgia’s law permits abortion if the patient’s life is at risk, but medical providers have said the law’s language is unclear, tying their hands and threatening the health of patients who have high-risk pregnancies.
Their cases, which a state medical review committee found to be “preventable,” have galvanized activists in the state.
Harris spoke at length about the women, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, at a recent campaign event in Atlanta. She blamed their deaths on Georgia’s law, calling it “the Trump abortion ban,” because the former president appointed three justices he’d promised would overturn Roe v. Wade.
“This is a health care crisis, and Donald Trump is the architect of this crisis,” Harris said. “Understand what a law like this means: Doctors have to wait until the patient is at death’s door before they take action. … You’re saying that good policy, logical policy, moral policy, humane policy is about saying that a health care provider will only start providing that care when you’re about to die?”
Trump has not commented on the deaths. He has repeatedly said this year that abortion access should be left to the states. He has dismissed the idea of a federal abortion ban, but during the presidential debate, he refused to say whether he would veto such legislation.
At a recent rally in North Carolina, Trump addressed “our great women” (a demographic he’s trailing among), saying, “you will no longer be thinking about abortion, because it is now where it always had to be, with the states, and with the vote of the people.”
Abortion was a driving concern in this spring’s qualifying process for Georgia’s 2024 legislative elections — the first opportunity for aspiring state lawmakers to jump on the ballot in response to their state’s severe abortion restrictions.
Melita Easters, the executive director and founding chair of Georgia WIN List, which endorses Democratic women who support abortion rights, was already calling this year’s general election “Roevember” back when President Joe Biden was still the party’s nominee.
But Easters told States Newsroom that having Harris on the ticket instead has elevated the issue of reproductive freedom even more and “has breathed new life into down-ballot campaigns.” Easters said she is especially encouraged after a Democratic state House candidate in Alabama who ran on abortion rights flipped a Huntsville seat during a special election in March.
Michigan Democrats continue betting on abortion after 2022 successes
Michigan was one of the earliest states post-Dobbs to show that abortion rights could be a strong election-winning issue.
Months after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Michiganders overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to protect abortion rights in the state constitution; reelected Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who vowed to prioritize reproductive freedom; and voted for Democratic majorities in both chambers, giving the party a legislative trifecta for the first time in 40 years. In 2023, the legislature repealed a 1931 abortion ban that was still on the books and passed the Reproductive Health Act, expanding abortion access in the state.
This year, state and national abortion-rights groups have campaigned in toss-up congressional districts across Michigan, warning that a federal ban would supersede the state’s protections.
State judicial races, meanwhile, have attracted millions of dollars, as they could determine partisan control of the Michigan Supreme Court. Democrats secured a slim 4-3 majority on the state Supreme Court in 2020 after Republican-nominated justices controlled the court for most of the last few decades.
Nevada reproductive rights activists hope ballot initiative improves turnout
In Nevada, abortion remains legal through 24 weeks and beyond for specific health reasons. In 2023, the state’s Democratic-led legislature passed a law shielding patients and providers from out-of-state investigations related to abortion care; it was signed by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo.
Seeking to cement these rights in the state constitution, reproductive health advocates mobilized a ballot initiative campaign, which they hope will drive voter turnout that would affect the presidential and down-ballot races. Constitutional amendments proposed through an initiative petition must be passed by voters twice, so if voters approve Question 6 in November, they will have to approve it again in 2026.
In North Carolina many Democrats are campaigning in opposition to a 12-week abortion ban that the Republican-majority legislature passed last year after overriding Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto.
In a high-profile race for governor, Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein faces Republican opponent Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who has previously said he believes “there is no compromise on abortion,” according to NC Newsline. The lieutenant governor is now facing calls to withdraw from the race over comments made on a pornography website years ago, and Stein has started racking up endorsements from prominent state Republicans.
