Why Abortion Rights Won Even as Kamala Harris Lost
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from a new york times. I'm Michael borrow. This is the daily.

Last tuesday, voters across the country approved measures to protect abortion rights while rejecting the presidential who claimed to champion those same rights. Today, my colleague kate ng explains that gap and what IT tells us about the new politics a bosh.

It's tuesday, november twelve. Kate, so much of the focus on election day was quite naturally on the race for president. And I think as a result, a lot of us, and here and guilty myself, didn't quite understand how much abortion was on the ballot and literally not in that spiritual way that we sometimes talk about in in political reporting that something is on the ballot. And this was .

actually on the ballot. That's right. So in ten states and pretty diverse states across the country, there were amendments on the ballot to establish abortion rates in the state constitution. This was a record number of ballot measures on emotion in seven of those ten states. Those amends one.

So quick math, that's a seventy percent Victory RAID in all of these states and has to be seen as a very big win. D for abortion rights.

absolutely. And this is really the biggest Victory for abortion rights groups since row was overturn two and hf years ago.

okay. And just explain how these ten measures ended up on so many of these state baLance at exact time.

you know between the time of row in one hundred and twenty three and dobb, ballot measures were actually something that anti abortion groups used to their advantage. So there are forty four in that time period, almost fifty years, and only four of them were put forward by abortion rights groups.

Um so basically, ballot initiatives have been a tool of anti abortion forces.

absolutely. That's even true coming out of jobs the decision where the supreme court overturned robi wade, anti portion groups know that under jobs the question of how you regular abortion is going to go back to the states, right? So they think we're going to continue this, play a book.

We're going to have all these oration ballot measures to ban abortion in the states. So the first place we see this is in kansas in August of twenty twenty two, which is two months after dos. Anti portion groups have put a measure on the ballot saying there is no right to abortion in the state constitution and they think they're going to sweep that. They think this is given it's gonna a sleepy August election. Nobody y's going to turn out except for their voters and win.

right? As you said, history on their side, when IT comes to the initiatives restricting portion.

that's right IT. Turns out abortion rights groups really rally their supporters to work against this baLance endpoint, and IT fails in August. So abortion rights groups look at kansas and thank wow, we got a ton of support there.

Maybe these ballot measures can actually be a way of establishing abortion rights and guaranteeing abortion access in other states. And so they begin to put measures on the ballot in the mid terms of twenty twenty two. And by the end of that year, we see really of a winning streak for the version.

And right side, they've won six out of six ballot measures. The next year they try for ohio first real red state. They win ohio. So now going to this year and the presidential contest, abortion rights groups are seven for seven.

And just to be very clear about what IT is we're talking about, he have this happening in the seven states you just mentioned increasingly after kansas, and create me from wrong. These are efforts to put something in a state's constitution that protects aversion and therefore means that if a republican legislature in the state decided to try to restricted they can, a judge would look at the constitution and say, you just can't do that. The voters in the state of said, this is a ride. Therefore, they strike down any legislative effort to ban portion.

That's right. And most of these measures are establishing a right to abortion until viability, which is the time and pregNancy when fear can survive outside the uterus. St, that's actually the standard that was in rovaniemi. And most of states also say that after that point, the legislation can regulate abortion, but they can't prohibit women from getting abortions if they need them in a medical emergency. So essentially, what all of these ballot measures are doing is restoring row, but in the state constitution, instead of having IT in the federal constitution.

fascinating. So let's turn to the mechanics of the twenty twenty four ballot initiatives and the plan to extend this abortion rights winning street to a much broader set of states with the reality, of course, that must have been in the back of everyone's head that twenty twenty four was different because it's the presidential year.

right? It's the first presidential year post jobs. So there are two ways of looking at this, and those two ways do overlap. And the first is that abortion rights groups are looking at all these states where post jobs, there are bans on abortion, and thinking these ballot measures can be a way of restoring version access. Democrats, meanwhile, are looking at how abortion has galvanized all these voters.

The less than coming out of the twenty twenty two mid terms was that the candidates of abortion rights, one, the democrats headed off the red wave, and the house representatives, anti forgan candidates, lost in a couple of states, and they're thinking, okay, we can use this issue to power Victories for our candidates who stand for portion rights. And democrats in particular. This is really going .

to gavan ize turnout, right? The thinking was that even when jobim was the nominee and of relatively weak nome visible trump in the polls that abortion rights could make the difference in a few key battleground states, because I was going to bring out voters who care about abortion. And those voters would see the democrats as the only logical candidate to protect abortion rights, given trust role inversion reviewed yeah.

And this wasn't some time in the guy thing. This was a proven strategy. So this was something not only that democrats thought was gonna, but that republicans thought was gonna.

Um how do folks end up choosing the ten states that they do where these ballot amendments end up being?

So as abortion rates groups and democrats go into twenty twenty four and the presentin race, there are only seventeen states in the entire country that allow citizens sponsor ballot measures, which means that people can sign a petition, you, you get the petition outside your girls, restore your hardware or whatever. And people put this question directly before the voters. And of those seventeen states, ten of them had abortion bans.

