Several prominent pro-abortion groups have united in a decade-long effort to restore the ability of women to abort their children in every state of the union.
Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and Reproductive Freedom for All are banding together to form Abortion Access Now — "a national, 10-year campaign that will both prepare policies for the next time Democrats control the House, Senate, and White House, and build support for those policies among lawmakers and the public," according to Politico.
On Monday evening, they lobbied a group of well-heeled progressives about the need to go on offense.
“Dobbs was a really devastating outcome, but we’re going to win back our rights much faster than they think,” Mini Timmaraju, the president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said in an interview. “We’re not going to let the anti-abortion extremists define this moment. We’re coming for them and we’re going to make sure that they become increasingly irrelevant.”
The disturbing part of this effort is that they don't just want to restore abortion rights to where they were before Dobbs. They want to expand the right to abortions far beyond the limitations of Roe.
The coalition, which also includes the Center for Reproductive Rights, In Our Own Voice, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum and the National Women’s Law Center, plans to push for the most sweeping federal protections possible — laws that make abortion not just legal but easily accessible and affordable. But its effort to project a unified battle plan comes amid deep divisions within the left about the best way to restore abortion access. Some abortion rights supporters, including President Joe Biden, are calling for a revival of Roe, which protected abortion only up to the point of fetal viability. Others argue that Roe failed to ensure meaningful abortion access for many people during the roughly 50 years it was the law of the land, and are calling for national protections that go further.
The pro-abortion lobby is outspending the pro-life forces at every turn, including state ballot initiatives to legalize abortion and electing pro-life candidates. But that hasn't phased most of them.
“It feels like we’re David and they’re Goliath,” said Kristi Hamrick, chief policy strategist for Students for Life of America. The group recently started a modest messaging campaign in states where abortion was on the ballot. “There’s a glut of spending to sell all abortion and someone has to tell the other side of the story.”
But the new pro-abortion lobby has other goals than "telling the other side of the story."
“We are operating with a really big vision, but we’re also living in the world of the possible,” said Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity. “Our goal, really, is to galvanize what is currently a national outrage over abortion bans into action — into a mass movement.”
Abortion opponents have made public specific policy levers they want pulled to limit abortion if Donald Trump returns to the White House, such as enforcement of the Comstock Act to prohibit the mailing of any drug or medical device used for terminating a pregnancy. Abortion Access Now is, instead, pushing the broad goal of “ensuring a federal right to abortion, making it legal again, and securing access to abortion care in every state” — with details to come down the road.
Like many left-wing issues, advocates see abortion as a "long, twilight struggle" to reverse state-level decisions to ban abortion in most cases. Reversing state laws that make abortion illegal will mean appointing Supreme Court judges to do their bidding.
Could a Democratic president achieve that goal in the next four years? Clarence Thomas is 75, and Samuel Alito is 74. John Roberts is 69, while the three Trump-appointed justices are all in their 50s. Replacing two conservative justices will flip the court and hand the liberals the steering wheel.
It wouldn't take long to radicalize abortion and bring on even more liberal abortion policies.
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