Fundamental Freedoms

“The Dire Threat of Trump’s Ongoing Assault on Women’s Fundamental Freedoms”

As Dobbs turns two, “everything is at stake” for reproductive rights this November, says Vice President 

JULIANNE MCSHANE

On the eve of the two-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision that overruled Roe v. Wade, the Biden campaign is stepping up its messaging to voters about the stakes of the November election for reproductive rights.

Monday marks two years since the Supreme Court revoked the constitutional right to abortion established in Roe. The Biden campaign will use the occasion to host 16 events in more than a dozen states, according to a campaign memo shared with Mother Jones. Those will include an event with Vice President Kamala Harris in Phoenix, and a rally in Wisconsin with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Amanda Zurawski, one of the women who sued the state of Texas after being denied an abortion despite facing life-threatening pregnancy complications. (The Texas Supreme Court rejected the case and refused to clarify exceptions to the state’s abortion ban late last month).

“As we approach the two-year anniversary of the fall of Roe and the first presidential debate, the Biden-Harris campaign is going to make sure women and their loved ones across the country understand the dire threat of Donald Trump’s ongoing assault on American women’s fundamental freedoms,” the memo says. “Pro-choice voters delivered for President Biden in 2020 and for Democrats in 2022, and we’re going to make the stakes clear—Trump is a vote for a national abortion ban.”

Also on Monday, MSNBC’s Morning Joe will air an exclusive interview with Harris and Hadley Duvall—a reproductive rights advocate and rape survivor who shared her story in a viral ad supporting Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear—discussing the threats a second Trump term would pose to abortion rights and reproductive health more broadly.

“If there is a woman who is in that reproductive age, then her life is at stake during this election,” Duvall says in the interview, according to an excerpt shared with Mother Jones.

“And it does not matter if you have never voted Democrat in your life. It’s get off your high horse, because women, we don’t get to choose a whole lot, and you at least can choose who you can vote for,” she continued.

“I agree with Hadley,” Harris added. “Everything is at stake.”

“If such a fundamental freedom as the right to make decisions about your own body can be taken, be aware of what other freedoms may be at stake,” Harris continued.

Polling suggests that focusing on the threats Trump poses to reproductive rights is an effective message for the Biden campaign. A majority of Americans disapprove of Dobbs and believe abortions should be legal in all or most cases, according to Pew Research. Yet, despite Trump bringing about the decimation of abortion rights in America by appointing three of the five Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe, a Data for Progress poll conducted in December found that less than a quarter of voters overall (plus only 36 percent of Democrats—and, oddly, only 11 percent of Republicans) see Trump as “responsible for new bans or restrictions on abortions in states across the U.S.,” as I reported earlier this year.

The Supreme Court was blamed by the largest number of respondents—50 percent—who apparently do not realize that Trump is responsible for its conservative supermajority. And remarkably, more recent New York Times polling found that nearly a fifth of voters blame Biden for the fall of Roe.

Trump, in fact, boasts about contributing to the overruling of Roe, as I have covered. However, he has not shown a willingness to fully own the consequences of Dobbs—which include more than a dozen states enacting near-total abortion bans; child rape victims being forced to give birth or cross state lines to get an abortion; increasing reports of reproductive coercion by abusive partners; and—as we’ve seen in Alabama and from Senate Republicans—threats to IVF access. While Trump has pledged to leave the question of further abortion restrictions “to the states” if re-elected, he has a history of flip-flopping on the issue. He could enact a federal abortion ban via the Comstock Act, or ban the mailing of abortion pills, as his acolytes at Project 2025 have explicitly urged him to do.

So when you read the headlines marking two years since the Dobbs decision, remember that it’s Trump and his party who made it happen, and who are likely to take the draconian policy as far as they can.