Opinion

Trumps Is Now Threatening All Immigrants, “Illegal” or Not

Edith Olmsted

THE NEW REPUBLIC
Wed, October 9, 2024 at 8:21 AM MDT·2 min read


Donald Trump has taken yet another page out of the fascist handbook and decided that immigrants in the United States with legal status aren’t actually legal.

During an interview Tuesday night on Newsmax, Trump said he didn’t care about what legal processes the Haitian immigrants of Springfield, Ohio, had gone through. They’re still “illegal” to him.

“I mean, look at Springfield where 30,000 illegal immigrants are dropped, and it was—they may have done it through a certain little trick, but they are illegal immigrants as far as I’m concerned. They’re destroying the towns, they’re destroying the whole—they’ll end up destroying the state!” he ranted.


The Haitian immigrants in Springfield are in the country under temporary protected status, which Trump has already pledged to revoke if he is put into office. The Republican presidential nominee’s reckless disregard for legal processes isn’t surprising, but it is alarming, as it widens the field of whom he hopes to displace in his plan to carry out the largest mass deportations in U.S. history. Whether you’re in the country legally or not legally depends entirely on whether you’re a convenient scapegoat for the former president.

Vice presidential nominee JD Vance has also stated that he doesn’t care about the legal status of immigrants. “Well, if Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally, and says these people are now here legally, I’m still going to call them an illegal alien,” Vance said during a campaign event in North Carolina last month. “An illegal action from Kamala Harris does not make an alien legal. That is not how this works.”

Trump has been not-so-subtly increasing the number of Haitian immigrants in Springfield every time he mentions it. In reality, there are between 10,000 and 12,000 Haitian immigrants in Springfield, according to CNN. Using fake numbers, and even faker stories, Trump has repeatedly exaggerated the supposed negative effect of immigrant communities on American cities.
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Ohioans know Trump’s claims about immigrants are false — but they still plan to vote for him
Alex Woodward
Thu, October 10, 2024 

Most voters in Ohio do not believe Donald Trump’s racist falsehood that Haitian immigrants are “eating the pets” of Springfield.

But the Republican presidential candidate is still leading Vice President Kamala Harris by roughly six percentage points in the state, maintaining his lead from his 2016 and 2020 victories, according to polling from The Washington Post.

Roughly 55 percent of Ohio voters, including nearly every Democratic voter in the survey, correctly believe that the debunked viral claim that Haitian immigrants in the state are eating people’s cats and dogs is false.

But 42 percent of Ohio Republicans believe Trump, the poll found. Taken together with the respondents who say they’re “not sure,” that figure is 68 percent.

Law enforcement and city officials in Springfield have firmly rejected the allegation — which was amplified by Trump on the debate stage and by his running mate JD Vance and their allies, dovetailing with Republican campaign promises and inflated claims on immigration and the US-Mexico border.

The claims appeared to fuel death threats as well as hoax bomb threats that temporarily closed schools and city buildings and forced hospitals into lockdown.

An electronic billboard in North Carolina displays a message against Donald Trump referencing his false claims that immigrants in Ohio are eating pets. (REUTERS)

Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican who supports Trump, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times defending the city’s “rich history of providing refuge for the oppressed and being a place of opportunity.”

Haitian immigrants, who are living there legally, have been an economic boon to the city amid a population decline and a depressed business outlook as the city’s labor force dried up, DeWine said.

“As a supporter of former President Donald Trump and Senator JD Vance, I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield,” DeWine wrote. “This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there.”

Trump won the state by roughly eight percentage points in 2016 and 2020 after Democratic candidate Barack Obama carried the state in 2008 and 2012.

Ninety percent of Republican voters in the state plan to vote for Trump in 2024, while 95 percent of Democrats plan to support Harris, according to the poll.

