Protesters and clinic escorts gathered outside EMW Women’s Surgical Center in Louisville last year before abortion was banned in Kentucky. (Photo by Deborah Yetter)

LaDonna Prince’s new reproductive care clinic in Illinois was supposed to be open more than a year ago.

Prince and her staff were prepared for Indiana to ban abortion, and started trying to move operations to Danville, Illinois, in 2023. It’s about 90 minutes across the border from her old clinic in Indianapolis, which provided abortion care for more than 40 years before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and allowed states to regulate abortion access. Today, 12 states — including Indiana — have a near-total ban on abortion, and four states have a six-week ban, before many people know they are pregnant.

Now that abortion access nationwide may be threatened by the second administration of President-elect Donald Trump and Republican-controlled chambers of Congress, Prince is determined to open the clinic at the beginning of 2025.

“It’s scary, to be honest with you,” Prince said during a press conference in early December. “It’s just really frightening.”

Prince’s clinic, Affirmative Care Solutions, is one of a few independent clinics in the country that will open while many others have closed their doors for various reasons. According to a new report released by the Abortion Care Network, 76 brick-and-mortar independent abortion clinics closed between 2022 and 2024, 11 of those in 2024 alone.

The report also showed that 70% of the closures in that two-year period were in the South or Midwest. Besides those forced out because of a statewide ban, the report said staffing issues and lack of funding have been the driving factors for others to close their doors.

That lack of funding is widespread for abortion care. Planned Parenthood affiliates across the country have reported a downturn in donations and cuts in state funding that have put them in precarious positions. The Abortion Care Network reported in August that their donations decreased by one-third. The Network provides grants for infrastructure projects that help keep clinics afloat, such as building repairs, supplies, equipment and security.

Approximately 58% of all abortions in the United States take place at independent clinics rather than a Planned Parenthood affiliate or a hospital, the report said, and more than 60% of clinics that provide abortions after the first trimester are independent. The only clinics in the country that provide terminations after 26 weeks are independent as well. The vast majority of abortions take place in the first trimester, but third trimester care is sometimes necessary.

Kentucky clinic co-owner tries to keep pieces together to quickly open again

While Illinois has some of the most liberal abortion laws in the country, Prince quickly met resistance from the local government, including the mayor, who cast a tie-breaking vote to pass a city ordinance meant to block the clinic from providing abortion services in Danville. Mayor Rickey Williams Jr. told local news outlet WCIA at the time that the ordinance was in response to the clinic moving in, saying, “This is not any kind of comprehensive health for women. This is literally just an abortion clinic.”

The ordinance is unenforceable because of state law, Prince said, but that hasn’t changed the attitude among local government officials. All of that preceded an attack on the clinic by a 73-year-old man who crashed his truck into the building and tried to set it on fire as it was under renovation in May 2023, causing more than $500,000 in damages and further delaying the clinic’s opening.

Earlier this month, Prince tried to hire a plumber, only to have him tell her he wouldn’t do any work for her because he didn’t believe in abortion.

“It’s not easy to find people who are even willing to do the work, and it’s a business that’s not even open yet,” she said.

The Abortion Care Network provides grant funding for infrastructure needs at independent abortion clinics, and in the report, the organization laments all of the recent clinic closures — because once a clinic closes, it is often exceedingly difficult to reopen, even in a state with laws that allow broad access.

For that reason, at least one independent clinic in a state with a near-total abortion ban is trying to retain its existing infrastructure so that opening would be easier if abortion becomes legal again. Ona Marshall, co-owner of EMW Women’s Surgical Center in Louisville, Kentucky, said the center provided medication and procedural abortion care for 43 years before it was forced to close, and it provided the vast majority of abortions in the state.

Marshall cited a new lawsuit filed in Kentucky in November seeking to overturn the state’s ban, saying that was good news that could ultimately allow the clinic to reopen someday, but those court proceedings can take years. In the meantime, she is trying to keep the pieces of the clinic together to be able to quickly open again if that day comes.

“Once you give up a license in a hostile state, depending on whether there’s an anti-abortion governor, they may deny you a license for no valid reason, which requires months of additional court challenges with no guarantee of winning,” Marshall said during the press conference. “You are taking a large personal and financial risk in a highly unstable and politically charged environment, so it’s just critical to try to keep as many clinics open as possible.”

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Beyoncé takes part in a campaign rally focused on reproductive rights with the Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, at Shell Energy Stadium on Oct. 25, 2024 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris appeared alongside superstar performer Beyoncé on Friday night to encourage voter turnout and reinforce the differences between the two parties on reproductive rights, with just days to go before voting ends.

The rally at Shell Energy Stadium in Houston, Texas, followed months of speculation about whether Beyoncé would support Vice President Harris publicly ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election. The two-hour event featured other celebrities, including Willie Nelson and Jessica Alba, as well as women detailing being denied medical care for pregnancy complications in Texas after its abortion ban went into effect.

Beyoncé, who has won more than 30 Grammy Awards as well as hundreds of others throughout her career, said casting a vote is “one of the most valuable tools” that Americans have to decide the future of the country.

“We are at the precipice of an incredible shift, the brink of history,” Beyoncé said, adding that she wasn’t speaking at the rally as a celebrity or a politician.

“I’m here as a mother,” she said. “A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in. A world where we have the freedom to control our bodies.”

‘Horrific reality’

Harris, who is locked in an extremely close race with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, said abortion bans and restrictions implemented during the last two years have been “devastating.”

“We see the horrific reality that women and families face every single day,” Harris said. “The stories are vivid, they are difficult to hear, they are difficult to tell.”

Harris said there are also many stories that women and their families won’t discuss in public about challenges they’ve faced with access to medical care during pregnancy complications.

“An untold number of women and the people who love them, who are silently suffering — women who are being made to feel as though they did something wrong, as though they are criminals, as though they are alone,” Harris said. “And to those women. I say — and I think I speak on behalf of all of us — we see you and we are here with you.”

Harris said if voters give Trump another four years in the Oval Office, he will likely nominate more justices to the Supreme Court, which she argued would have a negative impact on the country.

“If he were reelected, he’d probably get to appoint one, if not two, members to the United States Supreme Court,” Harris said. “At which point Donald Trump will have packed the court with five out of nine justices … who will sit for lifetime appointments; shaping your lives and the lives of generations to come.”

Texas has one of the country’s most restrictive abortion laws, which has led to concerns about its OB-GYN workforce, how the state addresses maternal mortality and testimony before Congress about women having to leave the state to get care for pregnancy complications.

Texas is also where anti-abortion organizations decided to file a federal lawsuit in November 2022 challenging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 2000 approval of medication abortion.

The two-drug regimen, consisting of mifepristone and misoprostol, is currently approved for up to 10 weeks gestation and is used in about 63% of abortions nationwide, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute.

