Three weeks before the US midterm elections, the strategy aims to win more votes at a time when the blues (the color that characterizes the government party) see their narrow majorities in the federal Congress in jeopardy.
The president’s speech, at the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C., will – according to administration officials – insist on the dilemma that voters face next November.
They will have to choose “between Republicans who want to ban abortion nationwide with criminal penalties (…) and Democrats who want to codify (Roe v. Wade) into law to protect women’s reproductive freedom,” they said.
Biden and many Democrats tried to make this right the focus of the campaign after the June 24 Supreme Court ruling that eliminated the federal right to abortion, after it had been achieved five decades earlier.
That is why, both in the political realm and in the official sphere of the White House, the president has focused in recent weeks on the struggle for this right.
When his administration unveiled new measures to improve abortion protections earlier this month, Biden warned he “would not stand idly by while Republicans across the country enact extreme policies.”
He took the opportunity to attack in this regard after a proposal by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, that would impose a federal ban on most 15-week terminations.
CNN reports that at a fundraising event for Democrats in New York last month, the governor described Graham’s bill as a symbol of Republicans becoming “more extreme in their positions.”
So, with the November 8 midterm elections looming, Biden is trying to convince voters that they need to elect more Democrats to codify Roe v. Wade in law.
He also promised to veto any bill banning abortion at the federal level if Republicans took control of Congress.
More than a dozen states in the union have implemented the ban since the June ruling, which has affected nearly 30 million women of childbearing age here.
Although Democrats hope abortion rights will motivate voters, a recent CNN/SSRS poll found that the economy remains a point of recovery.
Ninety percent of registered voters considered the economy “extremely or extremely important to their vote,” while 72 percent of those interviewed cited abortion.
However, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that the abortion issue was a major motivating factor for American voters this year.
“Voters need to make their voices heard. This fall, Roe is on the ballot. Personal liberties are on the ballot. The right to privacy, liberty and equality are all on the ballot,” Biden said in June.
Yesterday, when asked why Biden is now focusing on abortion-related issues, White House press secretary Karen Jean-Pierre confirmed that the president had been talking about Republicans’ “assault” on the right to abortion “over the past few months.”
The Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade on January 22, 1973 determined that a woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy falls within her constitutional right to privacy.
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