Two years after the US Supreme Court stripped away constitutional protections for abortion, the crucial issue will feature prominently in Thursday's debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, with Biden, a Republican, under pressure to avoid alienating voters.
On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court, with an ultra-conservative majority formed under President Trump, overturned the historic Roe v. Wade decision that protected the right to abortion, leaving the issue in the hands of the states.
The same day, several US states banned abortion, forcing clinics to hastily close or relocate to more welcoming locations.
Already politically polarized, the United States is now divided between states that have banned or significantly restricted abortion access and states that have introduced new protections for women's right to an abortion.
The Supreme Court's decision sent political shockwaves and reverberations across the country, and since then, conservatives have lost nearly every referendum and vote on abortion rights.
And some of those losses came in states that have recently moved sharply to the right, like Ohio, Alabama and Kansas.
Kamala Harris takes the baton
Since Roe was overturned, “the abortion rights movement has discovered that Americans care about abortion rights much more than they expected,” said Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law.
“And they are trying to exploit that with the referendum movement, which has largely followed the same path as the abortion rights movement,” she told AFP.
Democrats are making the most of this opportunity, hoping to garner crucial support from women and younger voters.
Biden, a devout Catholic who has long struggled with the issue, has become a champion of abortion rights, making it a key policy in his reelection bid and winning the support of several family planning groups.
Kamala Harris, the first woman to serve as vice president, has spent months traveling the country mobilizing her supporters.
Harris, 59, became the first vice president to visit an abortion clinic in Minnesota in March.
She is scheduled to hold an event on Monday in Arizona, seen as a key battleground in November's presidential election and the state where the Supreme Court ruled that a Civil War-era abortion ban remains valid.
Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs later signed a repeal of the 1864 law.
Democrats across the country are encouraging key states to hold small abortion referendums to coincide with the presidential election, to encourage less-willing voters to turn out to vote.
Trump is intentionally vague
If the plethora of polls is correct, Democrats have every reason to be confident in their reasoning.
A Fox News poll released Wednesday found that 47% of voters believe the abortion issue is “extremely important” in deciding whether to vote for Biden or Trump.
The Republican front-runner frequently points to the three Supreme Court justices he nominated who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, but he has been noticeably ambivalent on the abortion issue in recent days.
“You have to follow your heart on this issue, but you also have to remember you have to win an election,” Trump said in a video message in early April.
He did not campaign on a promise to make abortion federally illegal, as the religious right has lobbied for.
“When your position is unpopular, the best thing you can do is not take a position,” Ziegler says.
Biden, whose approval ratings are never high, is almost certain to attack Trump on the issue when the two meet on Thursday for their first 2024 debate.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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