As abortion access promises to be an energizing driver for voter turnout in 2024 — with abortion initiatives making their ways onto ballots in a handful of states — abortion advocates and the Democratic Party are reminding voters early and often that a vote for President Biden is the way to preserve abortion access in their states.
On the same day that the Washington Post published an article critical of 2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s flimsiness on the issue, an abortion rights group began an ad campaign in Michigan and Wisconsin, painting RFK Jr. as a danger to in-vitro fertilization and abortion access generally.
According to the Washington Post, RFK Jr. has been hard to pin down on abortion, but has often sounded less than fully supportive of it. He has spoken in support of a 15-week federal ban as recently as August, when he said at an event in Iowa that he wouldn’t necessarily “personally” support abortion restrictions, but then proffered the leave-it-to-the-states rhetoric and late-term abortion myths being pushed by Donald Trump and others, all in the same breath: “I think the states have a right to protect a child once the child becomes viable, and that right, it increases.”
RFK Jr. has also, per the Post, done events with Angela Stanton King, an anti-abortion activist who runs a facility that attempts to change the minds of women seeking abortions and to persuade them to carry their pregnancies to term. She also has pushed conspiracy theories that Planned Parenthood and other abortion care providers encourage Black women to have abortions, the Post reported. RFK Jr. has repeated some of that rhetoric in recent months.
The pro-choice group, Reproductive Freedom for All Freedom Fund, paid for the new ads to run in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Madison, Wisconsin, both big public college towns in swing states. RFK is not yet on the ballot for Wisconsin but has said he plans to meet the petition deadline to do so in August. He just qualified for the ballot in Michigan last week, news that prompted a slew of mainstream headlines about Biden’s prospects in the state that he won by less than three percentage points in 2020.
“He doesn’t know whether he’d support a national abortion ban, and he’s picked a vice president who won’t even protect IVF from MAGA attacks,” the ad said, according to The Hill. “Kennedy Jr. and Shanahan mean we’d be less safe from dangerous abortion bans, and get more attacks on IVF. Kennedy Jr. and Shanahan would put your reproductive freedom at risk,” it continued.
The DNC also seized on the Washington Post report on Monday, putting out a statement titled “ICYMI: Like Trump, RFK Jr. Can’t Be Trusted on Abortion,” with a bulleted list outlining all of RFK’s abortion messaging sloppiness reported in the WaPo piece.
“Like Donald Trump, RFK Jr. can’t be trusted to stand up for reproductive freedom. He’s said he would sign a national abortion ban and has repeatedly dismissed the importance of abortion rights on the campaign trail,” DNC communications adviser Lis Smith said in the statement. “With reproductive freedom under attack, we need leaders who will stand strong for women. It’s clear that neither RFK Jr. nor Trump will.”
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