‘Immediate shift’: Democrats speaking about abortion in once unimaginable ways

CHICAGO — President Joe Biden and fellow Democratic leaders have spent two years focusing on women with wanted pregnancies who were denied emergency abortion care.

The party, now firmly in its Kamala Harris era, is widening the lens.

Democrats at their convention this week spotlighted stories of unwanted pregnancies, a long taboo subject in politics, as well as men who feared they’d lose their wives because they couldn’t obtain emergency abortions.

It’s a notable contrast to Biden and other candidates who for years have highlighted the stories of rape survivors or women with wanted but unviable pregnancies, leaving some on the left concerned about creating a distinction between “good” and “bad” abortions . And that framing also left men on the sidelines of what was considered a women’s issue.

On Wednesday, speakers were explicit that women should have the right to choose to end a pregnancy for any reason, framing abortion as a fundamental right to control one’s body, not just a health care need in an emergency. It’s part of an effort to ensure the issue resonates broadly ahead of November, with progressives and libertarians who believe the government has no place telling women when and why they can end pregnancies — and with politically moderate men concerned with Dobbs ’ impact on access to fertility treatments.

“Look at the immediate shift that we’ve seen with the vice president, around trusting women,” Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood’s CEO, said in an interview. “From a messaging standpoint, it’s really important because it’s setting up a broader kind of values framework for the policy to live in.”

The broader focus comes as Democrats hope that abortion — and other kinds of reproductive health care — will drive voters to the ballot box like it did during the midterms. Harris has always been a much more comfortable and savvy messenger on the issue than Biden — a devout Catholic who largely avoided saying the word “abortion” — expanding what she and other Democrats can talk about on the campaign trail.

McGill Johnson on Wednesday told the story of a Georgia woman who was “pregnant and didn’t want to be,” the first time a speaker at a Democratic convention highlighted a woman with an unwanted pregnancy.

Vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz on Wednesday shared the ups and downs of going through fertility treatments, which he framed as under threat in a post- Dobbs world.

And on Monday night, Texas resident Josh Zurawski detailed the panic he and his wife experienced as they were sent home to wait for her to get sick enough so the hospital would terminate her nonviable pregnancy.

“We’re trying to create a space for men to jump into this fight,” Zurawski told POLITICO. “It’s very clear that this isn’t just a woman’s issue because what happened to Amanda … impacted our family equally. It was really important to get on stage and share that message and hopefully try to broaden the number of men who view this as a major voting issue.”

Zurawski has not campaigned as much as his wife, he said, but in May he attended a small Los Angeles gathering with second gentleman Doug Emhoff and about 30 other men, and he has participated in other reproductive freedom events hosted by men’s organizations. And he said he was “honored” when the Harris campaign asked him to share his story alongside his wife.

“We all felt like having a male voice was really important,” he said.

At the same time, McGill Johnson said it’s important for Democrats to highlight the stories of women who received abortions because they didn’t want to be pregnant. She shared how the Georgia patient traveled to two other states trying to receive an abortion before flying to California to terminate her pregnancy.

“That is the majority of what we see,” McGill Johnson told POLITICO before her Wednesday speech. “That’s why we need to trust women because they know what is best for their lives.”

Abortion-rights activists who have long called for a broader message see the shift toward highlighting a wider variety of abortion stories as promising. Jenni Villavicencio, an OB-GYN and co-founder of Raven Lab for Reproductive Liberation , which advocates for abortion access throughout pregnancy, said that until recently, the only abortion stories featured in Democratic ads and speeches were “neatly-tied-up-in-a-bow medical emergencies, from a white, affluent, connected individual who has tons of support and looks good on camera.”

While she feels those stories are valid, she and other advocates also want Democrats to lift up stories that might be less politically palatable but more accurately reflect the diversity of people who have abortions.

“We often don’t hear folks talking about abortion later in pregnancy, outside of some severe tragedy,” said Dr. Jamila Perritt, an OB-GYN and president of Physicians for Reproductive Health. “My hope is that we are able to hear from more young people, more LGBTQ folks, more black and brown people who are closest to the problem and also closest to the solution.”

More than 9 in 10 abortions happen during the first trimester, according to CDC data, and it is rare for women to receive abortions later in pregnancy except for medical reasons.

The Democratic National Convention still featured the kinds of stories that have become emblematic of the far-reaching consequences of the fall of Roe . Kate Cox, the Texas woman who came to national prominence after she sued her state at 20 weeks pregnant as she sought an emergency abortion, shared her story in the middle of a raucous and jubilant ceremonial roll call on Tuesday confirming Harris as the party’s nominee.

And the first night of the convention featured not only the Zurawskis but two other women from Kentucky and Louisiana who shared their experiences with pregnancy, including miscarriages after rape and being denied abortions during obstetric emergencies.

On Wednesday, Walz talked about his and his wife’s struggles with infertility, offering a different spin — one that he said many would relate to — on the ripple effects of Roe ’s demise. It is an issue that took on new relevance after an Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are people, temporarily pausing treatments in some clinics in the state.

“If you’ve never experienced the hell that is infertility, I guarantee you you know somebody who has,” he said. “I’m letting you in on how we started a family, because this is a big part about what this election is about: freedom,” Walz said.

Mini Timmaraju, CEO and president of Reproductive Freedom for All, said Wednesday morning at a reproductive health-focused event that men sharing their stories publicly indicates to other men that “this is you, you’re part of the story, too.”

Both the anti-abortion and abortion rights movements have taken steps to reach out to male voters post- Roe . A messaging campaign that anti-abortion groups launched this year includes several explicit appeals to men, urging them in videos to “be a hero” by opposing abortion and becoming fathers. Meanwhile, Men4Choice and other abortion-rights groups are holding targeted events in battleground states — including one featuring Emhoff in Florida — and going canvassing door-to-door.

Male Democratic leaders have also joined the effort, with some sharing personal stories for the first time about their partner’s abortion. In 2020, Michigan Sen. Gary Peters became the first sitting senator to publicly share his abortion story, which is similar to the Zurawskis’.

In an interview in Chicago this week, Peters said people four years later still come up to him to share their stories.

“Just last week a woman came up to me in northern Michigan and said that was her story, and she appreciated that I shared it, and it’s important for people to know,” Peters said. “It affects men because that’s their partner that’s going through this experience. It’s emotionally trying. No one wants to see a loved one going through an experience like that.”