Harris Outflanks Trump on Reproductive Freedom

Trump is running scared on reproductive rights... and he should be.

Image Credit: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (X.com/DWStweets)

Ever since Donald Trump’s packed Supreme Court majority overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Democrats have overperformed expectations in election after election.

There was the 2022 midterm “red wave” that never materialized, when against all historic precedent Democrats added to their U.S. Senate majority, gained state legislative seats in 21 states, flipped majorities in 5 state legislatures, and won a trifecta of control in Michigan, Minnesota, Maryland and Massachusetts. There was  Democrats’ consistent and persistent overperformance in special elections in 2023 and into 2024. And there were the seven states, including Kansas, Montana, and Ohio, where voters sided with abortion rights advocates in statewide ballot initiatives.

Throughout it all, the message was clear: The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, aided by all three of Trump’s anti-choice justices, had lit a turnout fire under Democratic voters, one that has shown no signs of abating.

And that has put Donald Trump into quite the bind. On one hand, Trump is proud he enabled the overturning of Roe v. Wade, something the Christian right has been striving to achieve for decades. To his campaign’s likely dismay, Trump can’t help publicly boasting about it. But on the other, he knows it’s bad politics, and so has tried to forge an “I sent it back to the states” middle ground on the issue, even pretending “everyone wanted” Roe v. Wade overturned.

But there’s a problem with Trump’s calculus here: The state he lives in, to which his precious Dobbs decision “sent abortion back,” has a ballot measure before voters this November that would enshrine the right to abortion into the state constitution and end the DeSantis 6-week abortion ban. So, naturally, Trump is being asked how he will vote on the amendment…and it is not going well for him. At all.

So this week, knowing just how perilous the issue is for Trump and what a turnout driver it is for Democrats, the Harris campaign launched its 50-city “Fighting For Reproductive Freedom” bus tour right in Donald Trump’s backyard in Palm Beach, Florida.

They even drove right past Mar-a-Lago.

The bus tour, which will travel through battleground states over the next several weeks, is evidence enough that the Harris-Walz campaign knows it has the upper hand on the issue of reproductive rights. But trolling Trump by launching it in his hometown is a sign they intend to make him squirm on the issue, and rightfully so.

In today’s piece, I’ll explore how the Harris campaign is using this bus tour to put Trump on defense over reproductive freedom, and why the Trump campaign is struggling to message on an issue that is rising in importance heading into November.

Fighting For Florida’s Amendment 4

This November, voters in Florida will be asked to weigh in on Amendment 4, which states succinctly:

Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion

No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.

Amendment 4 is one of ten ballot measures seeking to protect or expand abortion rights that will appear on state ballots this year, including in swing states Arizona and Nevada.

Much as Republicans did with same-sex marriage ballot initiatives in 2004, Democrats and abortion rights advocates hope these initiatives will drive Democratic turnout to help Kamala Harris over the finish line to the presidency.

An added benefit is that one of those states happens to be home to Donald Trump. And when he was initially asked how he would vote on Florida’s Amendment 4 a week ago, his characteristic word salad answer left much up for interpretation:

"I think the six week [ban] is too short, there has to be more time. And so, I told them that, I want more weeks.”

“So you’ll be voting in favor of the amendment?”

“I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks…”

The implication here, of course, is that Trump was signaling his support for the amendment. But his campaign immediately walked this back after backlash from the far-right.

And then on Friday, Trump clarified:

"I'll be voting no.”

Trump has been trying to walk this line between placating his far-right base and not seeming like a far-right radical himself for months, which is why the Harris campaign has branded the state-based bans he set in motion as “Trump abortion bans.”

And it’s also why the campaign launched its Fighting For Reproductive Freedom bus tour in his neighborhood.

As Harris-Walz Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez put it in a statement:

"Our campaign is hitting the road to meet voters in their communities, underscore the stakes of this election for reproductive freedom, and present them with the Harris-Walz ticket's vision to move our country forward, which stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump's plans to drag us back." 