The case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled earlier this year the organizations lacked standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place, but the justices didn’t address the merits of the anti-abortion groups’ arguments.

Speaking at ‘ground zero’

Harris told reporters on Friday before the rally began that Republican lawmakers in Texas have made the state “ground zero in this fundamental fight for the freedom of women to make decisions about their own body.”

Harris contended that access to reproductive rights, including abortion, is “not just a political debate” or “some theoretical concept.”

“Real harm has occurred in this country, real suffering has occurred,” Harris told reporters. “People die, and it is important to highlight this issue because this is among the most critical issues that the American people will address when they vote for who will be the next president of the United States.”

During Trump’s first term in office, he nominated three Supreme Court justices, who later joined with other conservatives to overturn the constitutional right to abortion established in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case.

The Supreme Court’s ruling two years ago sent “the authority to regulate abortion … to the people and their elected representatives.”

That has led to a hodgepodge of laws with 13 states banning abortion, six states restricting access between six and 12 weeks, five states setting a gestational limit between 15 and 22 weeks, 17 states restricting abortion access after viability and nine states not setting a gestational limit, according to KFF.

Polls find support for abortion access

Public support for abortion access has outpaced support for restricting access for decades, according to consistent polling from the Pew Research Center.

The most recent survey from May shows that about 63% of Americans want abortion to be legal in most or all cases, while 36% said they believe it should be illegal in most or all cases.

Additional surveying from Pew shows that 67% of Harris supporters believe abortion access is “very important — nearly double the share of Biden voters who said this four years ago, though somewhat lower than the share of midterm Democratic voters who said this in 2022 (74%).

“And about a third of Trump supporters (35%) now say abortion is very important to their vote — 11 points lower than in 2020.”

In addition to playing some role in the presidential election, voters in 10 states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and South Dakota — will weigh in on abortion access directly through ballot questions.

Congress could supersede any protections or restrictions on abortion access established within states, if the House and Senate ever agree on legislation and a future president signs it into law.

Republicans are slightly favored to gain control of the Senate for the next two years following the election, while control of the House is considered a toss-up, as is the presidential race.

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Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Eric Hovde in the 2024 Senate campaign debate | Screenshot via Youtube

This year’s race to represent Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate presents  a stark contrast between incumbent U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and challenger Eric Hovde.

Baldwin, a  two-term senator who previously served in Congress for more than a decade and in state and local office before that, faces Hovde, a banker whose only political experience was a failed Republican primary run for the same seat 12 years ago.

Baldwin points to the results of her lifelong work in politics — successful legislation addressing health care coverage, veterans, manufacturing and human rights, and also ambitious measures that have not passed yet.

Hovde is dismissive of Baldwin’s record and depicts his business background as an asset he can use in Washington to benefit Wisconsin. Combative during their only debate on Friday, Oct. 18, as well as in public interviews, he has  taken a leaf from the playbook of former President Donald Trump, both in style and in the subject matter that he highlights.

Whether control of the Senate remains with the Democrats or shifts to the Republicans could turn on the outcome of the Wisconsin race, one of a handful getting close scrutiny in this election.

Negative campaigning has been commonplace for decades, but it’s especially prominent in the Baldwin-Hovde race.

“There’s a lot of mud being slung,” says Lilly Goren, political science professor at Carroll University in Waukesha. “It’s not as if we haven’t had mudslinging in Wisconsin politics before, but it feels like there’s a little bit more going on.”

Heavy attacks

From the moment Hovde entered  the race, Democrats have pounced on the bank owner’s California connections, starting with his Orange County mansion and his high profile in the Southern California community, where a local publication named him among the county’s “most influential people.” In press releases, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin has taken to calling him Eric Hovde (R-Laguna Beach).

Hovde defends himself as a Wisconsin native and still a legal resident who  maintains his voting registration in Madison. At the debate he pulled out a utility bill to prove he has a local address.

Democrats have pushed for Hovde to declare that if elected he would remove himself from SunWest bank, which operates in California but moved its headquarters a few years ago to Utah. In September, the Wisconsin State Journal reported that Hovde said he would “step away” from the bank and was considering whether to put his assets in a blind trust if he goes to Washington.

Hovde, meanwhile, has pushed back with accusations that Baldwin’s partner, Maria Brisbane, an investment and wealth management adviser, puts the senator in a conflict of interest in connection with Baldwin’s Senate oversight roles.

The Senate’s ethics rules don’t address such a relationship, however. When Hovde raised the matter during the debate, Baldwin retorted that “Eric Hovde should stay out of my personal life, and I think I speak for most Wisconsin women that he should stay out of all of our personal lives.”

Reproductive rights

That response alluded to an issue that Baldwin has highlighted repeatedly: abortion and reproductive rights. During a rally with vote canvassers earlier in October, Baldwin recalled that Hovde “celebrated when the Dobbs decision came down” in June 2022 overturning the nationwide right to abortion enshrined in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision a half-century ago.

Referring to positions Hovde took in his 2012 GOP primary campaign, she added, “Previously he said he was 100% against abortion, and we have to take him at his word.”

Hovde has endorsed the Dobbs decision outcome for leaving the legality of abortion up to individual states. But he has also appeared to soften somewhat his earlier statements of opposition, saying several times, including in last week’s debate, that “women should have a right to decide early on in their pregnancy,” but not defining what period of time that would involve. 

Under Roe, abortion could not be regulated by the state during the first trimester. Later in pregnancy, abortion restrictions were permitted.

During the debate, Hovde accused Baldwin of supporting abortion  late in pregnancy, “where a baby can be born healthy and alive,” calling such abortions “unconscionable.” Baldwin quickly shot back, “Eric Hovde, that does not happen in America and it’s very clear that he has never read Roe v. Wade.”

Baldwin has authored legislation to codify the Roe decision. “I’m pushing to have that be the law of the land. Your rights and freedom should not depend on your ZIP code or the state in which you live,” she said.

Notwithstanding the wide range of other subjects that have surfaced in the race, Goren, the Carroll University professor, said in an interview that she’ll be watching how abortion and reproductive rights in the post-Dobbs era continue to play out at the ballot box.

“This is an issue area that both campaigns are focusing on in different ways,” she said. Wisconsin’s 1849 feticide ban — interpreted as an abortion ban for the first year and a half after Roe was rolled back until a Dane County circuit judge ruled that it did not apply to elective abortions — has given the topic new urgency  for many women in the state.

Farm bill clash

When asked whether he would support passing the 2023 farm bill during the debate, Hovde answered, “Well, I’m not an expert on the farm bill because I’m not in the U.S. Senate at this point.” Then he launched  into a call for farm bills “to get back to farmers” and to address the “regulations that Senator Baldwin and her allies continue to push on them.”

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Dan Bice called Hovde’s answer “the worst moment” of the debate.

For Baldwin, it offered a target that allowed her to promote her recent endorsement by the Wisconsin Farm Bureau — the GOP-leaning group’s first endorsement of a Democrat in nearly two decades.