The Washington Post poll also found that the race for Ohio Senate is in a dead heat, with incumbent Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown at 48 percent and his Republican rival Bernie Moreno at 47 percent — within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Ohio voters don’t back Trump’s false claims about Haitian immigrants, poll says

David Rees
Thu, October 10, 2024



COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Although former President Donald Trump holds an edge over Vice President Kamala Harris in Ohio, a majority of voters in the state do not believe the false claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are “eating people’s pets,” a new poll shows.

About 57% of Ohio voters said the debunked comments are probably or definitely false, while 24% said Trump’s claim is probably or definitely true, according to a new Washington Post poll that surveyed 1,002 likely Ohio voters. The poll comes after Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have pushed untrue claims about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, even as local officials have said there is no evidence for such claims.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” said Trump during a debate with Harris on Sept. 10.

About 55% of Ohio voters said they back Gov. Mike DeWine’s assertion that Trump’s claim is not true, and that those Haitian immigrants are in the state legally. Still, about 4 in 10 Ohio voters, about 42%, said Haitian immigrants in the state make the communities they live in worse, while 32% said they make them better.

His son died in a crash with a Haitian immigrant. He says Trump, Vance are using it for ‘political gain’

Trump has said he would deport Ohio’s Haitian immigrants if elected, vowing to revoke the migrants’ temporary status that allows them to remain in Springfield legally. Trump said that, in his opinion, “it’s not legal” and that Springfield has “been overrun.”

“Absolutely, I’d revoke it, and I’d bring them back to their country,” Trump said in an interview with NewsNation’s Ali Bradley at a Texas fundraising event. “They’ll receive them. If I bring them back, they’re going to receive them.”

Even through the Springfield controversy, the poll found Trump holds a six-point advantage, 51% to 45%, over Harris among likely Ohio voters, which is similar to his eight-point winning margin over President Biden four years ago. Ohio voters have a more favorable view of Trump, at 47%, compared to an unfavorable rating of 46%. Ohio’s view of Harris is reversed, with an unfavorable rating of 51% compared to 43% favorable.

Vance holds the state’s highest favorable rating at 49%, compared to an unfavorable of 42%. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, holds a favorable view of 42% to an unfavorable of 43%.

Meanwhile, voters are about evenly split in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race, with 48% supporting Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and 47% supporting Republican Bernie Moreno. Voters said Brown has a lead on handling issues, like abortion, health care and helping the middle class, while Moreno has an edge on immigration, taxes and crime.

Voters prefer Brown to Moreno by 13 points to handle abortion, after Ohio approved a measure last November to establish the right to abortion in the state constitution. Still, Moreno holds an advantage in that 51% of Ohio voters want Republicans to control the U.S. Senate, compared to 42% who wants Democrats to control the chamber.

Brown is more popular than Moreno, with 45% rating the Democratic senator favorably and 42% unfavorably. Moreno’s image is underwater, with 37% favorable and 46% unfavorable. The poll also found that Black voters in Ohio favor Brown by 72% to 24% for Moreno, similar to Harris’s margin over Trump, 70% to 24%.

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. 

Most in Ohio survey say baseless Trump claim that immigrants are eating pets is false

Tara Suter
Thu, October 10, 2024 




Most in a new Ohio survey from The Washington Post said baseless claims about immigrants eating pets are false.

Fifty-seven percent of registered voters in the Buckeye State labeled a claim by former President Trump that “Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people’s pets” as “definitely false” or “probably false.” About 24 percent labeled the claim as “definitely true” or “probably true.”

The false claim came into the national spotlight during last month’s presidential debate between Trump and Vice President Harris, with the former president stating that Haitian migrants are “eating the dogs” in the Ohio city.

“What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country — and look at what’s happening to the towns [in the] United States, a lot of towns don’t want to talk. Not going to be Aurora [or] Springfield,” the former president said. “A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs.”

When asked about “Haitian immigrants in Ohio” and how they affect “the communities they live in,” 32 percent of registered voters said they believe they “generally make” the communities they live in “a lot better” or “a little better.” Forty-two percent said they believe Haitian immigrants in their state generally make the communities they live in “a little worse” or “a lot worse.”

