--:-- Gideon Resnick: I'm Gideon Resnick, and this is a special series from Apple News Today, all about the 2022 midterm elections.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Earlier this year, it seemed almost inevitable that Republicans were poised to win, and to win big in November, buoyed by the president's low approval ratings and high inflation. But then, in June, things got more complicated. In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Samuel Alito...
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Supreme Court has voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. This opinion is very similar to that draft opinion that we saw leaked just about a month and a half ago at the beginning of May. The court has ruled that states can decide whether abortion should be legal or illegal.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade upended the expectations for the midterms. Over the summer, there were a number of special elections where Democrats outperformed President Biden's 2020 margins. And voters in Kansas, a typically conservative state, overwhelmingly voted down a constitutional amendment that would have taken the right to an abortion out of the state's constitution.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: This dynamic is playing out in other contests across the country as well. To name a few, in Pennsylvania and Michigan's gubernatorial races, in a key Wisconsin Senate race, and in the contest between Republican Herschel Walker and Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock, who are running for the U.S. Senate in Georgia.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Walker, who is opposed to abortion with no exceptions, has faced allegations that he paid for a previous girlfriend's abortion and offered to pay for a second one. Since that story came out in the Daily Beast, he has vehemently denied the accusations.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And besides these races, voters will get to weigh in on abortion rights directly on the ballot in a number of states. I recently sat down with Sarah McCammon, who covers abortion politics and policy for NPR.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Sarah, I asked her just how much she thinks abortion could determine the fate of November's elections.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: I think it's hard to overstate what a dramatic reversal the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision that came down in June from the U.S. Supreme Court, what a dramatic reversal that was of what had been the longstanding situation and expectation.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: So nearly 50 years of the expectation that abortion was a right in this country, a whole generation, generations really of women grew up with that reality. And very, very quickly, the reality on the ground has shifted.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: While abortion wasn't always accessible for women of color and low-income people, it was legal in every state. And now it's not. About a dozen states have banned most or all abortions and more may be poised to do so soon, particularly depending on the outcome of some of these midterm elections.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: We've already seen how some votes or some measures of voter support have indicated that this is a central issue, right? So in a referendum in Kansas, voters are overwhelmingly voted to protect abortion access.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: There was a New York congressional race that was also seen as a referendum on the issue. And we have a lot of polls that keep telling us that this is a top issue for voters.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: So what have you been hearing so far from voters in your reporting about this?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Well, you're right. I mean, and we should go back and note that even before the Dobbs decision, most Americans, a majority, opposed overturning Roe v. Wade.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Obviously, the Supreme Court doesn't make decisions based on public opinion necessarily, but that was the sort of underlying reality. And now polls suggest, as you indicate, that support for abortion rights has strengthened since the Dobbs decision.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You can look at a Wall Street Journal poll recently for that. There's also evidence from Pew, for example, that approval for the Supreme Court has slipped post-Dobbs.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: I think this is a moment where people are having to sort of think hard about what they really think about the reality of abortion policy.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: It's not just a sort of hypothetical, abstract question anymore. The Supreme Court has now made it possible for states to ban abortion, and many are doing so. And we're seeing the impact of that.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Yeah. And when it moves out of that abstract question, what tends to happen? Because I do think that we've sort of lived in a reality where everybody's consideration of this conversation has been in that realm of hypothetical.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: And I think it's hard to say what happens when it's no longer abstract. Right. And again, I want to stress that even before this summer, for many people, getting access to abortion was very difficult.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: If you lived in a rural area, if you're somebody without transportation, for example, or lived hours, you know, there were huge swaths of the country where there were, you know, maybe several states with just one clinic that provided abortions, but it was legal and there was somewhere you could go.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: And, you know, what's changed now is that to an even more significant extent, a dramatic extent, really, people are having to travel if they want to get an abortion in these states, you know, many of which are in the Midwest and South and some in the West, where abortion is illegal.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Just recently, Planned Parenthood reported that in Illinois, where, which is sort of what they describe as an abortion haven, a state surrounded by other states with very restrictive abortion laws or no abortion access at all, the number of people traveling to their clinic on the Illinois side of the Missouri border, just across from the St. Louis area where abortion is not available, the traffic there has increased more than threefold post-Dobbs.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: I think one of the gravest concerns for many patients and providers is that it is complicating the ability of doctors to make medical decisions.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: I've done some reporting, and so have my colleagues, in places like Texas where doctors say they've had to make very difficult, potentially life-and-death decisions about what to do when a pregnancy is ending, a miscarriage situation.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: We've heard a lot about ectopic pregnancies, of course, as these are, of course, tubal pregnancies that will never be viable and can pose serious risks to a woman's health or life if they're not treated properly.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: A woman I interviewed went into the emergency room at 19 weeks pregnant with her water breaking. She was miscarrying 19 weeks, as I think most people know who know anything about fetal development, is sadly far too early for the fetus to survive.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: In that situation, I interviewed her. I interviewed her doctor. Her doctor said the standard of care would be to offer her a termination. But doctors did not feel comfortable doing that because of this Texas law.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Now, that was, again, at a time when under the Texas law that was passed last year, the penalty was potentially fines and serious financial consequences. Now, in some states, the consequences could include jail time.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: So the stakes are very high for doctors making these decisions.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So, Sarah, I do want to talk about what could potentially happen in November in a minute. But first, can we talk a little bit about the history of how all of this has really progressed in the U.S.?
