United States: Can Abortion Right Make a Difference for Democrats?

It is time for mid-term elections in the United States. The famous midterm will take place on Tuesday 8 November and the results will be scrutinized more than ever. As the name suggests, the mid-term elections come two years after the election of the President of the United States. They allow for renewal the entire House of Representatives, one third of the Senate and two thirds of the governors.

In other words, they are capital, because their result will be decisive for the second half of the presidential term. The last midterm elections during Donald Trump’s presidency had notably allowed for welcome resistance from the Democratic Party through the emergence of several elected officials and elected progressives who have become essential, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar or Cori Bush.

The right to abortion, a key topic of the democratic program

In a country already almost cut in two, polarized, and while Donald Trump already hints that he is preparing for his big comeback for the 2024 elections, Joe Biden’s Democratic camp has bet in particular on the question of abortion. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade thus calling into question the right to abortion throughout the territory. Since then, more than a dozen states have severely limited it.

The democratic camp has therefore exaggerated on this issue during the mid-term electoral campaign in hope reach an electorate sensitive to the defense of sexual and reproductive rights. Make abortion a key topic in these medium-term strategies, good or bad?

According to a survey by ABC news And Washington Post conducted at the end of September, 64% of respondents disapprove of the decision to repeal Roe v. wade by the Supreme Court last June.

More recently, another poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that advocating access to abortion is indeed a defining motive for voters: “More than four in ten voters (44%), aged 18 to 49, say they are more motivated to vote this year than in previous elections and most of them (59%) say they the Supreme Court’s decision to repeal Roe v. Wade made them more likely to vote. “

Abortion, a (sufficiently) important topic?

However, other issues largely prevail over the defense of the right to abortion: the economy (cited by 84% of respondents), education (77%) and inflation (76%) are cited the most by future voters in terms of priority, according to the poll by ABC news And Washington Post.

Cited by 62% of respondents, abortion can therefore be identified as a strong symbol of this election, reminding us that freedom of choice is an emblematic issue to which the population is particularly attached and which they want to defend.

Some Democratic candidates have rightly made it a strong issue in their campaign, such as Jeannine Lee Lake in a Republican-dominated Indiana constituency, as this report by reporter Oliver Laughland shows:

This candidate’s voice is stronger than her resorted to abortion when she was young, against the wishes of her parents, after being raped.

‘Where you live doesn’t matter’: Joe Biden’s warning

“I ask you to remember how you felt when the decision was made and Roe was repealed after 50 years. Anger, worry, bewilderment. If you appreciate the right to choose, then you have to vote “

In a mid-October speech, Joe Biden could not have been clearer in inviting Democratic voters to go to the polls thinking about the impact of their choice. In front of a banner with the words “Restore eggs” (“Restore Roe”), the president of the United States recalled that a victory for the Republican camp would mean a national ban on the right to abortion. “Where you live doesn’t matter”he warned.

Currently, some states serve as safe havens for people living in a state that has banned abortion and must go to a clinic that provides it. But for how long?

Photo credit: Mark Dixon via Flickr