The Post poll was conducted Oct. 3-7 with 1,002 Ohio registered voters and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. T

The Hill.

 

 

China defiant over South China Sea skirmishes in ASEAN talks and blames meddling by foreign forces

Laos ASEAN
South Korean President Yoon, left, shakes hands with Thailand's Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra at the 25th ASEAN - South Korea Summit to commemorate the 35th Anniversary of Dialogue Relation in Vientiane, Laos, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
EILEEN NG AND JINTAMAS SAKSORNCHAI
Updated Thu, October 10, 2024 at 6:35 AM MDT 5 min read


VIENTIANE, Laos (AP) — Southeast Asian leaders stepped up pressure on China to respect international law following clashes in the disputed South China Sea, but Chinese Premier Li Qiang was defiant during annual summit talks on Thursday as he blamed “external forces” for interfering in regional affairs.


The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations' meeting with Li followed recent violent confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam that heightened unease over China's increasingly assertive actions in the contested waters.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said it was "regrettable that the overall situation in the South China Sea remains tense and unchanged” due to China's actions, which he said violated international law.

“We continue to be subjected to harassment and intimidation,” he told summit leaders. He called for more urgency in ASEAN's negotiations with China for a code of conduct to govern the South China Sea. The Philippines, a longtime U.S. ally, has been critical of other ASEAN countries for not doing more to get China to back away.

Li responded by saying the South China Sea is “a shared home” and that China has an obligation to protect its sovereignty, according to an ASEAN official who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the discussion.


Li later said meddling by foreign forces is creating conflicts within the region.

“We must realize that our development is also facing some unstable and uncertain factors. In particular, external forces frequently interfere and even try to introduce bloc confrontation and geopolitical conflicts into Asia,” Li said during an ASEAN meeting with China, Japan and South Korea. He called for more dialogue between countries to ensure disputes are resolved amicably.

Li didn’t name the foreign forces, but China has previously warned the U.S. not to meddle in the region’s territorial disputes.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who arrived in Laos on Thursday for the meetings, is expected to raise the issue of China’s actions in the sea, officials said. The U.S. has no territorial claims in the South China Sea but has deployed Navy ships and fighter jets to patrol the waterway and promote freedom of navigation and overflight.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who takes over the rotating ASEAN chair next year, said the bloc has called for an early conclusion to the code of conduct to maintain peace and security in the strategic waterway. Talks have been ongoing for years, hampered by sticky issues including disagreements over whether the pact should be binding.


ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei along with Taiwan have overlapping claims with China, which asserts sovereignty over virtually all of the South China Sea. Chinese and Philippine vessels have clashed repeatedly this year, and Vietnam said last week that Chinese forces assaulted its fishermen in the disputed sea. China has also sent patrol vessels to areas that Indonesia and Malaysia claim as exclusive economic zones.

Aside from regional security issues, the focus at the summit was also on trade. China's Li said creating an “ultra large-scale market” ia key to economic prosperity amid rising global trade protectionism.

ASEAN and China said they expect to conclude negotiations to upgrade their free trade pact next year. Since the two sides signed the pact covering a market of 2 billion people in 2010, ASEAN’s trade with China has leaped from $235.5 billion to $696.7 billion last year.

China is ASEAN's No. 1 trading partner and its third-largest source of foreign investment — a key reason why the bloc has been reluctant to criticize Chinese actions in the South China Sea.


ASEAN leaders, who held a summit among themselves on Wednesday, also met separately with new Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol.

ASEAN elevated its ties with South Korea to a “comprehensive strategic partnership." Yoon said the new designation will further help both sides to “create a new future together.”

Ishiba also pledged to boost the Japan-ASEAN relationship by providing patrol vessels and training in maritime law enforcement, strengthening economic security through financial and other support, and bolstering cybersecurity.