So this was always going to be a limited strategy. So when IT comes to the ten measures that are on the baLance this year, some of those are blue states that are just trying to in shine the right to boring that's already in state law and that new york, colorado and ireland, then you have read in purple states where either abortion is already banned or the state legislature and the governor are trying to ban abortion. And the goal of ballot measure there is either to overturn the ban or to hold the ban off. So those states are montana, missouri, south kota, florida, nebraska, nevada and arizona.

And of course, two of the states that you just mentioned in your red and purple list are our grounds states, nevada and arizona. So as everyone gears up to try to protect abortion rights in these ten states in time for last tuesday, what is up being the playback deployed in all of these states?

So the sponsors of these ballot measures are seeing that there's a shift in the way americans are thinking about abortion. A lot of americans, a lot of people I talk to, particularly men, thought or think that abortion is something that irresponsible women use as birth control. And that's not necessarily true.

But that was sort of the bias. That was the real stigma around abortion. What's happening, as you see all these state's ban abortion, is people are seeing that they are real consequences of this, and they're seeing that women who have much wanted pregnancies can't get medical care when they need for.

As long as I can remember, I wanted to be a mom. I'm lucky to have my son, but I wasn't lucky with my second pregNancy. There is a fetal anomaly. And to protect myself, I needed an abortion.

But abortion rights groups sponsoring these ballot measures really take that idea of abortion as health care and put that at the center of their campaigns, thinking of politicians interfering at nine in my wife, the care SHE needs, it's unforgiven missouri is abortion ban was too far. Know the ad that I think about a lot was one in florida where you have this couple. And the woman is saying, due to the portion band, I was reinforced to Carry the baby from twenty three weeks all the way to thirty seven weeks. I had to Carry a pregNancy thirty seven weeks, even though I knew, and even the doctors told me this would not be a healthy .

child having to watch your wife being pain, and continued to tell her to keep going that everything's gonna OK knowing it's not. That was the hardest thing.

And the add ends with the woman saying, this ban is torture. This ban is torture.

right? These ads end up feeling quite strikingly non partisan and are almost post partisan. They're all about women's health.

yes. And polls are showing that these ads are changing minds, that people who see them are more inclined to support abortion rights.

You mentioned, kate, that democrats end up seizing on these ballot initiatives as well, hoping that they are gone to boost turn out for them. My recollection is that they end up adopting very similar messages to the sponsors of these bills, right?

yes. So once common Harris becomes the ominous SHE really makes this the centerpiece of her campaign. Working people, working women, have to travel to another state to get on a plane sitting next to strangers to go and get the health care SHE needs.

You have her surgit like jabe prr americans force drive miles to deliver a baby because of draconian abortion law, shut down the eternity war. White mr. Michele le obama all coming out and talking about this. One woman spent twenty two days in jail on murder charges after SHE misCarried in her own bathroom. We are seeing doctors unsure if they can treat each topic pregnancies.

right? SHE spoke very explicitly about women bleeding out on a hospital bed because of some of these state bans on abortion.

Yeah, and that message from Michelle obama really closes out como Harris campaign talking about how you need to vote for democratic candidates because this issue is life and death for many women. And on election day, when we look at the results of these ballot measures, it's an incredible success for the version right side. In arizona, IT wins by sixty two percent. In the va, ta by sixty four percent. Missouri becomes the first day to overturn a ban on abortion, and they get fifty two percent of support .

in a very red state yeah.

even one of those three states where the ballot measure didn't succeed, which is florida IT still got a majority of support with fifty seven percent IT was just that florida required sixty percent to pass.

So not just wins proportion rights in these seven states, but clear majority ties.

Yeah, I think in some states, IT was even more support proportion rights than the sponsors expected. IT also helped democrats in some downtown ller races for congress and state legislators. But the democrat who everyone thought I would help most did not benefit from this. And that was common. Harris.

Will be right back.

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So kate, how much did this mostly winning abortion rights amendment not help common hairs quantify that? For us.

it's a pretty huge gap. And of course, the votes are still being counted. But from what we know now on monday afternoon, if you look at arizona, for instance, battleground state, remember, I just told you that sixty two percent voted for the portion measure, forty six percent voted for Harris.

That's an eight point gap. Nava, ta, it's even bigger. Abortion, the ballot measure at sixty four percent.

Harris gets forty a half, almost seventeen points in missouri, which is a red state where Harris was never expected to win. Abortion rights gets fifty two percent. Harris gets forty.

Then you look at florida, where I think some democrats had begun to hope that abortion might actually pull IT out for them. The portion ballot measure got fifty seven percent support. Harris got forty three percent.

wow. So you're talking about in a bunch of these cases, double digit gaps between those who cared enough about abortion to vote to enshrine IT in the state's constitution and those willing to vote for Harris. And essentially, what this data you just have reveals is that a bunch of people were capable of holding two thoughts in their heads at once and splitting those two things up.

That's right. And you know, this is something that a lot of people had actually tried to warn about that even in some of the earlier ballot measures, like in california in twenty twenty two, the ballot measures wore out, performing democrats. The ballot measure, california got more votes than the state's popular governor gave new son who's democrats. So this shouldn't have been seen as a silver boat strategy, but by the end, people really thought I was gonna that.