Wisconsin farmers have told her “they’re very eager to have Congress pass a new farm bill,” she said. The hold-up, she added, was that the Republican-controlled U.S. House has “basically eviscerated nutrition programs. Farmers support nutrition programs because it means purchasing their goods.”

Citing one of Hovde’s key talking points — calling for a cutback in federal spending to 2019 levels — she added that it would “cut the U.S. Department of Agriculture by 30% — that is not standing up for our farmers.”

Incumbent’s resume

Challengers typically deploy “career politician” as an epithet, but for Baldwin the term is both accurate and a point of pride. She readily traces some of her key legislative victories through that history.

Earlier this year, marking the passage in 2022 of the PACT Act, giving veterans exposed to toxic chemicals in conflicts  going back to the Vietnam War greater access to federal benefits, Baldwin recalled her introduction to the issue through a staffer when she was still in the U.S. House.

Likewise, she frequently points to the key role she played in shaping the  Affordable Care Act (ACA).

“It was my provision that allowed young people to stay on their parents’ health insurance till they turned 26,” Baldwin said during the  debate, repeating a campaign talking point.

Among her most recent trophies is language in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that for the first time empowers Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. The act also imposes caps on the out-of-pocket expenses Medicare recipients must bear and limits their cost of insulin to $35.

“We need to build upon the Affordable Care Act, and we need to build upon our efforts to negotiate lower prescription drug prices,” Baldwin said during Friday’s debate.

While health care has been among her top concerns, she also directs attention to other parts of her lawmaker’s resume.

Economy and rebuilding U.S. industry

When President Joe Biden’s administration and allies in Congress drew up the CHIPS and Science Act to support the return of technical manufacturing from overseas to the U.S., particularly in the computer chips that gave the legislation its nickname, Baldwin turned to a 2019 Brookings Institution industrial policy report.

Drawing on that document she pitched the inclusion of a “technology hub” program that would direct federal funds to support the development of specialized advanced domestic production projects.

After the bill was enacted, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. worked with Bio-Forward, a consortium of industries and institutions in the state, to propose a tech hub focused on the emerging science of tailoring medical diagnosis and treatment to the individual genetic profiles of patients. Baldwin championed the Wisconsin entry for a competitive tech hub grant, then joined an event in August to show off one of the participating businesses.

Those and other major initiatives that emerged from Congress and the White House in the first two years of the Biden administration exemplified a vision that government has a role to play working with the private sector for economic development.

The CHIPS and Science Act’s objective to revitalize domestic tech manufacturing was in the service of national and economic security in the U.S. “That takes a government investment to be able to do that,” said Lisa Johnson, Bio-Forward’s executive director at the August event.

She also has introduced her share of bills that haven’t made it out of even one house of Congress, but in some of those she’s found a measure of victory. In 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission finalized a rule aimed at curbing stealth investors who try to grab control of struggling companies out from under the owners and management in order to make a quick buck.

The rule had its origins in legislation that Baldwin sponsored in 2017 after the shutdown of a paper mill in Wisconsin’s Marathon County led the village where it was located to dissolve. While the bill didn’t advance, some of its language made it into the new SEC rule.

Baldwin’s office enlisted the support of the mill’s displaced executive, who praised the persistence and patience of the senator and her staff in seeing what became the new rule through to enactment.

The story reflects Baldwin’s success at allying with a wide range of constituents with a wide range of concerns — as well as with lawmakers across the aisle, like Republican Sen. David Perdue of Georgia, with whom she’d cosponsored the original legislative proposal.

“I fight for Wisconsin and only Wisconsin,” Baldwin told the debate moderators, “which means I’ll work with Republicans or Democrats, Republican administrations or Democratic administrations — to get the job done for Wisconsin but also stand up to them.”

Tying Baldwin to Biden

Hovde’s campaign has been largely built on three arguments: that the major federal legislation signed by Biden and championed by Baldwin has been not just ineffective but harmful; that immigration is out of control and hurting the country; and that Baldwin has been an ineffective politician with nothing to show for her 12 years in office.

Along with those critiques, he’s presented himself — the scion of developers in Wisconsin and the owner of a $3 billion bank in California, where he owns a $7 million home in Laguna Beach — as an experienced business operator who can bring a fresh face to Washington.

In his arguments on the economy and on immigration, Hovde has been largely in step with Trump. Hovde, who received Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement, spoke from the stage at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, even before handily winning his party’s nomination as the designated Senate candidate, and has appeared at numerous other Trump events.

In those public appearances, including last week’s debate, Hovde has attacked the incumbent almost constantly — shaking his head as she answered the questions posted by Wisconsin journalists at the event, then accusing her of lying repeatedly without offering specifics.

Wisconsin Democrats, meanwhile, have run TV ads citing more than a dozen instances in which independent fact-checkers have accused Hovde of lying in ads and public statements.

Hovde has railed against the signature bills Biden helped shape and signed — pandemic relief, the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act.

At the debate Baldwin used Hovde’s opposition to the latter law to charge that Hovde “opposes efforts to negotiate the price of prescription drugs, saving patients and Medicare money.”

Provisions capping the out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare patients and forcing drug companies to negotiate prices were part of the Inflation Reduction Act, she observed.

“My opponent would have voted against that measure. He’s said that many times,” Baldwin said. “We are seeing real reductions in prices that will save both patients money but will also extend the solvency of Medicare.”

Hovde took sharp offense to the assertion that he opposes negotiating drug prices, without addressing his opposition to the law that has made drug price negotiation possible. “I think drug prices are wildly too high and I’ll actually do something about it,” he said, without specifying what his response might be.

Inflation and immigration

Hovde has zeroed in on the 2021-22 inflation spike, blaming it primarily on the Biden legislation. “That’s why inflation got ignited,” he said at Friday’s debate, blaming Baldwin for “reckless spending.”

In addition to attacking Democrats on the economy, Hovde has echoed Trump’s campaign in criticizing Biden for ending a series of Trump executive orders restricting migrants.

At Friday’s debate, Hovde threw out figures for migrants in Biden’s first three years in office that added up to 10 million — a number that far exceeds any official estimates from federal agencies or non-government organizations that track immigration policy. He added, “We don’t know how many come in but it’s flooded our streets with fentanyl. We have criminals that have entered into our country and it’s created a humanitarian crisis.”

Political ads supporting Hovde have attacked Baldwin on the immigration issue.

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, however, cartels mainly seek to move the drug across the border with the help of U.S. citizens. 

Baldwin has endorsed a bipartisan bill that the Biden administration reached with a group of conservative Republican senators but that the U.S. House Republican leaders killed at Trump’s urging.

Hovde has defended killing the bill, calling it a sham. “It wasn’t going to change any of the asylum laws or immigration laws at all,” he said.