“Japan shares principles such as freedom, democracy and the rule of law, and would like to create and protect the future together with ASEAN,” he said.

The bloc is also holding individual talks with dialogue partners India, Australia, Canada, the U.S. and the United Nations that will culminate in an East Asia Summit of 18 nations including Russia and New Zealand on Friday.

Former ASEAN Secretary-General Ong Keng Yong said that despite challenges in addressing disputes in the South China Sea and the Myanmar civil war, ASEAN's central role in the region is undisputable.

“ASEAN and its diplomatic maneuvers have sustained the relative peace and progress of Southeast Asia to date. ASEAN will continue to be useful in that regard. Big powers cannot do what they wish in the region,” said Ong, who is now deputy chairman of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

Nearly 6,000 people have been killed and over 3 million displaced in Myanmar's civil war after the army ousted an elected government in 2021. The military has backtracked on an ASEAN peace plan it agreed to in late 2021 and fighting has continued with pro-democracy guerrillas and ethnic rebels.

Myanmar's top generals have been shut out of ASEAN summits since the military takeover. Thailand will host an informal ASEAN ministerial-level consultation on Myanmar in mid-December as frustration grows in the bloc over the prolonged conflict.

The US Supreme Court May Use Dobbs to Take Down Trans Rights—and Beyond

NEW TRUMP AD MAKES THIS AN ELECTION ISSUE

Susan Rinkunas

THE NEW REPUBLIC
Fri, October 11, 2024 

As the Supreme Court weighed the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case in 2021 and 2022, civil rights advocates noted that this would be no narrow ruling—and that the fallout from overturning Roe v. Wade would go way beyond abortion. After all, there were numerous legal matters inextricably tied to the Roe precedent, including the right to birth control and marriage equality. In his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito attempted to reassure people that no other rights were at risk. He wrote: “To ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

That was a lie. The February 2024 Alabama Supreme Court ruling declaring that embryos should be considered people under wrongful death laws, and which halted in vitro fertilization treatments, cited Dobbs multiple times. And we’re seeing another instance of Dobbs’s repercussions in a pending case about sex discrimination in medical care. If the high court accepts these arguments, it could have wide-ranging effects.




One of the biggest Supreme Court cases this term, U.S. v. Skrmetti, is about whether bans on gender-affirming care for minors amount to unconstitutional sex discrimination. The plaintiffs—three Tennessee transgender youth and their families—argue that the state law clearly discriminates based on sex because it bans medical providers from prescribing puberty blockers and hormone treatments to transgender youth but allows those same therapies for cisgender kids. (To put a finer point on it, under the law, Senate Bill 1, a minor assigned female at birth can take estrogen, while a minor assigned male cannot.) The Department of Justice argues that the Tennessee law violates equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.

In a brief filed on Tuesday afternoon, Tennessee’s Republican Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti chillingly cited Dobbs more than 10 times to argue that its law is a mere regulation of medical care and doesn’t discriminate based on sex. (The Dobbs opinion made the same claim about the Mississippi abortion law in the case.) More specifically, Tennessee claims that S.B. 1 isn’t discriminatory because it only restricts these treatments if the end goal is to transition to a different sex. Skrmetti writes:

The provision of testosterone to boys “to treat a minor’s congenital defect, precocious puberty, disease, or physical injury,” Tenn. Code Ann. §68-33-103(b)(1)(A), does not serve the same medical purpose as the provision of testosterone to a girl who wants to transition. The same drug is at issue. But it is used at different dosages and for different medical purposes.

But Michelle Banker, senior director of reproductive rights and health litigation at the National Women’s Law Center, said Tennessee is “just flat wrong on the law to be relying on Dobbs in this way.” And the error can be traced back to Justice Alito himself.