Iliana Santillan, a political organizer who supports abortion rights, has focused on mobilizing Latinos, a growing voting bloc in the state. The executive director of progressive nonprofit El Pueblo and its political sister group La Fuerza NC told States Newsroom she’s talked to many young women motivated to secure their own reproductive rights, including her college-age daughter. She said the Latinx community faces additional reproductive care barriers such as language and transportation, with undocumented immigrants scared to cross state lines without a driver’s license.
Santillan also said there’s a misconception that all Latinos are against abortion because they’re Catholic, when in reality opposition to abortion skews among older voters.
“With older folks, the messaging that we’ve tested that has worked is: ‘We don’t want politicians to have a say in what we do with our bodies,’” Santillan said.
Motivated voters in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral votes, is the largest swing state and considered essential to win the White House.
In a poll conducted this month by Spotlight PA and MassINC Polling Group, abortion ranked as the fifth most-important concern in the presidential race for likely voters, with 49% naming it as among their top issues.
The issue is far more important to Democrats, however, with 85% calling it a top issue compared with 17% of Republicans. Among those who aren’t registered with either major party, 49% called it a top issue.
In 2022, voters surprised pundits by sending enough Democrats to the state House to flip it blue. Voters were responding to the Dobbs decision, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro told Pennsylvania Capital-Star at a recent Harris campaign event.
Shapiro also won in 2022, and so far his administration has supported over-the-counter birth control pills and ended the state’s contract with a network of anti-abortion counseling centers. He said his administration would not defend a current state law that prohibits state Medicaid funding from being used for abortions.
Abortion isn’t protected under Pennsylvania’s state constitution, but it remains legal up to 24 weeks’ gestation, and clinics there have seen an influx of out-of-state patients.
Wisconsin abortion services resume
After more than a year without abortion access, reproductive health clinics in Wisconsin resumed abortion services in September 2023, shortly after a judge ruled that the 1849 state law that had widely been interpreted as an abortion ban, applied to feticide and not abortion. A state Supreme Court race a few months earlier saw Justice Janet Protasiewicz win in a landslide after campaigning on reproductive freedom.
Seven months later when Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher announced his resignation, Lyerly threw her hat in the ring, running as the only Democrat in the 8th District. She now faces businessman Tony Wied. Although in the past it was considered a swing district, it has leaned conservative in recent election cycles. With the redrawn maps and national support, Lyerly said it’s a competitive race.
“We have the potential to really fix, not just reproductive health care, but health care,” Lyerly told States Newsroom. “Bring the stories of our patients forward and help our colleagues understand, build those coalitions and help to gain consensus that’s going to drive forward health care reform in this country.”
Wied’s campaign website does not mention abortion or his policy proposals related to health care, though the words “Trump-endorsed” appear prominently and abundantly throughout the site. Wied hasn’t said much about the issue beyond it should be a state issue, but the two are scheduled to debate this Friday night. His campaign declined an interview.
Currently the only OB-GYNs who serve in Congress oppose abortion. If Lyerly wins in November, she would not only change that (potentially alongside Minnesota Sen. Kelly Morrison) but also could help flip party control in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Most Wisconsin voters oppose criminalizing abortion before fetal viability, according to a poll this year by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation.
Patricia McFarland, 76, knows what it’s like to live without abortion access. For more than 50 years, the retired college teacher kept her pre-Roe abortion a secret, having grown up in a conservative Irish Catholic family like many of her suburban Milwaukee neighbors.
McFarland told States Newsroom she has been politically active most of her life, but the Dobbs ruling dredged up the physical and emotional trauma from the illegal procedure she had alone in Mexico City. Now, McFarland rarely leaves home without her “Roe Roe Roe Your Vote” button, engaging anyone who will talk to her about the dangers of criminalizing pregnancy.
The mother and grandmother said she’s been canvassing and doing informational sessions with her activist group the PERSISTers, as well as the League of Women Voters. As she has warned fellow Wisconsities about the federal power over their reproductive freedom, she said the enthusiasm for abortion rights in her state is palpable.