Baldwin countered that the defunct legislation was “the toughest border bill that we’ve seen in years,” with provisions to add 1,500 border patrol agents along the Southern U.S. border. It also included technology to scan incoming vehicles for fentanyl.

She charged that Trump, with Hovde’s support, “wanted the political issue” of the immigration controversy. “They wanted the chaos,” she said. “They didn’t want a solution.”

With the attacks and counter-attacks, what started as a 7-point lead for Baldwin in the polls has narrowed considerably, with some polls showing the two neck and neck.

Despite that, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay political scientist Aaron Weinschenk says he believes a Hovde upset is unlikely. Baldwin easily won her last reelection bid in 2018, including in Republican areas like rural Richland and Lafayette counties, which Trump carried in the last two elections but which voted for Baldwin by more than 10 points. 

Baldwin “is pretty popular in Wisconsin,” Weinschenk said. “She’s like threaded the needle in appealing to people and you know different parts of the state that maybe you’d think of as being pretty Republican. It might be narrower than previous races, but I’d be surprised if she lost.”

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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.

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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 we all know 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.

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Lawrence University student Megan Eisenstein (left) speaking at a reproductive rights roundtable in Appleton last week as Emily Tseffos (right), a Democratic Assembly candidate and chair of the Outagamie County Democratic party chair, listens. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

FOX VALLEY — Democrat Emily Tseffos was stood up by her incumbent opponent Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Greenville), who is seeking his sixth term in the state Assembly, twice before she launched her campaign for Wisconsin’s 56th Assembly District.

The first time, Tesffos, a mother of three, said she got a babysitter and sat waiting at a restaurant in the district but he never showed up. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, she said she scheduled a second meeting. Then, it happened again.

“I was like, we pay your salary, sir, and you are supposed to be listening to people, even if it’s not aligned with what you believe to be true,” Tseffos, who also serves as chair of the Outagamie County Democratic Party, said. She said she later spoke with Murphy after visiting his office in the Wisconsin State Capitol (She was already there for a meeting about Child Care Counts). “I threw my hat in the ring shortly after that. We deserve better and I’m trying to run a campaign that reminds people that we deserve better.”

Outagamie County alongside Brown and Winnebago Counties make up Wisconsin’s ‘BOW’ counties — a growing population center in the Fox Valley that includes the cities of Green Bay and Appleton.

The battleground region could play a role in determining control of Wisconsin’s state Legislature as several newly competitive seats are up for grabs under recently adopted maps. Fox Valley voters could also determine the results of competitive federal races, including the presidential election. (The counties were identified by Politico as helping President Joe Biden win in 2020.) 

The region has been trending less red in recent elections, and Democrats are hoping to accelerate that trend this election year up and down the ballot.

Outagamie County

“This is a super purple county, so the fact that we’re in the battleground state of the moment but then in a county that, for the first time in 15 years, went blue for [Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet] Protasiewicz — like, that’s huge to us,” Tseffos said. “So we recognize the responsibility of making sure we’re getting every single progressive and Democrat and independent that aligns with the Democratic ideals to turn out in November.”

Former President Donald Trump won Outagamie County in 2020 with 53.8% of the vote. Biden had 43.9%, representing an improvement for the Democratic candidate when compared to 2016. During the 2022 midterms, unsuccessful Republican candidate Tim Michels carried the county with almost 53% of the vote, while Democratic Gov. Tony Evers received almost 46%.

The following spring the county swung in favor of liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz, whose campaign focused heavily on restoring abortion rights, with 51.5% voting for her over conservative former Justice Dan Kelly.

The 56th Assembly District, which includes part of Outagamie County and Waupaca County, is not one of Democrats’ top target seats to flip, and CN Analysis rates the district as “Solid R”. Still, Tseffos has been knocking doors there every day. 

On Friday last week, Tseffos drove 30 minutes outside of Appleton to Lebanon, Wis., a small town in Waupaca County, to knock on people’s doors in a rural part of the district. 

“Just talking politics with strangers,” Tseffos would say when someone had a look of confusion by her presence. Sometimes she would joke about how that’s what everyone wants to do on a Friday. It was her way of easing into conversations with people at their front doors, in their yards and as they walked their dogs.

After breaking the ice, Tseffos asked people about the issues that matter the most to them and tried to find common ground. She listened to their concerns, then made her case for why they should vote for her — and other Democrats — next month. 

Tim, an older white man who was in his garage when Tseffos walked up his driveway, said divided politics was a big concern for him, and that he was planning to vote a straight Democratic ticket. 

“I’m tired of the Republicans,” he told Tseffos. By the end of the conversation, he agreed to let Tseffos put one of her yard signs in his front yard, but declined a Harris-Walz sign. He said his neighbor is a Republican and he wanted to keep things civil.

Tseffos heard about concerns about the state of roads from multiple people, and she told them she could be the “squeaky wheel” that would help get those projects done. A Trump voter spoke to her about his concerns about immigration, and how he thought the border was more secure during Trump’s presidency. She tried to steer the conversation towards state-level issues, including education, to see if she could get him to split his ticket. 

A couple of people said they didn’t have any concerns or weren’t planning on voting in which case Tseffos gave them her spiel and tried to convince them that they should vote. She told these voters about her support for increasing public education funding, including special education funding, improving birth control affordability and accessibility and that she generally wants to work on bringing people together.

At the last door, Tseffos spoke to an older couple, Dale and Janice, who said they were Christians and don’t believe in abortion except for in extreme cases.

“We don’t like abortion,” Janice said at one point in the conversation. “There have been millions of babies tossed aside.”

Tseffos told the couple that she was a “fellow Christian,” who wouldn’t entertain abortion for herself, and as a mother, she knows “how precious life is.” However, as a victim of sexual violence, she said she also knows how terrible the world can be. She emphasized that bans could have an outsized impact on women late in pregnancy, who “desperately” want to have a baby, but are dealing with severe complications.

“That’s the problem with bans for me,” Tseffos said to the couple, adding that heartbeat bills are also problematic for her. 

In the rest of the conversation, they touched on the cost of child care, school and the need for the inclusion of rural voices in government. Tseffos said, reflecting on the conversation, that she felt like she made progress because she was able to explain her thinking to them.

Winnebago County 

Vice President Kamala Harris came to Ripon, Wisconsin, which sits just south of Winnebago County, last week to hold a rally with Liz Cheney, who made a pitch to Republican voters who don’t like Trump that they should support Harris. Chair of the Winnebago County Democratic Party Marcia Steele told the Examiner during the rally that enthusiasm for Harris has been unbelievable. Steele has served as party chair on and off for about 20 years. 

“If it comes down to Wisconsin, more than likely would come down to Winnebago County, Brown County and Outagamie County… so we are very fortunate that we’re starting to get more enthusiasm in our area,” Steele said.

Steele said that the enthusiasm is helping, especially as Democrats seek to flip seats by running candidates in newly created districts in the state legislative races. A lot of volunteers are showing up to knock doors and make phone calls, she said. 