In what essentially amounts to an aside in the text of the Dobbs decision, Alito wrote that state abortion bans don’t violate the equal protection clause, even though that was not an official question in the case. “The [equal protection] discussion in Dobbs is what we call ‘dicta,’ meaning that it doesn’t have the force of law because the issue wasn’t before the court,” Banker said. “The court had no business making a statement about it in that case, and courts shouldn’t be relying on it now.” (Unfortunately, it’s not the only instance of extraneous Alito comments setting a trap for people’s rights—the same can be said of the 2014 Hobby Lobby case about birth control.) In this same section, Alito cited a 1974 case, Geduldig v. Aiello, which held that pregnancy discrimination didn’t violate equal protection. Banker said the reasoning Alito applied in invoking Geduldig has been “rejected over and over,” but Tennessee cites it several times as well.

If the Supreme Court blesses this line of reasoning, states could use the precedent to attack other forms of health care. Banker said that Tennessee’s argument could have “really radical implications”—and pointed to birth control, as well as certain fertility treatments that would likely end up endangered.

Gillian Branstetter, a communications strategist at the American Civil Liberties Union, underscored that allowing politicians to regulate medical care based on sex is a risk for people who aren’t trans. “There really is no such thing as regulating other people’s lives because of who they are—you’re opening the door for the state to do the same thing to you,” Branstetter said. “The attacks are already escalating into things like IVF access and other reproductive health care. It’s not hard to imagine how it would then escalate into things like contraceptive access.”

Branstetter noted that solidarity is key: “The goal is for other people to be so afraid of transgender people’s freedom that they’re willing to sacrifice their own.”






The various right-wing playbooks against bodily autonomy have overlapped for years. There are already cases moving through the court system concerning minors’ right to access birth control without involving their parents. Earlier this year, the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of a conservative father who said a federal program offering contraception without parental consent violated his parental rights. The conservative blueprint Project 2025 wants a future Trump administration to target insurance coverage of emergency contraception, and we could also see states passing laws restricting minors’ access to those pills and to IUDs.

The right to use birth control, in particular, is usually discussed in the context of what’s known as substantive due process reasoning—not the equal protection rights at issue in the Tennessee case. Justice Clarence Thomas notably wrote in a Dobbs concurring opinion that he hoped the court would revisit other landmark precedents that relied on substantive due process, like Griswold v. Connecticut on birth control, Lawrence v. Texas on same-sex intimacy, and Obergefell v. Hodges on marriage equality. (Thomas conspicuously didn’t mention Loving v. Virginia, which protects interracial marriages, perhaps because he is married to a white woman.) But a steady chipping away at the right to birth control, starting but not ending with young people, could lead to a future where the Supreme Court overturns Griswold—we saw this strategy in the decades-long fight against Roe.

The Skrmetti case has not yet been scheduled for argument, but when the court does hear it, it’s likely that many media outlets will depict it as a case only about transgender people. Such framings will require substantial pushback—as history has shown us, all of our rights are intertwined.

Tennessee cites Dobbs to defend ban on gender-affirming care for minors at Supreme Court

Jordan Rubin
Thu, October 10, 2024 

When it overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the Republican-appointed Supreme Court majority rejected the notion that the Constitution’s equal protection clause extended to abortion rights.

Now, Tennessee is citing the Dobbs ruling to the justices in its defense of the state’s ban on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors.

“That is not discrimination,” the state Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican, wrote in a high court brief filed this week. “It is an evenhanded ‘regulation of a medical procedure’ that turns on the reason for the procedure’s use,” the brief continued, quoting from the abortion ruling authored by Justice Samuel Alito in one of several references in Tennessee’s filing.

The legal question in the case is whether the state law, called SB1, violates equal protection. The law prohibits all medical treatments intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”

The state didn’t cite Dobbs out of nowhere. The federal appeals court that sided with the state, prompting Supreme Court review, did as well to support the position that heightened legal protection “does not apply in the context of laws that regulate medical procedures unique to one sex or the other.”

