Late Thursday night, Joe Biden reversed his position on the Hyde amendment, which bans federal funding for abortion. The former vice-president’s abrupt announcement that he now opposes the Hyde amendment, just days after his campaign had announced his support for it, confirms – if anyone doubted it – that abortion is on the ballot in 2020.
Despite the conventional wisdom, which holds that abortion only motivates voters on the right, history suggests otherwise: boldly supporting a woman’s right to legal abortion is a winning strategy for Democrats on the road to the White House.
When the issue of abortion is activated during a presidential campaign – like it was in 1992 and 2012 – it results in big wins for Democrats.
Just as the 1992 presidential campaign was heating up, the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the supreme court sparked national debate about abortion. His confirmation – despite Anita Hill’s credible testimony about sexual harassment – tipped the bench to the conservatives. Roe looked doomed. But in a June 1992 ruling, three Republican appointees joined the court’s liberals to reaffirm women’s constitutional right to legal abortion.
Seven weeks later, an unpopular president, George HW Bush, surrendered the Republican convention to the only people he thought could keep him in power – the anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ, radical religious right. The platform, over Bush’s personal objection, called for banning abortion from the moment of conception. From the stage, rightwing leaders denounced “abortion on demand”, “homosexual rights” and “radical feminism”.
Bush’s gambit with the religious right backfired. Bush was crushed by a counterforce galvanized by Republican attacks on reproductive freedom and women’s rights. In the spring, upwards of 1 million people marched in Washington in the nation’s largest ever demonstration for reproductive freedom. In November, a record number of women were elected to Congress – most of them backed by the pro-choice group Emily’s List. Bush received only 37.5% of the popular vote. 1992 went down in history as the (first) year of the woman.
To be sure, 1992 deserved its Clintonworld moniker: “It’s the economy, stupid.” The poor economy was the No 1 issue for the majority of voters.
Yet Bill Clinton had also campaigned as a champion of reproductive rights, and that paid off. Post-election analyses showed that support for legal abortion had the second strongest effect of any issue on vote choice. In addition, for a quarter of all voters, abortion – not the economy – was the No 1 issue.
Republicans were on the wrong side of public opinion on abortion, and that proved enormously costly for Bush. Support for legal abortion in all circumstances reached a then record high of 61%, with two-thirds of Democrats and independents – and even a majority of Republicans – holding pro-choice views. Altogether, according to a study by the political scientist Alan Abramowitz, Bush lost one out of six Republicans over the GOP’s opposition to abortion, as pro-choice Republicans defected to Clinton or Ross Perot.
2012 featured a similar – if more surprising – showdown over women’s reproductive rights. As Republicans began casting their primary votes, the GOP House convened all-male hearings to denounce the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that health insurance cover birth control. Over the course of the campaign, the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, called Roe v Wade “one of the darkest moments in supreme court history”, published an op-ed against the birth control mandate and pledged to “get rid of” Planned Parenthood. Meanwhile, Republican-controlled states were passing a wave of invasive and unnecessary restrictions on abortion care. For good measure, Republican Senate candidates floated outrageous theories about rape and pregnancy.
In 2012, as in 1992, vocal support for reproductive freedom helped elect a Democratic president and Senate. Barack Obama, like Clinton before, leaned into the fight. A post-election study by scholars Melissa Deckman and John McTague found that the birth control mandate was overwhelmingly popular. They concluded it “was a winning issue for the Democratic party” and particularly decisive in Obama’s whopping 7.5m vote margin with women.
In short, in two of the most consequential elections of recent years, Republicans’ anti-abortion extremism galvanized a pro-choice majority to give Democrats control of the White House and Senate.
2020 looks to repeat that history – unless Democrats nominate someone out of step with their voters’ views. Someone who, say, supports the Hyde amendment.
Support for access to legal abortion remains strong and stable nationwide, with two-thirds of Americans opposed to overturning Roe v Wade. Even in Georgia, where one of the most restrictive bans was enacted, 70% are opposed to overturning Roe.
Likewise, recent elections provide compelling evidence that defending legal abortion is still a winner. In 2018, following the Kavanaugh hearings, which injected the fate of Roe and the issue of sexual assault into the campaign, exit polls showed 66% of voters favored keeping Roe as is. Democrats won seven in 10 of those pro-Roe voters. Democrats flipped two Senate seats, four governorships and 23 House seats with proudly pro-choice female candidates. (And that’s not even counting the many pro-choice men who also won.)
Looking ahead to 2020 and the key pickup states, the advantage lies with those who support legal abortion. In the “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Minnesota, more than 54% think abortion should be legal in all or most cases – by a 12- to 18-point margin over those who think it should be illegal in all or most cases.
It would be a mistake for Democrats to stay quiet or support middling positions on abortion. To their credit, most of the Democratic presidential candidates have condemned the recent abortion bans, called for the repeal of the Hyde amendment, and proposed protections for women’s reproductive health access. And the female candidates have plans.
The takeaway is clear: recent history tells us that when access to legal abortion is openly threatened by politicians beholden to the right, outspoken pro-choice Democratic candidates have the advantage.
Nancy L Cohen is an award-winning author, historian and leading national expert on the intersection of gender and American politics. She is the author of three books, including Breakthrough, Delirium: The Politics of Sex in America and The Reconstruction of American Liberalism