I, along with many other politicos, have stated early and often that the 2024 presidential election would be won or lost on the abortion issue. We have also stated the majority in the House of Representatives will be won or lost on the abortion issue, and several key Senate races will come down to the question of whether women should be able to make their own reproductive healthcare choices. This week events have again occurred to underscore the potency of the abortion issue, and how the Republican Party finds itself far apart from the vast majority of the nation who favor pro-choice policies. And candidates.
I found myself partly stunned from a legal and policy perspective, but admittedly equally excited from a political point of view by the news from Arizona that filled my email box midday Tuesday. The state Supreme Court upheld a Civil War-era law that bans abortion in all cases, at any stage of pregnancy, except when it’s necessary to save the mother’s life. Obviously, the harm this does to women in medical terms and from a personal liberty view is just another reminder of how much this nation lost when Donald Trump was able to fill vacancies on the Supreme Court with ideological conservatives hell-bent on ending Roe. v. Wade. This is one more legal case that underscores the extreme overreach that Republicans are willing to take, and the harm they are willing to place women in, all because they wish to play to the extreme conservative faction within the GOP.
Because of the go-for-broke attitude on full display by the GOP all over the country, there is going to be a political fight for pro-choice candidates and issues like nothing we have ever seen leading to the November presidential election. If this Court ruling were to be put into a financial context for how much it benefits President Biden and Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, it would be in the tens of millions of dollars. That is because Arizona is a must-win state in the hunt for 270 Electoral College votes. With a statewide referendum about abortion rights assuredly to be placed on the ballot in the Grand Canyon State the word frenzied will have a brand-new definition.
What makes this such a remarkably timed ruling is that on Monday, a mere 24 hours earlier, Trump was trying to revise his position on abortion. Taking credit for undermining a 50-year precedent in the nation, the GOP all-but-proclaimed presidential nominee said the issue should be left up to the states. Trump worded his latest standing on abortion with the unstated wiggle room for more draconian action should he be allowed to sit in the Oval Office again. But on Tuesday, he was pulled right back to the epicenter of the abortion storm and the fact he is responsible for the incredible damage he unleashed over abortion. The Arizona Supreme Court used the Dobbs case that Trump is so proud of, a ruling that rejected a federal right to abortion, in repeatedly citing it as a rationale for their state ruling.
Politicos know full well that Arizonans are going to have the final say on this matter, an issue that every poll in the nation shows that the vast majority falls in the pro-choice camp. That also, obviously, includes Arizona. There is a requirement for the collection of 383,923 signatures of support for constitutional amendments in Arizona, and already they have over 500,000 signatures. (Advocates for Arizona for Abortion Access are steadier at the helm in amassing signatures than the recall attempt efforts by Trump forces in recalling Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.) The proposal protects abortion rights through the 24th week of pregnancy. Voters would be asked to permit abortions past that point to “protect the life or physical or mental health” of the mother. The measure would also prohibit any law penalizing a person who helps someone get an abortion. But, cutting to the core of the issue the proposed amendment states clearly in words that even the most strident Trump supporter can grasp, “Every individual has a fundamental right to abortion.”
This amendment has legs, and the GOP fears its repercussions. Recall the women in Kansas? Women in Ohio? The women vote in the off-year Virginia elections? The Wisconsin State Supreme Court race in April 2023? I would bet my entire Elvis LP collection on a robust and highly energized Democratic turnout in Arizona shutting down both Trump and his seriously deluded side-kick and GOP senate candidate Kari Lake.
The GOP could not do more to assist Biden and congressional candidates this year if they sat down and plotted it out on the back of a bar napkin. The President was able to hit the nail with snap and vigor today by saying within minutes of the Court action, “This ruling is a result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom”. But I must say, the best line of the day came from Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa who delivered this summation. “This is what leaving it to the states looks like”. How more accurately and concisely can it be stated?
At the end of the day, Trump and his fellow Republicans are the biggest losers in this political storm. His base will be fed the usual nonsense of wild rhetoric and they will react in their typical fashion. It appears that women in Arizona will continue to have access to abortion services in the short term as the state already agreed not to enforce the ban for 45 days. But come the fall elections the anger over this ruling will be what leads throngs of voters to cast ballots in Arizona.
I am not worried about the bet over the Elvis LPs.