But in seeking to highlight the law’s discriminatory nature, the federal government writes to the justices that it “leaves the same treatments entirely unrestricted if they are prescribed for any other purpose, such as treating delayed or precocious puberty. Thus, for example, a teenager whose sex assigned at birth is male can be prescribed testosterone to conform to a male gender identity, but a teenager assigned female at birth cannot.”

Oral argument isn’t scheduled yet in the appeal, called United States v. Skrmetti, which could lead to one of the biggest decisions of the term that started this week. A decision is expected by July.

Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in Donald Trump’s legal cases.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com

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Tennessee cites Dobbs to defend ban on gender-affirming care for minors at Supreme Court

Jordan Rubin

Thu, October 10, 2024 at 12:33 PM MDT·2 min read

16

When it overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the Republican-appointed Supreme Court majority rejected the notion that the Constitution’s equal protection clause extended to abortion rights.

Now, Tennessee is citing the Dobbs ruling to the justices in its defense of the state’s ban on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors.

“That is not discrimination,” the state Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican, wrote in a high court brief filed this week. “It is an evenhanded ‘regulation of a medical procedure’ that turns on the reason for the procedure’s use,” the brief continued, quoting from the abortion ruling authored by Justice Samuel Alito in one of several references in Tennessee’s filing.

The legal question in the case is whether the state law, called SB1, violates equal protection. The law prohibits all medical treatments intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.”

The state didn’t cite Dobbs out of nowhere. The federal appeals court that sided with the state, prompting Supreme Court review, did as well to support the position that heightened legal protection “does not apply in the context of laws that regulate medical procedures unique to one sex or the other.”

But in seeking to highlight the law’s discriminatory nature, the federal government writes to the justices that it “leaves the same treatments entirely unrestricted if they are prescribed for any other purpose, such as treating delayed or precocious puberty. Thus, for example, a teenager whose sex assigned at birth is male can be prescribed testosterone to conform to a male gender identity, but a teenager assigned female at birth cannot.”

Oral argument isn’t scheduled yet in the appeal, called United States v. Skrmetti, which could lead to one of the biggest decisions of the term that started this week. A decision is expected by July.

Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in Donald Trump’s legal cases.

This article was originally published on 

Democrats Are Finally Talking About Abortion

Grace Segers

THE NEW STATESMAN
Thu, October 10, 2024



In her first, and perhaps only, debate with former President Donald Trump in September, Kamala Harris spoke about abortion in terms not typically used by a Democratic presidential candidate. “Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail, and she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot? She didn’t want that. Her husband didn’t want that,” Harris said, responding to Trump’s claim that Americans wanted the issue of abortion access to be returned to the states. “A 12- or 13-year-old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term? They don’t want that.”

It was a reminder of why abortion rights activists were so excited when Harris became the Democratic nominee for president in August. Her campaign marks a shift in the party’s rhetoric on abortion access. Gone are the days of candidates who insisted that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare,” while barely daring to mention the actual word “abortion.”

But the 2022 decision by the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade brought abortion to the forefront of Democrats’ campaign messaging and was critical to Democratic victories in several state and congressional races. Practically overnight, abortion surged in importance as an issue for voters.

Harris’s campaign has centered the real, often shocking consequences of the repeal of Roe.

Harris’s campaign has centered the real, often shocking consequences of the repeal of Roe. Kaitlyn Joshua, a Louisiana woman who has become a key campaign surrogate for Harris, spoke on stage at the Democratic National Convention in August, relating how she was turned away from two emergency rooms during her first-trimester miscarriage in 2022. She was flanked by Amanda Zurawski, who unsuccessfully sued the state of Texas after she was denied an abortion during a nonviable and life-threatening pregnancy, and Hadley Duvall, a Kentucky woman who was raped and impregnated by her stepfather when she was 12 years old. Duvall, who miscarried the pregnancy, has also appeared in a campaign ad for Harris.

