If you care about the rights of women to make their own reproductive choices, 2020 is the year that matters.
It’s too late to do anything about the current makeup of the court – except, of course, for women and the people who love them to be very, very loud in our support of abortion rights, and signal that there will be a serious cost if the court overturns or scales back Roe.
But abortion rights supporters need to understand that the anti-abortion movement will not be content to simply overturn Roe. Nor will they be content with what they say is their goal – to let the states decide. They will campaign not just at a state level but at a federal one to outlaw abortion wholesale in the United States.
This is the very real threat of 2020: Not just the end of Roe, which itself would be catastrophic, but an end to safe, legal abortion anywhere in the United States of America.
Democratic candidates, and voters, must face this threat head-on.
That means, yes, expecting that a Democratic president will do as Trump has done and appoint as many federal judges as possible – the younger the better. If Roe is overturned, it will throw state abortion laws into chaos, and lawsuits over abortion rights (and abortion restrictions) will proliferate. Federal appeals courts will have the final say in most of these cases. Good judges who are not right-wing ideologues will be crucial to retain any semblance of basic human rights for women.
It also means a president who understands abortion rights are not safe in the courts alone, and require proactive protective measures. A federal law enshrining the right of all women to make intimate decisions about reproduction, including a right to abortion and contraception, is more necessary than ever.
Refreshingly, several Democratic candidates, including Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders, support such a law. Kamala Harris has even suggested an abortion rights version of the Voting Rights Act, requiring states with a history of misogynist anti-abortion laws to get federal approval before they are permitted to enact new abortion restrictions.
That codifying abortion rights into federal law is no longer a fringe Democratic position is a testament to the good work of abortion rights groups, who have spent decades pushing politicians to be proactive on abortion, not just reactive to restrictions. But offering rhetorical support for a position is easy. One question pro-choice voters should ask all candidates: Is protecting reproductive freedom a very top priority?
There is a long list of other ideas progressive Democratic candidates should be putting on their agendas. Repealing the Hyde Amendment, which restricts federal Medicaid dollars from paying for elective abortions, has already been embraced – if not prioritized – by most of the Democratic field. They should all pledge to repeal the Helms Amendment, too, which places similar restrictions on US dollars spent on health and development overseas. A Democratic president should push Congress to permanently repeal the Global Gag Rule, which restricts not just abortion but even speech about abortion outside of US borders.
The US also lags in access to abortion medication, thanks to a spate of state restrictions; a federal abortion rights law should address that, too, and offer protections for women who self-induce their own abortions because they don’t have access to a safe, legal, affordable option. Abortions are also largely relegated to clinics because many hospitals won’t perform them. Any hospital that receives federal funds should be required to offer patients a full slate of reproductive health care, including contraception, emergency contraception and abortion. Insurance companies, too, should be required to fully cover abortion and contraception – and if the leftiest of Democratic candidates wins and their universal health care plans come to fruition, abortion must be treated like any other medical procedure and covered accordingly.
If Donald Trump (or any Republican) wins in 2020, it could signal the end of abortion rights as we know it. It’s more crucial than ever to have a Democrat in office who won’t just pay the usual lip service to women’s rights, but prioritize and push forward a plan to secure abortion access for all American women – no matter what the supreme court does.