“We’ve had… people that have never done it before. It’s just unbelievable — unbelievable. And the older people that have been doing it for a long time, recognize it and just keep saying, yes, sign me up for another shift,” Steele said. “In the Fox Valley, we’ve got the new 18th Senate District, which we can make it blue, which would be great, and then we’ve got the new 53rd [Assembly District], which we could make that blue, so it’ll be huge for the Legislature going in to have more people than it just all being a gerrymandered state.”

The 18th Senate District is made up of Appleton in Outagamie County and Menasha, Neenah and Oshkosh in Winnebago County. Kris Alfheim, a member of the Appleton Common Council, is running for the 18th Senate District against Republican Anthony Phillips, a cancer physician who wants to keep the district red. 

The 53rd Assembly District encompasses Neenah, Menasha and part of Appleton. Democrat Duane Shukoski, a Neenah retiree, faces Republican Dean Kaufert, the former Neenah mayor and a former Assembly member.

The two races are some of Democrats’ top targets as they battle to gain more seats in the state Legislature. Republicans currently hold a 64-seat majority in the 99-seat Assembly and a 22-seat supermajority in the 33-seat Senate. 

“If we can flip the Assembly or at least be close this year,… and get us closer to the Senate [majority] in 2026, we can be the forward Wisconsin it was when I moved here in ‘89,” Steele, who is originally from Michigan, said. 

Reproductive rights

Reproductive health issues are one of the issues that Democrats in the area are hoping will bring voters out to the polls. Tseffos was surprised to see the large margin that Protasiewicz won by in Outagamie County in April 2023. 

“Fair maps and reproductive health… that’s what they kept beating down,” Tseffos said. “It made us realize locally — continue to talk about reproductive health and what that means to people and what the realities are for folks.” 

After her daily door knocking last week, Tseffos joined Alfheim and Shukoski at a roundtable event in Appleton to talk about reproductive health issues.

Lawrence University student Megan Eisenstein, who attended the event, explained that when Roe v. Wade was overturned, it changed the way she felt about going to school in Wisconsin. She’s from Illinois.

“I felt pretty safe there to make any choices that I needed to reproductive health-wise, but I knew that I was going to a state where I wasn’t able to make those choices after Roe v. Wade was overturned, and so I started to really dread going to college as a whole,” Eisenstein said. 

Eisenstein, who is social chair for her campus’s college Democrats group and also interns with the state party, told the Examiner that she became politically active in 2022 after starting school. 

“I didn’t really see politics as being something where you could actually make a difference,” Eisenstein said. “Coming here to Wisconsin, where every single voice matters, every door you knock matters, it really inspired me to get a little more involved.” 

This will be her first time voting in a presidential election, and she has also been helping knock doors for Alfheim and other candidates. She said the issue is a good “rallying cry” for people.

“It serves as the foundation for a lot of liberal values, and so it becomes about more than just reproductive freedom, and it also becomes about freedom for other things, and also for caring for people who might not be like you,” Eisenstein said. 

Democratic candidates in the district emphasized their support for access to abortion, birth control, infertility treatments and control of their health decisions. 

“Democrats get it — people don’t want politicians in Madison or anywhere else making their personal health decisions for them,” Alfheim said. She said she would work towards restoring women’s access to reproductive health care if elected.

During the roundtable in Appleton, Alfheim sought to differentiate her position from her opponent Phillips. She commented on  Trump’s running mate JD Vance, that some Republican candidates’ public and private comments on reproductive health differ, and she sees this with her opponent, whom she described as “anti-choice.”

The Phillips campaign declined an interview request from the Wisconsin Examiner. On his campaign website, Phillips lists “Advocating for a culture of Life to protect the lives of the unborn” as one of the issues that matter to him. He previously told the Examiner that he would support a referendum on the issue, and believes people would favor some level of restrictions.

“You don’t get to take away what you say in private amongst your peers and then make me think it’s OK out here,” Alfheim said. “That’s an Integrity issue. We should be whoever we are. Own how you feel and be strong enough to say it out loud every time… We have seen it with everyone. They are clearly stating they are against it and then they are slowly backing away.” 

Brown County

Brown County — home to the Green Bay Packers — is the last of the three competitive counties in the region where Democrats are aiming to improve their margins.

In 2016, Trump won the county with 52% of the vote, while Hillary Clinton only garnered 41%. Trump won the county, again, in 2020 with 52.7% of the vote. Biden got 45.5%, representing an improvement for Democrats compared to 2016.

During the 2022 midterms, unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels carried the county with 51% of the vote, while Democratic Gov. Tony Evers received 47%. The following spring the county swung in favor of liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz, whose campaign focused heavily on abortion, with 51.5% voting for her over conservative former Justice Kelly. 

“We joke a lot in the office, ‘Welcome to the political epicenter of the country,’” Christy Welch, who chairs the county Democratic Party and is running for the state Assembly, said. “It is pretty wild… [it’s] the largest swing county in this critical state and this battle between the potential end of democracy or just being able to keep building on everything Biden-Harris got going.” 

The region has had several visits from the Harris-Walz campaign. Vice presidential candidate Tim Walz plans to campaign in Green Bay next week, according to a media advisory issued Thursday. Other surrogates including U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and First Lady Jill Biden have also campaigned in the area.

Welch said population growth contributes to the changing political cast of the city but that there are also a lot of people who are opposed to the direction the Republican party has taken.

“I’m knocking a lot of doors and I have run into so many people that tell me that they used to vote Republican but they just don’t want anything to do with the Republican party, the way it’s operating today, and so they’re voting for Democrats,” Welch said. “The divisiveness and not focusing on actual policies and solutions, just always looking backward and blaming. They don’t want to have anything to do with that.” 

Welch is also running in a competitive race against Republican Benjamin Franklin, a De Pere business owner, for the 88th Assembly District, which includes Bellevue, Allouez and De Pere. 

In the Legislature, Welch said she has been speaking with voters about the cost of groceries, housing, health care and child care. Her priorities for the Legislature overlap with these issues. She said she wants to increase public education funding and continue funding for the state’s Child Care Counts program. She said she also wants Wisconsin to take the federal Medicaid expansion and to repeal the state’s 1849 law, which caused all abortions to cease in the state for more than a year after Roe v. Wade was overturned. 

Through door knocking, Welch said that she has been able to let some voters know about the new legislative maps.

“Not everyone pays as close attention and some people just didn’t realize… It is nice to let people know, who consider themselves Democrats and are not totally in the loop on the maps, what that means. We’re definitely going to pick up more seats. Hopefully, we’re going to get the majority. That gives them some hope too,” Welch said.

