Former U.S. President Donald Trump participates in a Fox News Town Hall with Sean Hannity at the New Holland Arena on Sept. 4, 2024 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Confronted with polling that shows access to abortion remains a key issue for voters, anti-abortion activists and GOP leaders are making a final pre-Election Day push to paint Democratic nominee Kamala Harris as an extremist on the issue, and abortion as unsafe.
The emphasis offers a preview of how a Republican administration headed by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance could further crack down on abortion rights, by moving to limit access to abortion medications or pushing for nationwide restrictions on the procedure for people later in pregnancy.
But more than two years after the undoing of Roe v. Wade, the push to demonize abortion — which involves reviving old talking points about banning “late-term abortion” and “abortion after birth” — may no longer be landing.
“We’re seeing a shift in people not wanting restrictions on abortion at all, including later abortion, and that is brand new,” said Tresa Undem, a public opinion researcher and partner and co-founder at the firm PerryUndem. “They can go out talking about later abortion, but it’s not as effective as it used to be because people are hearing stories about why it’s needed.”
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Trump himself has attempted to rebrand his position on abortion, claiming that if elected, he would veto any proposed national ban on the procedure. But he’s continued to muddy his own position, first saying in a recent Fox News interview that an abortion ban is “off the table,” but then adding later in the conversation that “we’ll see what happens.”
Meanwhile, Vance has said that if elected, a Republican administration would cut Planned Parenthood out of federal funding programs, arguing that “taxpayers shouldn’t fund late-term abortions.” In a recent Fox News interview, Vance declined to answer whether he would support a 15- or 20-week ban on abortion, instead saying that “it’s reasonable to say late-term abortions are barbaric.”
“Late-term abortion” has no medical meaning and most abortions take place in the first trimester of pregnancy. Though Planned Parenthood receives federal funding through the Title X program, which supports affordable contraception for low-income Americans, it is already legally prohibited from using that money or any other federal dollars to pay for abortion.
The vast majority of abortions in the United States happen in the first trimester; those that take place later typically involve medical complications uncovered later in pregnancy, or happen because the pregnant patient has faced financial and logistical barriers that delayed them getting an abortion.
A cyclist rides past a Planned Parenthood clinic on May 18, 2018, in Chicago. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
These vintage talking points about “defunding Planned Parenthood,” which predate Roe’s overturn, represent an effort by the GOP ticket and its allies to backtrack — at least rhetorically — from unpopular stances such as banning abortion nationally. But those arguments may be less effective given the growing popularity of abortion rights.
“Most Americans are in favor of allowing access to abortion at least in most cases. Americans have even grown slightly more accepting of abortion in the past few years,” said Mallory Newall, vice president of public polling for Ipsos Public Affairs, which has extensively polled on the issue. “What you’re seeing on the talking points from Republicans at large is trying to throw a little bit of red meat at their base. But it’s a hard tightrope to walk, because it’s still out of steps with where the public is.”
Still, abortion opponents have been focusing on states that could tip the election and control of the U.S. Senate, as well as those where voters could weigh in directly on abortion.
The anti-abortion group Students for Life has organized door-knocking events in Florida and Missouri, which both have abortion rights measures on their November ballots, arguing that the measures would allow abortion throughout pregnancy. (They would actually allow for restrictions after fetal viability, typically around 23 to 25 weeks.)
A political action committee associated with SBA Pro-Life America, an influential anti-abortion group, is spending $2 million on a digital ad campaign targeting Harris, who has said she supports passing a federal law that codifies Roe’s protections. The ads target voters in Georgia, North Carolina, Montana, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio, and they claim that Harris, too, would support abortion throughout pregnancy — even though the framework she supports would also allow for restrictions after fetal viability.
The same campaign characterized medication abortion, the two-pill regimen that accounts for most abortions done in the country, as dangerous, even though the drugs involved — mifepristone and misoprostol — have an incredibly low risk of complication and are largely safe and effective.
That’s an argument the organization has made before. In September, the PAC aired another Georgia-focused set of digital and televised ads blaming doctors and medication for the deaths of two women in the state. The state’s maternal mortality review committee and other experts attributed those deaths, first reported by ProPublica, to the state’s six-week abortion ban.
Though that law has exceptions for medical emergencies, doctors have repeatedly said they are exceptionally difficult to use in practice, adding that the law’s narrow wording has forced them to delay care for patients. In these cases, the law resulted in delayed follow-up care for one woman, Amber Thurman, when she developed rare side-effects after her medication abortion; the other woman, Candi Miller, did not receive follow-up care because she feared criminal punishment for getting an abortion.
Since Roe’s fall, abortion opponents have sought to argue that the pills used in medication abortion, the method used in the vast majority of pregnancy terminations in the country, are unsafe and should be taken off the market, or at the very least be put under heavy new regulations.
The argument, the substance of a case dismissed by the Supreme Court earlier this year, defies decades of serious medical research that shows the safety and effectiveness of mifepristone and misoprostol. But it has taken on greater urgency for national and state-based anti-abortion organizations, who have pointed in particular to the growing prevalence of mail-order telehealth abortion services, which a growing share of Americans have used to circumvent their states’ bans on the procedure. Medical professionals who prescribe and mail the pills operate from states with abortion-friendly governments, under the protection of “shield laws” meant to guard them from out-of-state prosecution.
The renewed focus on medication abortion, and in particular false claims about its danger, suggest that major anti-abortion lobbies would likely push for national restrictions on the drugs involved if Trump wins a second term. And the increase in attacks on “late-term abortions” — a stance Trump too has adopted — could preview efforts to enact some kind of national restrictions.
SBA Pro-Life America did not directly answer a question about what kind of policies it would prioritize if Trump is elected. But in a statement, Marjorie Dannenfelser, the organization’s president, echoed Vance’s talking points, saying that Democratic leadership would result in “painful late-term abortions through the ninth month paid for by taxpayers.”
“Strategically, they’re going in two directions,” said Greer Donley, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies abortion law. “One is trying to build support for a national abortion ban at some point in pregnancy. And two, trying to build support to take medication abortion off the market, make it harder to access, remove telehealth — whatever it’s going to be.”
Protesters hold up signs at a protest outside the Texas state capitol on May 29, 2021, in Austin, Texas. Thousands of protesters came out in response to a new bill outlawing abortions after six weeks signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. ( Sergio Flores/Getty Images)
That could have profound consequences. Data from the Society of Family Planning suggests that about 1 in 5 abortions done in the United States are now performed through telehealth, and about half of those are shield-law backed abortions for people in states with bans.
In states with these bans, activists and anti-abortion lawmakers have struggled to find new avenues to curb access to medication abortion. But medical professionals who use shield laws to provide abortions have expressed concern that a hostile presidential administration could leverage its executive authority — particularly the Food and Drug Administration — to limit access to mifepristone.
While publicly, Trump has disavowed a national ban, he’s been far less clear about what approach he would take to medication abortion. Project 2025, the conservative policy blueprint crafted by the Trump-aligned Heritage Foundation, argues that a Republican administration should push the FDA to reverse its decision that mifepristone is safe to prescribe through telehealth, or even undo the drug’s approval altogether.
Vance has endorsed enforcing a different law, a dormant 1800s anti-obscenity law known as the Comstock Act, to outlaw the mailing of abortion medication.
“The one thing I feel confident he will go after is medication abortion through the FDA,” Donley said. “That’s the one that’s having very serious effects for the anti-abortion movement across the country, because of shield laws and shield provision and telehealth.”
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