But I think it's worth explaining why democrats especially thought that a vote for abortion rights was quite logically going to be vote for come Harris in this race. And that's because of the unique singular role that trump yed in appointing supreme court that overturned row because, as you just told this, cate, in the first time of this conversation, democrats seem to benefit a lot from the issue of abortion in the last election, the twenty twenty two mid terms. And because commoner's was campaigning so ethereal and explicitly as the candidate of abortion rights.

that's right. And I think also if you think about the way abortion has framed, it's an issue of women's, right? So I think a lot of democrats thought I was reasonable to think all these people coming out to support abortion rights are also going to be excited about the idea of electing the country's first female president.

So just walk us through in the kind of post morning ways. And i'm sure democrats are the understanding of why so many voters split their ballot.

One way to think about this is that Harris was actually a victim of her own success and way SHE changed how the country thought about abortion just in that .

because it's a of a complicated a.

If you're coming at this from the perspective of wanting to increase abortion access or guarantee abortion access, IT was really smart to talk about this as a matter of health care, as a matter of health care freedom in the right to make your own decisions. Because IT really appeals to a libertarian spirit in this country and a sentiment that a lot of independence and republicans house.

So you saw people crossing traditional party lines to vote for abortion rights, but those people who might now see abortion rates as something they want to support aren't necessarily gonna on board for the rest of democratic agenda. They're not necessarily going to be the people who you want student loan forgiveness, for example. They're not necessarily going to be the people who want to vote for the country's first fema president.

But of course, the thing that also has to be true here for those who are going to split their tickets on this scale that we're talking about, is that these voters have to not see trump as a threat to abortion rights.

right? And truth effectively neutralized the issue for himself because as much as he was saying to anti abortion groups, i'm the guy who finally got the court to overturn robi wade. He was saying to people who support version rights, you don't have to worry about me.

I'm not going to impose a national ban on abortion. I just want to give all this back to the states. And polls showed that people believed him.

For instance, in a times poll two months before the election, seventy percent of trump voters said they did not believe that he would sign a national ban and abortion. So in some sense, the way to look at this is Harris strategy is effective. But so as trumps in the nk.

what seems really significant about the selection is that IT gave voters who cared about ocean rights the ability to say so in their vote without voting for the candidate who claimed SHE was the champion of proportion rates, common hairs. And that makes me wonder our democrat looking back and asking themselves if putting abortion on the ballot as its own issue was a mistake, that they could have done a different year and then asked people to vote on abortion by voting for hairs. I think .

that conversation is surely happening. But for abortion rights groups, the immediate issue is restoring abortion access. And so they're looking at that conversation and saying, don't be so cynical like if we're talking about this is a matter women dying, we're gonna wait another year and let more women die. We need to fix this now .

issue over a party.

absolutely. And that's not to say that, of course, these groups wanted common haris to win the White house, but they're also incredibly grateful to her. You know, her legacy becomes that he spoke about abortion in a different way.

They would say that he was a big reason that the issue won the way he talked about abortion and got the democratic party, which had always, like, really hesitated. You know, joe biden did not want to say the word abortion comment has changed all that. And so her legacy is this expansion of abortion rights, this protection abortion rights in some state. And that's not nothing. Put a .

different way. Abortion rights didn't help coma Harris win twenty twenty four. By commonly, Harris helped abortion rights win in twenty twenty four.

That's certainly how abortion rights groups see that .

IT strike to the kate that for many democrats and many democratic women, there's gonna lot of distances in the result of a selection, because there is simultaneously this huge electoral win for what menu see as an the central woman's right and abortion, and a huge electoral defeat for the woman candidate for president who championed that right.

And I think that distant is at the heart of a lot of shock that many women are feeling about this, because for so long, feminism and abortion were intertwined. So was easy for them to think the public is really moved on. Abortion rights.

That means the public supports women's rights. The reason that abortion rights groups used to center the phrase and the idea of my body, my choice, was because they really saw abortion as the right of women to determine the course of their own lives. But in this election, that wasn't how we talked about abortion.

Come on, Harris and the supporters of these ballot measures didn't talk about feminism and emotion. They did couple of those two things. Abortion is about protecting women who want to be mothers and, you know, making sure that a husband doesn't need to worry about his wife, right?

Giving him and her doctor the ability to help her make this decision. So the path for abortion rights is making IT less and less of a feminist idea. You know, it's making IT more about protecting women, but in a Peter nal way. And that's not the same as autonomy for women.

right? None of those campaign ads and none of those campaigns eche acknowledge the simple reality that a woman in the united states might want to have an abortion because he might not want to have a baby.

right? That decoupling leaves feminism in a really uncertain place. IT really diminished the question of, do we trust women to determine the course of their own lives? So when you look at last tuesday, you can argue that the results tell us that we've changed the way we talk about abortion. We've changed the way we think about abortion. But what we haven't changed is the way we think about and talk about women.

Okay.

thank you very much. Thank you, Michael.

Would be back.

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