US President Joe Biden was poised to make a big promise on Tuesday to push abortion rights into law as his party seeks to embrace the politically divisive issue in its final push before the election. midterm elections.
At a speech focusing on abortion rights at a Democratic National Committee event on Tuesday, Biden will say that if Democrats elect more senators and retain control of the House in the middle term, “the first bill he’s sending to Congress next is going to be to encode Roe — and he’ll sign it around the 50th anniversary of Roe’s decision,” a Democratic official told CNN.
Since the 2020 campaign, Biden has called for systematizing Roe sue Wade, which has guaranteed the federal constitutional right to abortion. The Supreme Court overturned it earlier this year, changing access to reproductive health care in the country. It’s unclear how politically effective the promise of prioritizing such a bill would be, as Democrats have a fierce battle in November to keep both the Senate and House of Representatives.
Biden will also need more than a mere majority in the Senate to make good on this promise. While Biden has voiced support for ending the movie in order to systematize abortion rights, Democrat Joe Manchin, of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona, remains opposed to such cutting. Biden previously said he would need at least two more elected Democrats to the Senate to change the filtering rules and pass abortion rights legislation.
In remarks at the DNC event at the Howard Theater in Washington, DC, Biden plans to speak broadly about what he sees as choice voters face midterms amid Republicans pushing for a ban on breaking national pregnancy and pursue doctors who perform abortions, against Democrats who want to systematize Roe v. Wade.
The official also said that the context they wanted to clarify with Biden’s speech on Tuesday was that “nearly half of the states in the United States have passed a ban on abortion or will soon and in many states, abortion.” was banned even in cases of. rape and incest.”
Since the Supreme Court ruling earlier this year, Democrats have been hoping that abortion rights will excite and mobilize voters and have seen some signs of the move.
For example, 50% of registered voters in a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation said the Supreme Court decision made them more motivated to vote next month – a 7 percentage point increase over with July, when the same question was asked just weeks after the ruling went down. About half of voters in states with outright abortion bans also said their state’s abortion laws made them more motivated to vote.
Women are particularly motivated by the Supreme Court decision, new survey finds: About 3 out of 5 women aged 18 to 49 said they were more likely to take part in polls in September to suggest that Roe’s ouster was a motivating factor.
However, a recent CNN/SSRS poll shows the economy remains the focus of voters, with 90% of them saying it is extremely or very important to their ballot. Less – 72% – say the same about abortion.
And a New York Times/Sienna poll found voters more likely to consider the economy (26%) and inflation (18%) the most important issues facing the country, with just 5% choosing Abortion is their top issue.
The economy and inflation play a more important role in competitive congressional districts. While 59% of registered voters nationwide called the economy extremely important to their ballot, that number rose to 67% in those counties and the rate of inflation is critical. increased from 56% to 64%.
Abortion is a complicated issue for the President, who has seen the political shift around it throughout his half-century career and reckons with personal anxieties rooted in his faith. His Catholic. As a candidate in 2019, Biden reversed his longstanding support for an amendment that would prevent federal funds from being used for abortions.
When his administration announced new steps to strengthen abortion protections earlier this month, Biden said he would not “sit back and let Republicans around the country enact extremist policies.” .”
The White House has absorbed Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina’s proposal to impose a federal ban on most abortions at 15 weeks of gestation. At a Democratic fundraiser in New York City last month, the President described Graham’s bill as symbolic of Republicans becoming “more extreme in their positions.”
As the midterm elections approached, Biden argued that voters needed to elect more Democrats to codify the Roe v. Wade protections into law. He also pledged to veto any bill banning abortion at the federal level if Republicans take control of Congress.
More than a dozen states have seen abortion bans go into effect since the Dobbs ruling, affecting nearly 30 million women of reproductive age.
