The relatively new consensus ought to please reproductive justice advocates, who have been trying to reframe the abortion debate for years. They’ve highlighted the economic barriers to abortion access and pointed to the economic opportunities the procedure affords. They’ve made an affirmative case for abortion as essential health care, rather than trying to refute restrictions as a government overreach issue. They’ve told politicians that the phrase “safe, legal, and rare”—a formulation commonly used in the Democratic Party until around 2012, but which only three 2020 candidates, all long-shots, support now—makes it sound like abortion is a social ill to be avoided rather than the common medical procedure it is. They’ve told stories of the difficult choices women are forced to make when faced with devastating diagnoses of fetal anomalies, the circumstances under which many third-trimester abortions take place. And they’ve argued that pro-choice politicians who support bans on Medicaid abortion coverage aren’t pro-choice at all, because they’re preventing low-income women from choosing abortion.
These efforts seem to have paid off: The Democratic candidates are starting to use the language and make the arguments activists have been using for quite some time. More importantly, this persistent advocacy seems to have helped move voters left on the issue. People who identify as Democrats have increasingly favored legal abortion over the years, enabling the presidential hopefuls to take up more progressive positions. The swing is even more meaningful when put in a broader context. Recent polling suggests that support for abortion rights might be a bigger motivator for voters than support for abortion restrictions, and that voters are growing ever more protective of abortion rights that appear threatened in today’s political landscape.
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