Democrats and allied groups used the second day of the party’s national convention to promote their outreach to women on the issue of abortion rights, believing it can continue to be a powerful motivator among voters against a Republican ticket led by former President Donald Trump.
EMILY’s List, a Democratic-aligned group that supports women candidates who back abortion rights, contended gains the party made in the 2022 midterm elections can be expanded this year, particularly among younger women.
And Planned Parenthood’s political action committee, along with Everytown for Gun Safety, announced Tuesday a combined $1 million digital ad campaign in battleground states to promote the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and her support on the combined issues of reproductive rights and gun control.
At the same time, Gov. JB Pritzker, an ardent and longtime abortion rights advocate, said the issue presents a valuable alignment with Harris. Pritzker visited the California state delegation breakfast meeting prior to his speech to the DNC on Tuesday night.
“You could tell this was going to be an important issue for 2024. Now, you’ve got the added impetus that people feel for Kamala Harris,” said Pritzker, who also heads Think Big America, a dark money group helping fund abortion rights initiatives across the country.
“This is a very important issue, right? It’s one that she talks about regularly. She understands it well,” the Illinois governor said. “And so when you put those two things together — electing Democrats means preserving your reproductive rights, and the excitement of having somebody for whom this is a top issue — the combination of that is really, I think, going to make a huge difference in pulling voters out.”
Unlike the night before, when Democrats overpacked their schedule with speakers, forcing Biden’s farewell speech to begin well past the end of TV prime time, the DNC promised to shorten its evening and began a half hour early. But their effort proved too aggressive and convention organizers, running a half-hour ahead of schedule, were forced to vamp with recorded music to make up the time.
Delegates were shouting from the floor, wanting the show to proceed — reminiscent of the Palace Hotel Ballroom scene in “The Blues Brothers” when impatient fans called for the band to take the stage.
The events on Tuesday served as a precursor for the evening’s keynote address — a homecoming of sorts — to former President Barack Obama, who nurtured his political chops as a union organizer in his adopted hometown of Chicago. Former first lady Michelle Obama also was an announced speaker.
The appearance by the Obamas followed the opening night political valedictory address of President Joe Biden, who endorsed Harris in tandem with his decision not to seek reelection last month.
On the tarmac at O’Hare International Airport before boarding Air Force One for a family vacation in California, Biden told reporters the cheering reception he received from convention delegates Monday was “pretty overwhelming” and “meant a lot to me.”
Biden also said “no one influenced my decision” to drop from the race and that “no one knew it was coming” when he made the surprise announcement on July 21.
“You always think you could have won. And if you go back and look at the numbers, we weren’t that far behind,” he said, adding that his campaign was not “getting blown out” and that the race against Trump “would have been close.”
“What (would) have happened, though, if the discussion had been, ‘Was I going to cost seats for Democrats?’ That would have been the whole subject matter for the remainder of the campaign,” he told reporters. “You’d have to cover it. That would be the issue, and it would give him an advantage.”
In his speech to delegates, Biden noted the issue of abortion rights and Trump’s role in appointing the conservative U.S. Supreme Court majority that in 2022 reversed the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which had created a federal right to abortion, and instead turned the issue over to individual states.
“MAGA Republicans found out the power of women in 2022,” Biden said, referring to Trump’s campaign motto of “Make America Great Again” and Democratic wins in the elections two years ago.
“And Donald Trump is going to find out the power of women in 2024. Watch,” he said. “And you know Trump will do everything to ban abortion nationwide. Oh, he will.”
Survey results conducted by the independent expenditure arm of EMILY’s List said that in the year before the court’s 2022 Dobbs decision reversing Roe, only 20% of voters in five battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona — thought Roe would be overturned. Now, nearly 70% of voters in those states think Trump would want a national abortion ban, the group said.
The survey also contended that the abortion issue is a potent one in encouraging turnout among younger women voters, who make up about 20% of the electorate in those five states.