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Vice President Kamala Harris took part in an interview with the “Call Her Daddy” podcast that was released Sunday. In this photo, the “Call Her Daddy” host, creator and executive producer, Alex Cooper, participates in The Art of The Interview session at Spotify Beach on June 20, 2023 in Cannes, France. (Antony Jones | Getty Images, for Spotify)

WASHINGTON — In an interview released Sunday on a widely heard podcast geared toward young women, Vice President Kamala Harris stressed the importance of reproductive rights, a central topic in her bid for the White House.

The “Call Her Daddy” host, Alex Cooper, specifically centered the 40-minute interview around issues affecting women such as domestic violence and access to abortion.

Meanwhile, the GOP nominee, former President Donald Trump, joined the Hugh Hewitt radio show Monday, a conservative talk show that has about 7.5 million weekly listeners.

The interview with Trump was mostly about the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas. In the attack, 1,200 people — including 46 U.S. citizens — were killed in Israel and hundreds were taken hostage.

On “Call Her Daddy,” Cooper noted before the interview that she does not have politicians on her show because it is not focused on politics, but “at the end of the day, I couldn’t see a world in which one of the main conversations in this election is women, and I’m not a part of it.”

“The conversation I know I am qualified to have is the one surrounding women’s bodies and how we are treated and valued in this country,” Cooper said.

She added that her team reached out to Trump and invited him on the show. “If he also wants to have a meaningful, in-depth conversation about women’s rights in this country, then he is welcome on ‘Call Her Daddy’ any time,” she said.

The podcast is the second-most listened-to on Spotify, with an average of 5 million weekly listeners. The demographics are about 90% women, with a large chunk of them Gen Z and Millennials — an important voting bloc for Harris to reach with less than a month until the election concludes Nov. 5.

The podcast is part of Harris’ media marathon this week. Late Monday, she appeared on “60 Minutes” for an interview. On Tuesday she is scheduled to be in New York to appear on the daytime show “The View,” “The Howard Stern Show” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

Victims of sexual assault

Harris on the podcast touched on several stories she tells on the campaign trail, such as how a high school friend ended up staying with her and her family because the friend was being sexually assaulted at home.

“I decided at a young age I wanted to do the work of protecting vulnerable people,” Harris said.

She added that it’s important to destigmatize survivors of sexual assault.

“The more that we let anything exist in the shadows, the more likely it is that people are suffering and suffering silently,” Harris said. “The more we talk about it, the more we will address it and deal with it, the more we will be equipped to deal with it, be it in terms of schools, in terms of the society at large, right, and to not stigmatize it.”

Cooper asked Harris how the U.S. can be safer for women.

Harris talked about domestic violence and the bind that women can be in if they have children and are financially reliant on an abuser.

“Most women will endure whatever personal, physical pain they must in order to make sure their kids have a roof over their head or food,” she said. “One of the ways that we know we can uplift the ability of women to have choices is uplift the ability of women to have economic health and well-being.”

Cooper asked Harris about the aftermath of Roe v. Wade being overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court two years ago and the recent story of Amber Thurman, a Georgia woman who died after not being able to receive an abortion following complications from taking an abortion pill.

Harris said states that pass abortion bans will argue there are exceptions “if the life of the mother is at risk,” but that it’s not a realistic policy in practice.

“You know what that means in practical terms, she’s almost dead before you decide to give her care. So we’re going to have public health policy that says a doctor, a medical professional, waits until you’re at death’s door before they give you care,” Harris said. “Where is the humanity?”

Trump criticizes protesters 

Besides the appearance with Hugh Hewitt, Trump is also scheduled late Monday to speak with Jewish leaders in Miami.

During the interview with Hewitt, Trump slammed the pro-Palestinian protests across college campuses and argued that those institutions should do more to quell the student protests.

“You have other Jewish students that are afraid,” Trump said. “Yeah, that’s true, and they should be afraid. I never thought I would see this in my life with the campus riots and what they’re saying and what they’re doing. And they have to put them down quickly.”

Hewitt asked Trump, because of his background as a real estate developer, if he could turn Gaza, which has been devastated by the war, into something like Monaco. The Principality of Monaco is an independent, affluent microstate along the coast of France that attracts wealthy tourists.

“It could be better than Monaco. It has the best location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything,” Trump said, noting the Mediterranean Sea bordering the Gaza Strip. “You know, as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place — the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate.”

The war has drawn massive protests in the United States, and more than 40,000 people in Gaza have been killed, but researchers estimate the death toll is as high as 186,000.

Hewitt asked Trump about Harris’ housing policy that, if approved by Congress, would give first-time homebuyers up to $25,000 for a down payment. Both candidates have made housing a top issue.

Trump said he opposed the plan and instead advocated for the private sector to handle housing. He then veered off topic into immigration and without evidence accused migrants at the southern border of being murderers.

“Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States,” he said. “You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

Trump has often invoked white supremacist language when talking about immigrants, accusing them of “poisoning the blood” of the U.S. He’s also made a core campaign promise of enacting mass deportations of millions of immigrants in the country who are in the country without authorization.

Hurricane interrupts campaign

Some campaign events have been postponed due to Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 storm barreling toward Florida. It comes after the devastating Hurricane Helene that caused severe damage in western North Carolina and other states in the Southeast.

A Tuesday roundtable with Trump and Latino leaders was postponed, as well as a town hall in Miami, Florida with Univison for undecided Hispanic voters. The Univision town hall with Harris is scheduled for Thursday in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, on Tuesday is scheduled to give remarks in Detroit, Michigan.

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is heading to Reno, Nevada, Tuesday for a campaign reception.

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The Republican vice presidential candidate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, participate in a debate at the CBS Broadcast Center on Oct. 1, 2024 in New York City. (Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images)

Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Republican Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance squared off Tuesday night in a vice presidential debate that marked the last scheduled in-person meeting for the campaigns as Americans decide the country’s next chapter.

Meeting for the first time, Walz and Vance engaged in a policy-heavy, nearly two-hour back-and-forth hosted by CBS News at its studios in New York City. The debate was moderated by Norah O’Donnell, host of the “CBS Evening News,” and Margaret Brennan, who anchors the network’s Sunday political show “Face the Nation.”

The vice presidential candidates emphasized their modest upbringings and laid out their visions to lower high living costs, address charged issues like reproductive rights, immigration and gun violence, and navigate a quickly worsening conflict in the Middle East.

And, with the presidential contest marking the first since the violent aftermath of the 2020 election, and Trump’s continued false claims that he won, the moderators pressed the men on whether voters would see a peaceful transfer of power, no matter the winner. Vance would not provide a direct answer whether he would have certified the 2020 vote.

Walz is a second-term governor who previously served six terms in the U.S. House. Prior to his election, Walz worked as a public school teacher and football coach while also enlisted in the Minnesota Army National Guard for 24 years.

Vance served in the U.S. Marines for four years before earning his Yale law degree and becoming a venture capitalist and bestselling memoirist. He was first elected to public office in late 2022 to serve as Ohio’s junior U.S. senator.