The kick-off featured Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of Florida, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell as well as other abortion rights advocates, to remind Florida voters to vote Yes on Amendment 4:

As well as to hang the issue around Donald Trump’s neck.

Which is why we loved to see the bus troll Trump by literally swinging by Mar-a-Lago, as documented by TikToker TizzyEnt from inside the bus:

@tizzyentI rode with the Harris Reproductive Freedom bus and we visited Mar-a-Lago

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While a recent poll shows 56%—a clear majority—of Florida voters support Amendment 4, it could still fall short of the 60% threshold Florida requires for a constitutional amendment to pass. Yet another important reason the Harris-Walz campaign is focusing so hard on Florida with this launch, choosing Jacksonville, FL as its second stop.

From there the bus tour will travel to battleground states all around the country over the coming weeks, with around 50 stops in all, to remind voters that on reproductive rights, as Kamala Harris herself put it at the DNC, Trump and his GOP are “out of their minds.”

Not Just Abortion Rights

As Harris made clear in her DNC speech, the fight for reproductive freedom is not just about abortion. 

It’s about access to contraception, which Justice Clarence Thomas made clear in his concurring opinion to the Dobbs decision should be on the chopping block, and which would be restricted under Project 2025.

It’s also about IVF, which JD Vance, along with every Republican U.S. Senator, refused to protect when given the chance, and which The Heritage Foundation famously railed against in a report whose foreword was written by Vance. 

Trump and Vance have been trying to run away from the most extreme positions of their base, but the dilemma they find themselves in is a problem of Trump’s own making. Thanks to him, the anti-abortion crowd is the dog that caught the car, and now they want more.

Per Politico, this includes their top policy priorities:

a national abortion ban, the enforcement of the Comstock Act to restrict abortion pills and restrictions on in-vitro fertilization

Trump was hoping his “back to the states” position, which he has used to oppose a national abortion ban as well as to deny he would enforce The Comstock Act, has largely inoculated him against claims he would be radical on reproductive rights as President. But there is a reason Trump is still tripping over his words on Amendment 4, why JD Vance is out there insisting Trump would veto a national abortion ban, and why Trump is now claiming that in his second term, the government would cover the cost of IVF treatments or “mandate that the insurance company pay.”

As Dan Pfieffer makes clear in a new piece in his Message Box Substack titled Why Trump Is Freaking Out About Abortion:

Trump’s desperate flailing on reproductive issues shows just how scared he is about the power of abortion. The polling shows that Trump’s fear is well warranted.

Trump Is Afraid…And He Should Be

As Pfieffer notes, with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, abortion has risen in saliency as a top issue on the minds of voters.

According to a NYT/Siena poll taken in mid-August:

Pfieffer laid out the current abortion politics dynamic in an on-point Twitter thread:

In a 24 hr period, Trump said he would vote for and against overturning Florida's 6-wk abortion ban. Trump is clearly panicking about the politics of his position on abortion With @KamalaHarris in the race, Trump's biggest political problem has gotten worse

According to NYT polling, the number of women who say that abortion is their top issue has gone up significantly since Harris became the nominee. For women under 45, abortion has overtaken the economy as the top issue

Abortion is helping drive a historically large gender gap. In @CBSNews polling, 76% of women say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. 

Trump's role in overturning Roe is helping broaden the Harris coalition. A majority of younger GOP women oppose bans like the one in Florida and believe abortion should be legal.

There is more work to do -- the numbers can go up. There is insufficient fear about a national abortion ban, and more voters cite immigration than abortion as their top issue (in 2022, abortion was a close second to inflation.

This is precisely why Harris’s national battleground reproductive freedom bus tour spanning the course of the final two months of the campaign is proving such an important tactical move.

This is the perfect issue for the Harris campaign to go on offense. Not only is Trump back on his heels on the issue, but there is still room for Harris to grow in polling and turnout, particularly as absentee ballots begin to drop as soon as this month. 

If Trump and the Republicans thought that Dobbs would “settle” the matter and that abortion rights would die back an issue, they were dead wrong. And Harris is about to prove that.