If you think Republican politicians and far-right judges should override your family’s most personal medical decisions, stop reading this post.
If you think pregnancy complications should force doctors to choose between providing the abortion care their patients urgently need and the threat of being jailed, Trump has great news for you.
If you think women should perpetually be one bad election away from having their freedom ripped away, then Democrats up and down the ballot might not be your first choice this November.
But if you believe in freedom, if you think your personal decisions and health care shouldn’t be the domain of domineering politicians, then we’ve got a fight on our hands, because this week laid bare for the nation what we’ve known for the last two years: abortion is on the ballot this November.
On Monday, Trump announced that he’d support whatever states decided to do in banning abortion. If you look carefully at what he said, he didn’t say he’d veto a national ban—which Mike Johnson’s Congress would surely send to him if he returns to the Oval Office. And we know his administration is openly planning to curtail access to abortion nationwide through executive action. Trump was trying to deflect attention from the fact that he’s the reason abortion bans are slamming down in state after state—but once again proudly took credit for killing Roe v. Wade.
The next day, Republican-appointed justices on the Arizona Supreme Court upheld an 1864 near-total abortion ban, making clear just how extreme Trump’s position is.
As if to drive home the point, Wisconsinites learned yesterday that our beloved state Supreme Court Justice Anne Walsh Bradley will be retiring at the end of her 30-year tenure on the Court next year. That means we’ll have an election for an open seat next April, which will determine the majority. The Republican candidate, Brad Schimel, is an anti-abortion extremist. As long as states can impose bans, reproductive freedom in Wisconsin will remain on a knife’s edge.
Across the country, the Biden campaign, Democratic elected officials, and state parties like WisDems have gone into overdrive to make sure that these stakes are clear to voters. We held a press call yesterday with Democratic leaders from across Wisconsin to highlight what Trump’s support for archaic state abortion bans means for our state. The New York Times reported on Democrats’ efforts to ensure that there’s a unified freedom message up and down the ballot in November. And the Biden campaign has already announced a seven-figure ad campaign in Arizona—no doubt the first of many such drives nationwide.
If you rip away Americans’ freedoms, there will be political consequences. That has to be the lesson this November. Let’s make it so.