The mostly amicable debate, with some moments of tension, was a noticeable departure from the bitter polarization on display daily during the presidential campaign. Walz and Vance shook hands and lingered onstage afterward chatting and introducing each other to their wives.

The presidential nominees, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, met on the debate stage last month in a more acrimonious exchange during which the former president falsely claimed immigrants were eating pets in Ohio and Harris ripped into him for his remarks on race and abortion.

Trump has refused to debate again. Following the Vance-Walz exchange, the Harris campaign renewed its offer for another presidential meetup offered by CNN in Atlanta later this month.

Growing Middle East conflict

Answering the first question from the moderators Tuesday night, Walz and Vance sparred over which administration, if elected, would best quell signs of a widening war in the Middle East.

Tensions in the region escalated earlier Tuesday when Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel, according to the Pentagon.

Walz accused Trump of being “fickle” on foreign policy and said the world is worse off since Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal. Walz argued for “steady leadership.”

“You saw it experienced today where, along with our Israeli partners and our coalition, [we were] able to stop the incoming attack,” Walz said.

“It’s clear, and the world saw it on that debate stage a few weeks ago, a nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes is not what we need in this moment,” the governor continued.

Vance maintained that Trump headed off heated global conflict by invoking fear.

“We have to remember that as much as Governor Waltz just accused Donald Trump of being an agent of chaos, Donald Trump actually delivered stability in the world, and he did it by establishing effective deterrence,” Vance said. “People were afraid of stepping out of line.”

The barrage in the Middle East followed Israel’s ground incursion into Southern Lebanon and its recent assassination in Beirut of Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iranian proxy militant group Hezbollah.

While Israel intercepted the majority of the rockets Tuesday, U.S. Navy destroyers in the Middle East fired roughly a dozen interceptors at incoming Iranian missiles, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said.

The Biden administration promised “severe consequences,” though it has not provided details. Harris said late Tuesday that Iran poses a “destabilizing, dangerous force in the Middle East” and her commitment to Israel is “unwavering.”

Despite a visit to Washington less than a week ago from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the CBS moderators did not ask about the ongoing war in Ukraine, and neither candidate brought up the costly and ongoing fight against Russia’s continued invasion.

2020 election

Vance and Walz sparred over how Trump handled his loss in the 2020 presidential election and his actions leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol following a rally that Trump hosted.

Walz said while he and Vance found some areas of common ground at other points during the debate, the two were “miles apart” on Trump’s actions following the 2020 election.

“This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen, and it manifested itself because of Donald Trump’s inability to say – he is still saying he didn’t lose the election,” Walz said.

Vance didn’t directly answer whether he would have certified the electoral count for President Joe Biden had he been a member of Congress at the time, to Walz’s dismay.

“I’m pretty shocked by this,” Walz said. “He lost the election. This is not a debate.”

Walz said he was concerned that Vance wouldn’t follow the example set by former Vice President Mike Pence, who refused to go along with a scheme to recognize fake slates of electors and deny Biden the presidency.

Fact check: States Newsroom assesses claims from the Vance-Walz vice presidential debate

Vance tried to pivot to Harris’ actions following the COVID-19 pandemic and whether she “censored Americans from speaking their mind” before saying that both he and Trump “think that there were problems in 2020.”

There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud during the last presidential election, during which Trump lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College.

Walz also criticized Trump and Vance for using the same narrative ahead of this November’s elections, saying they were “already laying the groundwork for people not accepting” the results should Trump lose.

Taxes and tariffs

Both Harris and Trump have released economic plans that would add trillions to the national deficit — though analysis after analysis shows Trump’s proposals outpacing Harris’ by at least a few trillion.

Harris and Walz are running on an “opportunity economy” theme that would permanently expand the Child Tax Credit, including giving $6,000 to new parents, and provide tax credits and deductions to first-time homebuyers and entrepreneurs.

Harris, following Biden’s earlier budget proposal, has said she would impose a minimum tax on high-wealth individuals, but vowed steeper levies on long-term capital gains.

Trump has promised to fund the Treasury’s coffers with money raised by taxing imported goods. Largely he wants to extend his signature 2017 tax law and permanently lower the corporate tax rate.

When asked by the moderators how the candidates could accomplish those goals without ballooning the national debt, both Vance and Walz sidestepped directly answering the question. Rather they touted Trump and Biden administration policies and then went on the attack.

“Donald Trump made a promise, and I’ll give you this: He kept it. He took folks to Mar-a-Lago [and] said, ‘You’re rich as hell. I’m gonna give you a tax cut,’” Walz said, adding that Trump’s tariff plan would be “destabilizing” for the economy.

Economists warn that Trump’s plan to slap tariffs on imports across the board —  as high as 60% on Chinese imports and 100% to 200% on cars and John Deere tractors manufactured in Mexico — could cause consumer prices to increase and invite retaliation.

But Vance said he wanted to “defend my running mate” on the issue.

“We’re going to be taking in a lot of money by penalizing companies for shipping jobs overseas and penalizing countries who employ slave laborers and then ship their products back into our country and undercut the wages of American workers. It’s the heart of the Donald Trump economic plan,” the senator said.

High costs and housing

Both candidates spent significant time addressing housing and child care costs.

Walz touted Harris’ “bold forward plan” that calls for construction of 3 million new homes and “down payment assistance on the front end to get you in a house.”

“A house is much more than just an asset to be traded somewhere. It’s foundational to where you’re at,” Walz said.

Vance said some of Walz’s ideas on housing were “halfway decent.”

One of the central pillars of Trump and Vance’s housing plans is to turn over federal lands to private hands for development.

“We have a lot of federal lands that aren’t being used for anything. They’re not being used for national parks. They’re not being used, and they could be places where we build a lot of housing,” Vance said.

On child care, Walz pledged a paid federal family and medical leave mandate as a priority for the Harris campaign, and advocated a parallel workforce development program for the care professions.

“We have to make it easier for folks to be able to get into that business, and then to make sure that folks are able to pay for that,” Walz said.

The dual goals, he said, “will enhance our workforce, enhance our families, and make it easier to have the children that you want.”

Vance said he sees an opportunity for a “bipartisan solution” to the high cost of child care, though he stopped short of agreeing with a federal paid leave law.

Instead he proposed expanding the potential recipients for federal child care grants.

“These programs only go to one kind of child care model. Let’s say you’d like your church maybe to help you out with child care. Maybe you live in a rural area or an urban area, and you’d like to get together with families in your neighborhood to provide child care and the way that makes the most sense. You don’t get access to any of these federal monies,” Vance said.

Immigration, again

Vance also repeatedly connected the housing shortage and high costs to immigration — the central issue for Trump’s campaign and a common answer from him for several of the nation’s woes.

The Ohio senator said housing is “totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.”

“The people that I’m most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris’ open border,” Vance said, referring to the town where he and Trump falsely claimed over and over that Haitian migrants were stealing and eating pets.

