In the decade of Roe v. Wade became state law, abortion rights groups tried to bolster their support by declaring “Abortion Is Health Care.”
Only now, two years after the Supreme Court removed the constitutional right to abortion, and only six months before the presidential election, the slogan takes on the force of reality.
The public conversation about abortion has evolved into one about the complexities of pregnancy and reproduction, as the consequences of the ban have played out in the news. The question is not only whether you can get an abortion, but also, Can you get one if pregnancy complications make you septic shock? Can you find a gynecologist when many are leaving the country with the ban? If you miscarry, will the hospital send you out to bleed? Can you and your partner do in vitro fertilization?
That shift helps explain why a record percentage of Americans now declare themselves single-issue voters on abortion rights — especially among black voters, Democrats, women and those aged 18 to 29. Republican women increasingly say the party’s opposition to abortion is too extreme. , and Democrats are running on the issue after years of running away from it.
“When the Dobbs case came down, I told my colleagues – but not all in jest – that America was about to be seen in a long seminar on obstetrics,” Elaine Kamarck, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the Supreme Court. decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Opponents of abortion say that stories about women facing medical complications are overblown and that women who really need an abortion for medical reasons are already able to enforce the ban.
Still, an April poll found that 46 percent of registered voters have heard stories of women being forced to cross state lines to get abortions they need because of pregnancy complications — up 11 points since September. In the latest abortion case before the Supreme Court, judges from both ends of the ideological spectrum pressed lawyers for Idaho to explain how the state can deny the procedure to a woman who bleeds uncontrollably after the water has broken early.
The Biden campaign has sent six women to warring states for trying to mobilize voters on Monday two years after the decision that overturned Roe: Five were not denied an abortion despite suffering from septic shock, becoming unconscious, miscarrying or finding the fetus to be absent. skull; six could not complete her plans to have a second child through IVF after the decision of the Alabama Supreme Court which shuttered clinics in the state.
Tresa Undem, who has polled people on abortion for 25 years, estimated that before the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe, less than 15 percent of the community considered private abortion appropriate – women who can become pregnant and will choose abortion.
“Now it’s about pregnancy, and everybody knows anybody who has a baby or wants to have a baby or can get pregnant,” she said. “This is very personal for the majority of the public.”
In her polls and focus groups, voters equate abortion with concerns about safety, health and medical care. Seventy-three percent of independents who support abortion rights say stories of women who nearly died because of the ban will influence how they vote.
“People used to talk about politicians trying to control our bodies,” he said. “Now, they have no business getting involved in these medical decisions, these politicians have no medical expertise, they are making these laws, and they are not based on health care or science.”
Most Americans are confused about the details of reproduction. When Ms. Undem asked adults in a poll in August 2020 whether it was true that “most women have their period at the beginning of the month,” 75 percent got the answer right – wrong – but a notable 21 percent said “definitely not.” Two months after Dobbs, 22 percent of adults said they weren’t sure if the eggs in a woman’s ovary had a shell (they didn’t).
But in the past two years, women have increasingly spoken out in public and on social media about pregnancy complications that can lead to abortion. Many have stories like model Chrissy Teigen, who in September 2022 announced that she learned too late that the procedure described in a previous social media post as a miscarriage at 20 weeks was actually an abortion due to pregnancy complications.
Anti-abortion groups have responded by trying to carve out a distinction between “elective abortion” for an unwanted pregnancy – for which desire is prohibited – and “maternal fetal separation” in medical emergencies. (Same medical procedure.)
“Pro-abortion Democrats resort to fear-mongering to drive a radical abortion agenda, instead of presenting women with the reality they deserve,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
Still, the push by anti-abortion activists to establish that life begins at conception has raised concerns about how abortion bans affect popular health care procedures. Republicans in Congress rushed to defend IVF this month after the Southern Baptist Convention voted to oppose it. Men and women at the convention asked other church members to support IVF, tearfully telling how they could grow their families.
Opponents have long viewed abortion as irresponsible women using it as birth control or because they care more about their careers than having children. “When the focus shifts to the dangers that banning abortion poses to pregnant women,” said Reva Siegel, a professor of constitutional law at Yale who has written extensively on the country’s abortion conflict, “it’s easier for Americans to talk about it.”
Not only are the stories of pregnancy complications increasing. Technology and criminal law have changed the script, he said.
Although abortion is currently out of reach for millions of women, especially the poor, those with unintended pregnancy can use a home test that allows them to know if they are pregnant early, and can order pills for abortion online.
But for women with pregnancy complications, there are new obstacles. Before Roe legalized abortion nationally in 1973, the law allowed more leeway for what it considered “therapeutic abortion.” Doctors, often solo practitioners, can use good judgment to provide. Even the Southern Baptist Convention supports abortion in cases of fetal defects or when the physical or mental health of the woman is at risk.
Now, the threat of prosecution, $100,000 fines and the loss of medical licenses has made doctors and hospital systems cold to treat women with pregnancy complications. Most often in some countries, lawyers make decisions.
“People are starting to realize how influential it is, outside of abortion care just a quote,” said Dr. Nisha Verma, a specialist in complex family planning in Georgia and a fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists who has testified. before Congress.
In Georgia, she said, more people opposed the state’s ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy after being told that this meant two weeks after the average woman missed her period — not, as her partner believed, six weeks after conception. Some voters, he said, believe that six weeks means six weeks after a woman finds out she is pregnant.
“We don’t want to raise only certain abortions that deserve it,” said Dr. Verma. At the same time, he added: “‘Our body, our choice,’ we did this for so long, it doesn’t work. The historical message of our movement has its place, but it can be very polarizing for those who struggle with the complexities of abortion, which the majority of Americans.