“There is a fundamental underestimation of how dramatically the landscape has shifted since the Dobbs decision,” said Jessica Mackler, the president of EMILY’s List.
“By overturning Roe v. Wade and attacking our abortion rights, Republicans sparked outrage in women across the country — and that outrage has not dissipated,” Mackler said. “At the same time, Vice President Harris has brought a vision for the future that offers those same women hope and optimism, because they trust her to restore our rights and protect our freedoms.”
At a morning panel with leaders of Planned Parenthood and the Everytown gun safety group, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said abortion and gun safety should not be considered political third-rail issues that would harm politicians who raise them.
“We’ve got to lean in and talk about it,” she said. “And I do think that women are at the forefront of both these movements.”
Whitmer said sharing personal stories was among the most powerful ways to let women know they’re not alone.
“It is a horrible thing that in this country, in order for a woman to be taken seriously on reproductive rights, she has to talk about, sometimes, the most horrible thing that ever happened to her,” Whitmer said.
At a Democratic women’s caucus at McCormick Place, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the party’s vice presidential nominee, pointed to his track record of approving progressive policies, including guaranteeing a right to an abortion.
“Go with us, we’ll help your kids get fed. You go with us, we’ll get you an education. You go with us, we’ll leave you alone to make your own decisions,” Walz said.
But shortly after his comments, there were shouts from several anti-abortion activists while others in the crowd attempted to drown them out with chants of “USA!” The protesters were escorted from the conference room, distracting listeners from the end of Walz’s speech.
Since the high court’s Dobbs decision, 22 states have banned abortion, Planned Parenthood said. Eight states will have referendums on the November ballot dealing with abortion rights, including battleground states Nevada and Arizona, as well as Florida.
“I would say for women, it is one of the top, if not the top issue that motivates us,” said state Rep. Ann Williams of Chicago. “Without the ability to control your reproductive future, you really have no rights as a human being. For us, it feels so foundational, so basic, so important that (it’s hard) to imagine a world in which we don’t have the ability to control our bodies.”
State Rep. Dagmara Avelar of Romeoville said women “see how detrimental it could be if we don’t protect those rights.”
“There’s a lot of motivation, there’s a lot of excitement to make sure that we get a president who’s going to protect those rights,” she said.
DuPage County Board Chair Deb Conroy, a former Democratic state representative and a delegate at the DNC, said there is “no greater threat to bodily autonomy and women’s right to choose than another term of Donald Trump.”
Conroy noted the ideological and political changes that have taken place in recent years in DuPage County, which was “once one of the reddest counties in America” and was the political home of the late former U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde of Wood Dale, who authored the namesake “Hyde Amendment” that banned the use of federal funds for abortions.
Much of the movement from Republican to Democrat in DuPage has been attributed to suburban women who have long been considered as a voting bloc to be fiscally conservative but socially moderate.
“We must defeat him in November,” Conroy said of Trump. “In Illinois, we have fought to protect these rights and have become the beacon of reproductive freedom for the rest of the country.”
Pritzker said the abortion rights issue also resonates with men as well.
“The fact that we’re fighting the fight to win men to the Democratic Party, and that women are reacting first on that issue, is not surprising to me. But I do think men care deeply about it,” Pritzker said.
“It’s also a way of thinking about people’s personal freedoms, and so it affects …a panoply and a collective of personal freedom that matters,” he said. “So even if choice isn’t your No. 1 issue, it’s in that grouping of things, and it tells you something about a candidate, where they stand on choice.”
Meanwhile, the anti-abortion group Illinois Right to Life on Thursday criticized Cardinal Blase Cupich, the Catholic archbishop of Chicago, for giving the opening invocation on the first day of the convention Monday night.
“It is incredibly disheartening to see a local church leader who once aligned himself with our cause participate in such a deeply anti-life, anti-family event as the DNC,” Mary Kate Zander, the organization’s president, said in a statement.
Tribune reporters Olivia Stevens, Molloy Morrow, Karina Atkins, Sarah Freishtat and Dan Petrella contributed.
