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CHICAGO — Outside the Democratic National Convention, throngs of activists took to the streets Sunday night to call for “free abortion on demand” and argue that Roe v. Wade was an inadequate and even dangerous compromise that should not be revived.
Twenty-four hours later, party delegates voted to adopt a platform embracing the narrower return-to-Roe approach favored by Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democratic Party leaders, which would allow states to ban abortions later in pregnancy.
While Democrats have made restoring abortion access a cornerstone of their campaign for the White House and Congress, the overwhelming approval of the platform Monday night spotlights the significant lingering divisions about what, exactly, that means.
Much of the abortion-rights movement embraced Harris’ candidacy the moment it was announced — praising her record as California attorney general, senator and vice president and expressing hope that she would move beyond President Joe Biden’s often hesitant advocacy and more moderate policy positions. But Harris has since clarified that she is sticking with Biden’s call to restore Roe, which protected abortion up to fetal viability — around 22 to 24 weeks — and allowed mandatory waiting periods and targeted regulations on clinics that forced many to close.
Even some of the groups pouring money into boosting Harris are critical of the Roe-focused approach.
“Starting at Roe is the wrong framework,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “It was never grounded in justice. It was grounded in gestation, state interest and … burden. None of those principles are connected with how pregnancy and privacy decisions work.”
“We don’t want just some of our rights,” she added. “We want them all.”
The abortion-rights groups closest to Harris acknowledge the Roe framework is a politically pragmatic one, even if they want more. They note that Democrats in Congress are unlikely to have the votes to restore Roe or anything more sweeping — making the debate mostly symbolic — and say it’s important to give voters a familiar rallying cry.
“I firmly believe that when Kamala Harris says and when Joe Biden says ‘restore Roe,’ that is shorthand for making abortion legal in all 50 states, and Americans support that. We polled on it. People get it,” said Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All. “For a presidential campaign, it is a way to quickly convey to Americans that we’re trying to right the ship, we’re trying to get back these fundamental baseline rights.”
Harris’ bind on abortion, in some ways, mirrors former President Donald Trump’s, as both try to assuage their parties’ activist bases without alienating moderates and swing voters. Trump, for example, has angered some of the anti-abortion advocates who helped carry him to victory in 2016 by arguing that the issue should be left to the states and by refusing to say how he would vote on a ballot measure that could overturn Florida’s six-week abortion ban.
And while Harris has met with reproductive justice groups like In Our Own Voice that believe “Roe has never been enough,” she has resisted calls to go further. That’s left some feeling like political pawns being used for their votes rather than bona fide participants in the abortion-rights conversation happening in the highest echelons of the Democratic Party.
“Democrats will always try to use this issue to win votes because it’s one of those issues that we need them on,” said Ivy Czekanski, a member of Chicago for Abortion Rights, as she prepared to march down Michigan Avenue on Sunday evening. “But we feel dangled, we feel like they’re not willing to do the right thing and entrench our rights into law because they can always use this as a cudgel to make us vote for them. We want that to stop. We just want them to do the right thing and the hard thing and to protect our rights.”
More than 400 doctors sent an open letter to Harris and Biden this month, asking them to “champion policy solutions that are not premised on returning us to the narrow protections Roe created,” citing a “multitude of reasons people need access to abortion care throughout their pregnancies” — including medical complications and difficulty saving up for the procedure.
They have yet to receive a response.
The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The vice president’s critics acknowledge she has a more nuanced grasp of abortion rights than Biden, pointing to her background in law enforcement and the meetings she’s held over the years with doctors and activists who want more sweeping protections than Roe offered. But while they offer praise for understanding, they are disappointed that it hasn’t translated into any difference in her campaign rhetoric.
“The bottom has fallen out of the reproductive health social safety net, and we have an opportunity to build a new health care system where people get the care that they need and they deserve,” said Jamila Perritt, the president and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health, which spearheaded the open letter. “But that can’t be done if we’re focused on the bare minimum.”
The platform delegates approved Monday night pledges to “make Roe the law of the land again” by passing federal legislation. It also promises to overturn the Hyde Amendment’s ban on federal funding for abortion, boost contraceptive access, protect fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization, support access to medication abortion and appoint administration officials and judges who will “uphold fundamental freedoms.”
While the document is broadly supported by abortion-rights groups close to the administration — including Reproductive Freedom for All, whose board chair sat on the platform committee — others on the left see it as a step backward from the party’s broader language in its 2020 platform, which eschewed the Roe benchmark and said: “Every woman should be able to access high-quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion.”
Nearly 100 progressive groups and hundreds of individual activists are instead promoting a policy platform dubbed Abortion Justice Now, which calls for removing all government restrictions on abortion.
Jenni Villavicencio, an OB-GYN and co-author of Abortion Justice Now, said while she understands Democrats’ concerns about losing moderate voters’ support, she wants to see party leaders take a risk to advocate for people at the margins. More than 90 percent of abortions occur in the first trimester, according to the CDC, but Villavicencio said she’s treated patients who had medical complications late in pregnancy and others who were blocked from having an abortion earlier by an abusive partner.
“Certainly we need to have a candidate that gets elected and that is willing to protect abortion rights,” she said. “But if they are not willing to protect abortion rights for the people who are most likely to be put in jail or unable to get an abortion, then what are we actually really doing? I’m unwilling to allow those folks to fall by the wayside in order to get a political win.”
Outrage over the erosion of abortion rights has energized voters since the Dobbs decision in 2022 — helping Democrats win gubernatorial, congressional and state legislative races. Democrats, hoping the trend will continue, are making the issue a core part of their 2024 message. On Monday night, the convention featured speeches by three women from red states who suffered medical complications or sexual abuse to highlight the need for abortion protections. It’s the first time such personal stories have made it to the convention stage and a direct rebuke to Trump’s stance that leaving it to the states resolves the issue.
While polls show strong support for abortion access post-Roe, that support decreases when voters are asked about terminating pregnancies in the second and third trimesters. But those pushing for few if any restrictions on abortion argue that the general public is more willing than ever to embrace that stance. A June poll from The Associated Press/NORC found that 70 percent of people think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. And a 2023 poll by PerryUndem, an opinion research firm that specializes in health care, found that voters would be even more enthusiastic about state ballot measures that legalized abortion throughout pregnancy than those with a viability limit.
“Support for the most expansive version of abortion access is stronger than it’s ever been,” said Deirdre Schifeling, chief political and advocacy officer at the ACLU. “And so we will go into the next administration doing our best to advocate for the most access that we can possibly get.”
Those in the abortion-rights movement closest to Harris said their support does not mean they’ll stop pressuring her and other Democratic leaders to embrace more expansive policies heading into November and beyond.
“We can’t stop with just legislation to codify a federal right to abortion,” Timmaraju said. “We have to push for more.”
Still, she added, “If Roe is the floor, how do you build when there is no floor?”
