WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden had ample opportunity during the presidential debate to lay out a clear vision on abortion rights in light of increasing restrictions and deteriorating medical care for women since the fall of Roe v. Wade, something his campaign sees as an important motivator for voters.
That’s not what happened.
Biden’s muddled and even nonsensical responses Thursday night to questions about abortion rights — coupled with TrumpThe bizarre but unverified claims about Democrats’ positions were panned by some abortion rights advocates who suggested the performance was a failure.
“Look, no one who cares about abortion felt good about Biden’s comments or his actions last night,” said Kellie Copeland, the director of Abortion Forward, an advocacy group in Ohio. “We need better — we need much better.”
To put it more bluntly, “He failed us last night,” said Sarah Garza Resnick of Personal PAC, an Illinois group that supports candidates who support abortion rights.
Reproductive rights have already proven to be a winning issue for Democrats. Voters consistently opt to protect abortion rights on ballot initiatives. About two-thirds of U.S. adults and nearly nine in 10 Democrats say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to AP-NORC data from last June. It’s an issue that should be an easy win for Biden.
The president recovered somewhat on Friday, telling his supporters at a rally in North Carolina: “Folks, despite all his lies, we learned some important truths about Donald Trump last night. We learned that he is still proud that he is the person who killed Roe v. Wade.”
But the night before, Biden seemed unable to explain the Supreme Court’s historic ruling legalizing abortion.
When asked by moderators whether he supports certain restrictions on abortion, Biden said he “supports Roe v. Wade, which had three trimesters. The first time is between a woman and a doctor. The second time is between a doctor and an extreme situation. A third time is between the doctor, I mean, between the women and the state.
Abortion rights advocates lamented a missed opportunity to clearly lay out the stakes.
“Biden had a great opportunity to really show the difference between him and Trump in who supports abortion access and who doesn’t,” said Nourbese Flint, president of the national abortion justice group All Above All Action Fund. “And I think he really missed the point.”
The overturning of federal protections has left the issue largely in the hands of state legislatures, where laws vary widely. At least 25 million women now live in states with abortion restrictions.
And since Roe’s death, reproductive health in the U.S. has become increasingly fraught. Women who never intended to terminate their pregnancies have nearly died because they couldn’t get emergency treatment. Care for miscarriages has been delayed. Routine reproductive medical care has dried up in states with strict bans. In Alabama, fertility treatments were temporarily halted.
The Supreme Court revisited the issue Thursday, tentatively ruling that Idaho women should be able to get abortions in medical emergencies; the state’s strict abortion ban generally does not allow this, and the Biden administration has filed a lawsuit. Trump even said he was in favor of exceptions to bans – but Biden failed to take advantage of them.
Trump again boasted about appointing three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
And he made false claims that Democratic-led states were passing legislation “that would allow you to execute a baby after birth.” Infanticide is a crime in every state, and no state has passed a law allowing the killing of a baby after birth.
Abortion rights advocates say this type of language and “late-term abortions” are a not-so-subtle attempt to stigmatize abortions later in pregnancy. But even those are extremely rare. In 2020, less than 1% of abortions in the United States were performed at or after 21 weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And those types of abortions are usually the result of serious complications.
“Donald Trump has shown us who he is and what he can do. There should be no doubt that if given the chance, he will sign a national abortion ban,” said Mini Timmaraju, head of Reproductive Freedom for All. But even as abortion rights groups criticized Biden’s performance, they closed ranks around the president, praising his record on abortion rights and highlighting concerns about what Trump could do if he wins the election.
“The choice between the two presidential tickets is crystal clear: Donald Trump poses an existential threat to women in America,” said a joint statement Friday from several groups.
Biden is hardly a “call your abortion” type, and has long been seen as an imperfect messenger: He’s an 81-year-old Catholic man who still avoids the word. But his evolution over the years has mirrored that of the Democratic Party as a whole. And the way he talks about it—as an issue of health care and personal freedom—is something that resonates with voters.
Vice President Kamala Harris is the administration’s lead spokesperson on the issue. But Biden’s campaign has also enlisted a growing group of women to speak to voters about how a lack of access to abortion has affected them. These are women who never intended to end their pregnancies but have been swept up in the medical confusion created by the overturning of Roe. Biden’s campaign released an ad featuring one of them on Thursday.
Still, Biden missed important opportunities during the debate to fact-check Trump and clarify untruths.
“It was his duty to expose the lies,” said Jennifer Driver, senior director of reproductive rights at the nonprofit State Innovation Exchange. “He just couldn’t accurately and effectively push back on the lies that were presented. And if he doesn’t do that in real time, people watching won’t know what’s wrong.”
About 4 in 10 approve of Biden’s handling of abortion policy — making it one of his better issues — while many disagree with his approach, according to a new AP-NORC poll. Seven in 10 Democrats say they approve, compared with about 3 in 10 independents and about 2 in 10 Republicans.
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Christine Fernando reported from Chicago. Associated Press writer Linley Sanders contributed to this report.