Debate moderator Brennan pressed Vance on his claim: “Senator on that point, I’d like for you to clarify. There are many contributing factors to high housing costs. What evidence do you have that migrants are part of this problem?”

Vance said he would share on social media following the debate a Federal Reserve study that supported his claim.

Reproductive rights 

Access to abortion and fertility treatments was one of the more contentious areas of disagreement, though neither candidate trod new ground for their party.

Vance maintained the Trump stance that abortion laws should be set by voters or state lawmakers, while Walz said women and their doctors are best suited to make those decisions.

Vance told a story about a woman he grew up with having an abortion, then telling him a few years ago that “she felt like if she hadn’t had that abortion, that it would have destroyed her life because she was in an abusive relationship.”

“And I think that what I take from that, as a Republican who proudly wants to protect innocent life in this country, who proudly wants to protect the vulnerable, is that my party, we’ve got to do so much better of a job at earning the American people’s trust back on this issue, where they frankly, just don’t trust us,” Vance said. “And I think that’s one of the things that Donald Trump, and I are endeavoring to do.”

Walz rejected Vance’s position that state lawmakers should determine women’s access to the full slate of reproductive decisions, including fertility treatments.

Walz referenced some of the stories women have told in the last two years about being denied medical care for miscarriages or other dangerous pregnancy complications because of vaguely written state laws that banned or significantly restricted access to abortion.

“This is a very simple proposition: These are women’s decisions to make about their health care,” Walz said, later adding that people should “just mind their own business on this.”

Gun violence

The two vice presidential candidates had one of the more genuine exchanges of the debate after the moderators asked them about solutions for gun violence.

Vance conceded that he and Walz both want to reduce the number of people killed by guns every year, but said the solution should center around addressing illegal guns, including those used in drug trafficking, and through changing how schools are designed.

“Unfortunately, I think that we have to increase security in our schools. We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the door stronger. We’ve got to make the windows stronger,” Vance said. “And of course, we’ve got to increase school resource officers, because the idea that we can magically wave a wand and take guns out of the hands of bad guys, it just doesn’t fit with recent experience.”

Walz said school shootings are every parent’s “worst nightmare” before telling a story about how his son witnessed a shooting at a community center while playing volleyball.

“Those things don’t leave you,” Walz said, before talking about meeting with parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, when he was a member of Congress.

“We understand that the Second Amendment is there, but our first responsibility is to our kids to figure this out,” Walz said. “In Minnesota, we’ve enacted enhanced red flag laws, enhanced background checks.”

Walz said he absolutely believes Vance hates it when children die from gun violence, but added that’s “not far enough when we know they’re things that work.”

“No one’s trying to scaremonger and say, ‘We’re taking your guns,” Walz said. “But I ask all of you out there, ‘Do you want your schools hardened to look like a fort?’ … when we know there’s countries around the world that their children aren’t practicing these types of drills.”

Vance expressed sympathy that Walz’s son had witnessed a shooting and thanked him for bringing up Finland as an example of a country with a high rate of gun ownership that doesn’t have school shootings.

“I do think it illustrates some of the, frankly, weird differences between our own country’s gun violence problem and Finland,” Vance said, before mentioning higher rates of substance abuse and mental health issues within the United States.

“I don’t think it’s the whole reason why we have such a bad gun violence problem, but I do think it’s a big piece of it,” Vance said.

Hurricane Helene response, climate change 

The two candidates expressed dismay about the destruction stemming from Hurricane Helene in states in the Southeast, but disagreed about how best to address climate change.

Vance said “a lot of people are justifiably worried about all these crazy weather patterns,” before criticizing how Democrats have drafted climate change laws.

“This idea that carbon emissions drive all the climate change; well let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of arguments,” Vance said. “Well, if you believe that, what would you want to do? The answer is that you’d want to restore as much American manufacturing as possible, and you’d want to produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America, because we’re the cleanest economy in the entire world.”

Walz said that Biden and Harris have worked with Congress to enact legislation addressing climate change that also created jobs.

“We are producing more natural gas and more oil at any time than we ever have. We’re also producing more clean energy,” Walz said. “Reducing our impact is absolutely critical, but this is not a false choice. You can do that at the same time you’re creating the jobs that we’re seeing all across the country.”

Walz also said that farmers in Minnesota know climate change is real because some years they experience significant drought and other years they’re inundated with too much rain for their crops to handle.

“They’ve seen 500-year droughts, 500-year floods back-to-back,” Walz said. “But what they’re doing is adapting, and this has allowed them to tell me, ‘Look, I harvest corn, I harvest soybeans, and I harvest wind.’”

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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.

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 the state’s closely watched U.S. Senate race, Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen currently edges Republican Sam Brown, who has had inconsistent positions on abortion and reproductive rights but opposes the abortion-rights measure.

National anti-abortion groups Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and Students for Life of America have notably not focused on Nevada in their campaign strategies.

Growing Latinx voting bloc in North Carolina 

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.

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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.”

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Embryologist Ric Ross holds a dish with human embryos at the La Jolla IVF Clinic Feb. 28, 2007 in La Jolla, California. (Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate will vote for a second time next week on legislation from Democrats that would bolster support for in vitro fertilization, though it’s unlikely GOP lawmakers will reverse course from their previous opposition.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the revote Thursday afternoon, saying he hopes that Republicans will join with Democrats to advance the measure toward final passage. The bill would ensure patients have access to in vitro fertilization.

“Republicans can’t claim to be pro-family on one hand, only to block pro-family policies like federal protections for IVF and the child tax credit,” Schumer said. “But that’s just what they did this summer and I hope we get a different outcome when we vote for a second time.”

The Senate last held a procedural vote on the bill in June, though it didn’t come close to the 60 senators needed to advance.

The 48-47 procedural vote was mostly along party lines with Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski breaking with Republicans to support moving forward with debate and a final passage vote.

Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy argued against advancing the bill during debate, saying the legislation wasn’t necessary since no state currently barred IVF.

“Today’s vote is disingenuous — pushing a bill haphazardly drafted and destined to fail does a disservice to all who may pursue IVF treatments,” Cassidy said at the time.

Washington state Democratic Sen. Patty Murray spoke in support of approving the legislation, saying in June it shouldn’t be “controversial, especially if Republicans are serious about” supporting access to IVF.

“As we saw in Alabama, the threat to IVF is not hypothetical, it is not overblown and it is not fearmongering,” Murray said.

Alabama state legislators earlier this year had to provide criminal and civil protection to IVF clinics after the state Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos constituted children under state law.

The opinion from Alabama’s justices temporarily led all IVF clinics within the state to close their doors to patients, wreaking havoc on couples hoping to start or grow their families through the complicated, emotionally draining and often expensive process.

The issue also has emerged in the presidential race, and was fought over in the Sept. 10 debate by the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump.

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