Despite Biden’s dismal debate performance, abortion care providers remain determined

Abortion rights advocates were stunned by President Joe Biden’s vague and sometimes incoherent messaging on abortion access during Thursday night’s debate, particularly when he declined to rebuke former President Donald Trump’s false claims that Democrats are in favor of infanticide.

“The debate was a disaster,” said Dr. Warren Hern, director of the Boulder Abortion Clinic in Colorado. “It’s going to be hard to recover from this.”

The debate should have been a pitch for people in favor of abortion rights. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, defended the fact that he appointed three anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court while in office from 2017 to 2021. As a result, the constitutional right to an abortion was overturned in 2022, leaving states in charge of whether women should be allowed to terminate their pregnancy and at what stage.

But Biden did little to challenge his opponent on the issue during Thursday’s showdown. He said the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was a “terrible thing,” but then changed the subject to a nursing student who was killed earlier this year on the University of Georgia campus — an incident that had no had anything to do with abortion.

Julie Burkhart, co-owner of Hope Clinic, which provides abortions in Granite City, Illinois, said Biden’s poor showing on the topic sparked a sense of “discouragence, alarm and concern” among her colleagues. She said she feared a second Trump presidency could lead to a national abortion ban.

“This presidential election, I think, is the most important election that I will ever witness in my life,” Burkhart said.

Opponents of abortion said the same thing. They hope a second Trump presidency would lead to “reasonable measures” to make sure “tax dollars are not used to pay for abortion,” said Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee. .

The polarizing views come as the nation continues to grapple with the topic of abortion care. Last week marked the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe. According to a recent poll by KFF, a health care research and policy group, 1 in 10 women say the right to an abortion is the most important issue that determines their vote.

“Abortion rights advocates need to make sure the public understands what’s at stake for women’s health care and women’s rights,” Hern said. “It’s a desperate situation.”

Abortion rights supporters say they will stick to their messaging ahead of the election. They are trying to distract voters from Biden’s poor performance by focusing on his administration’s overall goals and decisions about who should be in charge of influential health care agencies.

“What direction will these agency heads take? Will they defend attacks on abortion access, or will they promulgate rules that make it more challenging, if not impossible, for people to access care?” said Michelle Velasquez, chief strategy officer at Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin.

“The presidency is more than just one person,” Velasquez said.

Leila Abolfazli, director of national abortion strategy at the Women’s Legal Center’s National Action Fund, said the group will continue to explain the impact of ongoing decisions, such as the Supreme Court’s overturning of a decision on whether Idaho’s abortion ban violates a federal law that sets standards for emergency room patients, including women whose pregnancies are life-threatening.

“The struggle I have is explaining to people what these transitional concepts and laws really mean on a daily basis,” Abolfazli said. “Pregnancy care is under attack, across the board. That’s what people need to understand.”

Beyond the presidential election, four states have amendments on the November ballot that would aim to preserve abortion rights: Colorado, Florida, Maryland and South Dakota.

“We’re all holding our breath until November,” said Candace Dye, owner of A Woman’s World Medical Center in Fort Pierce, Florida, a clinic that provides abortions. “I hope and pray that amendment passes.”