“For women my age,” McFarland said, “we don’t want our grandchildren to lose their ability to decide when to become a mother.”
Georgia Recorder’s Jill Nolin contributed to this report.
Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford speaks with reporters outside the U.S. Capitol about border policy negotiations on Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats attempted to pass a resolution Tuesday addressing abortion access in emergency medical situations, but Republicans blocked it from moving forward.
The floor action followed months of unsuccessful attempts by congressional Democrats to approve legislation on various reproductive rights, including access to birth control and in vitro fertilization.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said Tuesday she introduced the resolution to clarify what Congress’ objective was several decades ago when lawmakers approved the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA.
“We want to make it clear that Congress’s intent is that women can get life-saving care when they go to an emergency room anywhere in this country,” Murray said.
Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford blocked Murray’s unanimous consent request to approve the resolution, saying that doctors in emergency departments are able to act in cases of miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy and life-threatening situations.
“This is a false claim that somehow what happened in the Dobbs decision and what’s happening in states is limiting that,” Lankford said. “It’s actually the political rhetoric that’s making people afraid.”
Lankford objected to another of Murray’s unanimous consent requests in March, blocking approval of legislation that would have expanded access to in vitro fertilization for military members and veterans.
No recorded vote
Unanimous consent is the fastest way to approve legislative items in the Senate. Under the process, any one senator can ask to approve a bill or resolution and any one senator can object. There is no recorded vote that puts all senators on the record.
Murray’s two-page resolution, which had the backing of 40 cosponsors, would have expressed “the sense of the Senate that every person has the basic right to emergency health care, including abortion care.”
The resolution also expressed that “State laws that purport to ban and restrict abortion in emergency circumstances force medical providers to decide between withholding necessary, stabilizing medical care from a patient experiencing a medical emergency or facing criminal prosecution, and put the lives, health, and futures of patients at risk.”
This resolution wouldn’t have actually changed the text of EMTALA.
The 1986 law states that hospital emergency departments must treat or transfer patients who have emergency medical conditions, regardless of their health insurance status or ability to pay.
It defines an emergency medical condition as something that could result in the health of the patient being in “serious jeopardy,” such as the patient “experiencing serious impairment to bodily functions, or serious dysfunction of any bodily organ or part.”
Dobbs decision
The federal law has been the center of political and legal debate since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion two years ago in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling.
The Biden administration issued a public letter shortly afterward saying EMTALA protected doctors and other qualified health care providers who ended a pregnancy to stabilize the patient if their life or health was at risk.
Republican attorneys general in several states challenged that view of the law and the U.S. Department of Justice later sued Idaho over its abortion law.
That case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year, but the justices ultimately decided to send it back to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The high court said it should have waited to hear the case until after the lower court ruled.
At the center of the disagreement between Republican state attorneys general and the Biden administration is that the federal law applies when a pregnant patient’s life or health is at risk; many of the conservative state laws only allow abortions after a certain gestational age when a woman’s life is at risk.
Exactly when a woman’s life becomes at risk due to pregnancy complications has led to dozens of stories from women throughout the country, who say they had to wait for treatment until their health deteriorated further.
Analysis from the Associated Press released in August found that more than 100 women experiencing medical distress during pregnancy were turned away from hospitals or negligently treated during the last two years.
ProPublica recently obtained reports “that confirm that at least two women have already died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state.”
‘This cruelty is unforgivable and unacceptable’
The Senate resolution that Republicans rejected Tuesday is nearly identical to one House Democrats introduced earlier this month.
Murray said ahead of her UC request that women and their families will not forget about being denied medical care due to Republican state restrictions on abortion access.
“No woman is ever going to forget when she was sent off to miscarry alone after her doctor said, ‘Look, I know your life is in danger, but I’m not sure I’m allowed to save you right now,’” Murray said. “No husband is going to forget calling 911 in a panic after finding his wife bloody and unconscious. No child is going to forget, for a single day of their life, the mother that was taken from them by Republican abortion bans.