Harris is the most prominent Democratic politician to focus on these stories, but she is hardly alone. For more than two years, Democrats across the country have focused on the tangible consequences of the repeal of Roe, and warned of what a Trump presidency and Republican-controlled Congress could entail for abortion access. They believe that this messaging, and the impact of the repeal of Roe, could help them win the White House.

“I’ve had conversations with a lot of women—some that have not been engaged in the political conversation, and women who have, but that may have voted for the Republican candidate in the past—and this is an issue that completely changes things for them,” said former Representative Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who is running in Florida against incumbent GOP Senator Rick Scott. “They need to understand … that if this is an important issue for them, that they have to vote for the candidate that will protect a woman’s right to choose at the federal level.”

These more extreme stories are increasingly common, but most abortion stories are less sensational.

The typical abortion recipient is not a married woman suffering a miscarriage in a wanted pregnancy, or a young girl who had been sexually abused—she is more likely a twentysomething, low-income, nonwhite single mother with at least one child at home. This woman might already face significant stigma because of her race, her income, and her status as a single mother, which would then be exacerbated by societal beliefs about people who seek abortions.

Harris’s campaign is betting that sharing the stories of women who experienced miscarriages or other health emergencies at a later point in their pregnancy may help shift the perception of people who seek abortions as irresponsible—and can appeal to voters, particularly moderate women, who have only recently begun voting for Democrats. Having the women themselves be the messengers also puts a human face to these stories, as well as helping certain voters understand that this scenario could happen to them, or their loved ones. Not all abortion advocates are thrilled about this approach.

“When we get into conversations about why and under what circumstances [abortions take place], we are undercutting why we should trust women,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “When we’re asking why they needed access to abortion, then we’re implicitly saying … ‘I need a little bit more information before I don’t pass judgment on you.’”

Abortion rights advocates have sought to frame the battle over abortion access as a conflict between freedom and extremism. Republicans, meanwhile, have countered by arguing that Democrats are the real extremists: They would not only allow abortion up until the moment of birth but even allow mothers to, as Donald Trump claimed at the September debate, “execute” newborns. These Republican talking points may be hyperbolic, but they reflect a desire to flip the narrative in a way that mirrors a regular polling result: that abortion after a certain point in pregnancy is unpopular with most Americans. Harris herself has not answered questions about whether she would support expanding abortion access beyond the limits of Roe, which only legalized the procedure through fetal viability at around 24 weeks.

According to Pew Research Center, 63 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Gallup has found that 60 percent of Americans believe that overturning Roe was a bad thing. However, 55 percent also believe it should be illegal in the second trimester, and 70 percent think it should be illegal in the third. Nevertheless, a poll by PerryUndem, a consulting firm that does regular surveys on abortion, found nearly 80 percent also believe that laws on abortion can’t account for every situation where one might be needed. Much of Harris’s messaging appears to be focused on those voters.

In September, a pro-Harris super PAC launched three ads targeting suburban and exurban white women in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, featuring health professionals concerned about the effects of abortion bans.

“When my pregnancy was in crisis, and the child I wanted and loved had a devastating diagnosis, we chose to have an abortion,” Anna, an ob-gyn, says in one ad, which was produced by the group American Bridge. “Women are nearly dying because of these Trump abortion bans. As an ob-gyn, I can’t tell you how dangerous this is. And as a mother who’s had a miscarriage, I can’t think about living in a world like that.”

“When it comes to voters who are on the fence, what we’ve seen time and time again is that this is an issue that reaches across parties, especially with this group of women voters,” said Eva Kemp, vice president of campaigns at American Bridge. “When we present them with storytellers who look, sound, and feel like their relatives, their neighbors, their friends—it’s even more compelling.”

Democrats may be elevating the stories of women with atypical abortion experiences because they are so shocking and increasingly frequent, said Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who has written several books on the history of abortion politics in the United States. Lawsuits such as the one brought by Zurawski against Texas and a similar case against Idaho for its restrictive abortion ban have ensured national attention. For Democrats to ignore these stories would be “political malpractice,” Ziegler said.

