Democratic leaders, from President Joe Biden on down, aim to make abortion a key midterms issue telling voters that the Supreme Court's overturn of Roe v Wade is disastrous for women's rights.
However, despite holding slim majorities in Congress and controlling the White House, Democrats have not succeeded in making access to abortion legal through legislative means — a failure that some Democratic and progressive strategists view as a betrayal.
"President Biden and Speaker Pelosi passing the buck to voters by telling voters to 'just go vote' without doing everything in their power to fix things, is a slap in the face to their voters," said Tezlyn Figaro, a political strategist and former national racial justice director for the 2016 presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Biden's failure to do everything in his power to protect abortion will continue, Figaro suggested, regardless of what happens in the November midterms, where Democrats face historical headwinds as they aim to preserve congressional majorities. "On Saturday, June 25, President Biden doubled down on his position to not expand the court; therefore, regardless of how policies may change on the state level after the midterms, nothing will change on the federal level under the leadership of President Biden," Figaro said.
MIDTERMS BECOME URGENT PRIORITY FOR BIDEN, PELOSI AFTER SCOTUS ABORTION RULING
Demonstrators gather outside the Supreme Court in Washington on Friday, June 24, 2022. (Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Democrats began making abortion a key midterms message immediately after the Supreme Court's ruling. "We must ‘Remember in November’ that the rights of women, and indeed all Americans, are on the ballot," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Friday, promising to "continue to beat the drum – not only of what the challenges are, but what we as Democrats are doing about it."
President Biden stated that Congress does not have enough votes to codify a right to have an abortion into federal law in his own message Friday. "This fall, Roe is on the ballot. Personal freedoms are on the ballot. The right to privacy, liberty, equality are all on the ballot," Biden said.
Democratic strategist Sascha Burns, a partner at Turner4D, told Fox News Digital she was confident that the overturn of Roe will inspire voters to win Democrats greater majorities, so they can codify federal protection of abortion.
"The only supermajority in Congress is the number of votes needed to override the filibuster. Democrats control the Senate 50-50 and, in November, we’ll change that — all we need is to hold the House and add 2 Senate seats, and we will codify Roe. Republicans just handed us back the midterms and lost a generation of voters. And they know it," Burns said.
Following the leak of a draft opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization in early May, which signaled to the world that the Supreme Court would overturn nearly 50 years of precedent guaranteeing a right to access an abortion in the landmark 1973 Roe decision, Democrats did attempt to pass the Women's Health Protection Act, which would have prohibited governmental restrictions on abortion. The Senate failed to advance the bill after Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., voted no, calling the bill not a codification of Roe but an expansion,
SENATE FAILS TO ADVANCE BILL TO GUARANTEE ABORTION ACCESS NATIONWIDE
Emily Tisch Sussman, a Democratic political consultant and host of the "She Pivots" podcast, told Fox News that politicians of both parties surely believed the recently-confirmed justices would uphold the precedent of Roe.
During the hearings for Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch — all nominated by former President Donald Trump — Democrats asked whether the nominees viewed Roe as precedent. They responded variously that Roe's precedent had been reaffirmed by the court since the 1973 ruling, but would not comment on whether they would overturn the precedent.
"Democrats and Republicans believed in good faith that the three justices recently confirmed would not overturn Roe v Wade," Sussman said. "But they flat out lied under oath and now millions of women have lost the right to bodily autonomy. Acting in good faith, the Democrats did not blow up the filibuster to confirm bodily autonomy."
10 KEY QUOTES FROM JUSTICE ALITO'S OPINION OVERTURNING ROE V. WADE
Prior to Friday's historic Supreme Court decision, polls suggested the most important issues to likely midterm voters were the economy and rising inflation. By a wide margin, rising costs were top of voters minds in an early June poll conducted by Fox News, beating gun issues and abortion as most important to voters.
People attend a pro-choice protest at the Utah state Capitol in Salt Lake City after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Friday, June 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
Republican strategist Brian Darling, former senior counsel for Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Fox News that the recent push to make abortion access a midterm issue is a distraction.
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"Democrats did not codify Roe v. Wade with their current majority, nor when they had a supermajority during the first two years of the Obama administration," Darling said.
"They want to run on the abortion issue this fall, yet history shows that voters should have zero confidence that they will follow through with that promise. Democrats are relying on low information voters to believe their empty promises that they are going to pass a likely unconstitutional bill to make Roe the law of the land if they win in the midterms. They are trying to use the abortion issue to distract voters from President Biden’s dismal poll numbers, high inflation highlighted by soaring gas prices, and a cratering economy. It is not going to work."
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