“This cruelty is unforgivable and unacceptable. Democrats will not let it become settled status quo.”
Vice President Kamala Harris departs Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport aboard Air Force 2, after speaking at a campaign rally inside West Allis Central High School on July 23, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said Tuesday during a radio interview that she supports changing a Senate procedure in order to codify the right to an abortion.
Vice President Harris said she is in favor of ending the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, known as the filibuster, to advance abortion rights legislation. But that task would hinge on Democrats agreeing to do so and holding on to majority control in the Senate, a difficult feat this November as Republicans appear potentially poised to take back the upper chamber.
“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe, and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do,” she said during an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio.
Harris in 2022 said she would cast a tie-breaking vote in favor of abortion rights in her role as vice president. She has often pledged to sign into law a codification of Roe v. Wade, the constitutional right to an abortion struck down by the conservative U.S. Supreme Court in 2022.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in August that Democrats would talk about rules changes to codify abortion rights, NBC reported.
Trump in Pennsylvania
At a Monday rally in Pennsylvania, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump referred to himself as a “protector” of women. Trump said women no longer needed to think about abortion and it is “now where it always had to be, with the states.”
“All they want to do is talk about abortion,” the former president said at the rally, referring to Democrats. “It really no longer pertains because we’ve done something on abortion that no one thought was possible.”
Trump has called for Senate Republicans to dismantle the filibuster, but GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other Republican leaders like No. 2 Sen. John Thune of South Dakota have vowed to keep the procedure in place.
Current Senate projections indicate Republicans are likely to gain control of the Senate. Republicans are also expected to pick up a seat in West Virginia, and only need to hold on to seats in Florida, Texas and Nebraska.
Democrats will need to secure wins in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Additionally, Senate Democrats would need to break a possible 50-50 tie through a Democratic presidency — if they want to remain the majority party and change the filibuster.
If Harris wins, and Democrats hold 50 seats in the Senate, then Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the vice presidential nominee, would be the tie-breaking vote.
During a Tuesday Senate press conference on abortion, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington said she was supportive of Harris’ stance and that it would be a carve-out of the filibuster, rather than an elimination of it.
“What we are talking about is a simple procedure to allow, whenever rights are taken away from someone, that the U.S. Senate can, without being blocked by a filibuster, be able to restore those rights,” she said.
Harris, Trump and the economy
The Harris campaign hosted a Tuesday press call with business owner and “Shark Tank” investor Mark Cuban, to advocate for Harris’ economic policies.
Polls have found that voters view Trump as better for the economy. Pew Research found that Trump’s key advantage is the economy, with 55% of voters viewing the former president as making good economic decisions, and 45% of voters viewing Harris as making good decisions about the economy.
“In a nutshell, the vice president and her team thinks through her policies,” Cuban said. “She doesn’t just off the top of her head say what she thinks the crowd wants to hear, like the Republican nominee.”
Battleground states still the favorite spot
The candidates will continue to campaign and travel, especially around battleground states this week.
Trump is scheduled Tuesday to visit Savannah, Georgia, where he will give an afternoon campaign speech about lowering taxes for business owners.
Walz is scheduled to head back to his home state of Minnesota Tuesday for a campaign reception there.
Harris is heading to Pennsylvania Wednesday for a campaign rally and then she’ll travel to Arizona on Friday and Nevada on Sunday.
Trump is stopping in Mint Hill, North Carolina, on Wednesday to give remarks about the importance of making goods in the U.S. His running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, will travel to Traverse City, Michigan, on Wednesday to rally supporters.
Vance on Thursday will give a campaign speech on the economy in Macon, Georgia, and then host a voter mobilization drive in Flowery Branch, Georgia.
On Friday, Trump is scheduled to rally supporters in Walker, Michigan and in the evening hold a town hall in Warren, Michigan.
Login