Senator Tina Smith, a Democrat who once served as the vice president of Planned Parenthood in Minnesota, said that these stories also provided distinct examples of the impact of restrictive abortion laws.

“There’s so much clarity about the impact of somebody taking that decision away from you. A person who decides to terminate their pregnancy in 10 or 12 weeks and isn’t able to because of these Trump abortion bans—the impact on their life is really severe, but it’s less visible,” said Smith. Still, she continued, “It’s incumbent upon those of us that are talking about this to not focus exclusively on these terrible, but unbelievably rare, circumstances that face people who don’t have access to care.”

Connecting abortion access to maternal health and motherhood “makes it easier for people to talk about the story,” said Monica Simpson of SisterSong, an Atlanta-based reproductive rights organization, “as opposed to the ways that we’ve been conditioned to think that people who have an abortion because they want one and they need one [have] done something wrong.” A story about someone who wanted, but was unable to obtain, an abortion is “just as tragic” as someone who wanted to give birth but experienced a miscarriage, Simpson continued.

This approach to messaging could show voters who may be less concerned with how an abortion ban affects low-income and nonwhite Americans that these policies could have an impact on their lives as well.

“I think that’s also a completely fair point, to say, ‘Even if you think that it’s OK to stigmatize these people, if you think that these criminal laws aren’t coming for you, too, you’re wrong,’” said Ziegler. “I think seeing or showing [people in] positions of privilege that they have more in common with people they may have been ignoring than they think is politically valuable. It’s just a question of whether it inadvertently reinforces some other kind of stigma.”

The fall of Roe has led to a greater openness about abortion in all its forms. Tresa Undem, a partner and co-founder of PerryUndem, said that a story about a woman wanting an abortion may be more palatable to voters in 2024 than it would have been even in 2020. During the debate with Trump, Harris gave the example of women suffering mis-carriages or who were victims of rape being unable to obtain abortion care—but she also talked about a woman who would have to travel to another state to get an abortion, calling that hypothetical “unconscionable.”

“Maybe three or four years ago, I might have said the story about unwanted pregnancy, or the story about rape or incest might have been way more impactful than a typical story,” said Undem. Whereas now, she continued, the example of a woman needing to travel across state lines is “pretty relatable as well to people.”

McGill Johnson also warned against the presumption that an upper-class suburban woman would not have experience with an unwanted pregnancy. “All of these stories resonate precisely because we all know, either through experience, or through friendships, through relationships, through our sistership, the variety of circumstances that people want or need to have an abortion,” she said.

And Harris has spoken about more average abortion experiences. She was quick to respond when ProPublica in September revealed that a woman named Amber Nicole Thurman had died after being unable to access abortion care in Georgia in 2022. She had experienced complications from medication abortion, but the hospital she visited afterward was unwilling to perform a procedure to clear the remaining fetal tissue from her uterus and later conducted a hysterectomy after acceding to the procedure. Thurman was 28 years old, Black, and a single mother already raising a son—representative of the average abortion patient. Thurman, according to her best friend, did not believe that it was the best time in her life to give birth to twins.

Thurman’s death quickly became a rallying cry for Democrats and abortion rights advocates; the organization Reproductive Freedom for All launched an ad highlighting Thurman’s experience, which targeted young and low-propensity voters in Georgia—those who might see themselves in Thurman’s story. Harris’s willingness to discuss Thurman’s experience indicates an openness to highlighting the experiences of all abortion patients; at a rally in Georgia in September, Harris led attendees in speaking Thurman’s full name as a way to remember her.

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey in late September, Harris said that “Amber’s story highlights the fact that among everything that is wrong with these bans and what has happened in terms of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it’s a health care crisis.”

Thurman’s mother, Shanette Williams, also spoke during the interview with Winfrey. Her daughter shared characteristics with many abortion patients—and people who will be affected by abortion bans—but her individual story has universal weight.

“I want y’all to know Amber was not a statistic,” Williams said.