Democrats’ abortion blind spot

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Astead Herndon (1:00)

With just a few weeks to the midterm elections, we're adding a second America, Actually episode every week to discuss the topics and issues that we've been tracking throughout the year. This week, I spoke to Jessica Valenti, journalist and founder of the newsletter, Abortion Every Day. And I wanted to ask her how abortion rights are going to play in this midterm elections, why public support for abortion rights doesn't always translate to votes for Democrats, and how this fight could shape not only the midterms, but the upcoming presidential election. Let's dig in.

Thank you so much, Jessica, for joining us. How are you?

Jessica Valenti (1:40)

I'm good. Thank you for having me.

Astead Herndon (1:43)

All right. So there's new reporting from the Washington Sun that the White House told the Justice Department to delay abortion related action until after the midterms because they feared a backlash from voters. That feels like a good place to start. Now, the White House has denied those conversations have happened, but I tend to be skeptical of many words they say. So let's just kind of start there. Like, what are the stakes for abortion rights as you look across the midterms landscape?

Jessica Valenti (2:08)

I mean, it's everything. I think it's so incredibly important. And that article actually was so incredibly important. And I think it really solidified what everyone who works in this movement has been saying, which is that Republicans, the Trump administration, the White House, know very well how unpopular abortion bans and restrictions are. And they have been running from the issue even before Trump won re-election, right? Yeah. They are very aware of just what a toxic issue this is for them. And they've done everything that they can to sort of pretend like they're moderate, to change the subject, candidates deleting mentions of abortion from their websites.

My favorite stuff has been Republicans who try to either call themselves pro-choice, or they do this thing where there was, I forget who it was, he called a 12-week ban a plan to keep abortion legal for 12 weeks.

SPEAKER_1 (3:06)

Right?

Jessica Valenti (3:06)

Like they are so desperate to sound like they are somehow pro-choice because they know how unpopular it is, everywhere, I should say, everywhere.

SPEAKER_1 (3:15)

Yeah.

Astead Herndon (3:15)

I mean, you mentioned kind of how Trump was running from this even before the 2024 election. You know, he promised that abortion rights and restricting them wasn't a big priority of his. And that kind of worked. Like, I remember being in Arizona and there were women who called themselves pro-choice, but would say they were voting for Trump and say, hey, he told us that this wasn't going to be something that he focuses on in the administration. How has he lived up to that promise?

Jessica Valenti (3:40)

Yeah, that's a really good question.

Just going back to the, I have to say something, because it was so frustrating, like watching these lies sort of come out and say, oh, we're not interested in it. We would veto a national ban. He had JD Vance going out and saying, we would never pass a national ban, maybe just a minimum national standard, which is a national ban, right? And because I think there weren't that many people who really understood the issue, reporting at a top level, those lies were really just replicated everywhere. Yeah, they were. And we saw that coverage everywhere. And I really think that that's a huge part of the reason that he won is that people did not think that abortion would be in danger. In terms of what he's done, it's been really interesting to watch because the biggest stuff, again, he's running away from, right? Like he hasn't enforced the Comstock Act, which would ban the shipping of abortion medication and abortion tools because that feels like a really big move.

Yet, they have decimated Title IX, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. They're going after birth control. You have multiple federal agencies calling different kinds of birth control abortifacients, right? So they're absolutely attacking abortion and attacking birth control and attacking reproductive rights, but they're trying to do it in this way that they're hoping no one will notice. And I think like what's happening with Mifepristone and Telehealth is a perfect example where you have Republican AGs who are really trying to get shield laws in front of the Supreme Court and the Trump administration essentially like just trying to stay away from it until after the midterms. But as that reporting said in the Washington Sun, what they're telling anti-abortion leaders is that after the midterms, it's going to be a free for all, right? That the gloves are going to come off and they're going to go all in and that they're even talking about enforcing Comstock.