--:-- Sarah McCammon: You know, long story short, while much of the opposition to abortion rights these days does come from conservative Christians, whether Catholics or evangelical Protestants, that hasn't always been the case, particularly with evangelicals.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: There was a time in the 70s when, for example, the Southern Baptist Convention, while not supportive of abortion in all situations, had a more, I think what you would call more moderate position on the issue, allowing for a broader range of exceptions where abortion could be an acceptable choice.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: What happened was really kind of in the late 70s, early 80s, and particularly with the rise of Ronald Reagan in the early 80s, this issue became increasingly sort of a rallying cry for the religious right.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Think of the Moral Majority, you know, Jerry Falwell, folks like that were able to mobilize voters around this issue and began a very organized and long-term campaign to get essentially to where they got this summer, overturning Roe v. Wade.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: And that campaign has involved grassroots work. It's involved voter mobilization at every level, lots of work in churches and with religious leaders, bringing them along as allies, and not just on the abortion issue, but also on issues like religious liberty, opposition to same-sex marriage.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: But abortion was always kind of the, I think, the number one focal point of that movement. And so these organizations worked for many, many years at all levels of government to elect conservative state lawmakers, to elect U.S. senators who would vote to confirm conservative Supreme Court justices.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Then I covered the Trump campaign in 2016 for NPR, and this was something I heard about all the time from particularly voters who said, you know, I don't really feel great about Donald Trump, you know, his tone, his history, whatever, but the Supreme Court is what I'd hear a lot.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: And often Supreme Court seemed to me to be a stand-in primarily for abortion. Trump delivered for the religious right, right? He was able to choose three justices, and that is why we are where we are today with Roe v. Wade no longer the law of the land.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Yeah. And it sounds like then for quite some time, Republicans were really able to use abortion to galvanize their base. You're saying even when people may have been a little uneasy about the candidate himself in this case.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So how has the decision in Dobbs changed that going into these midterms?
--:-- Sarah McCammon: I would point to Kansas, and I think there are signs that for some voters, again, the sort of seeing the reality of what these laws means might be pushing them a little bit.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: McCammon is referring to a proposed state constitutional amendment that was up for a vote in Kansas in August. It was the first state to vote on abortion rights since the Dobbs decision. The amendment would have said that there was no right to an abortion in Kansas, and it got voted down in an overwhelming fashion.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Nearly 60% of voters rejected it in a state that is relatively conservative, which was seen as a pretty stunning rebuke of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: McCammon says that at least anecdotally, the abortion ruling does seem to be changing people's minds. Just for one example, you know, I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, which for people who don't know Kansas City, it's right on the state line on the Missouri side, and there are suburbs that go into Kansas.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: So I grew up going to church in Kansas, and I still have got friends back home. And one of my friends texted me soon after the vote in Kansas, just sort of pouring out her thought process about how she wrestled with that issue.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: She said, look at little Kansas pulling through last night on the vote. I felt like I was being super rebellious with my vote. And ironically, in the line I stood in, I was surrounded by men on either side.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: I just wanted to scream, you don't know what it's like to give up your body for years. You have no idea. I cried in my car. It's just so complicated.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: The kicker was the 10-year-old case. She's talking about the 10-year-old girl from Ohio who had to travel to Indiana for an abortion She was a rape victim at age 10 and Ohio abortion ban went into effect right at the time that she needed an abortion so she had to travel across state lines and her story became, you know, the center of kind of a national controversy.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: So my friend says, the kicker was a 10-year-old case. They didn't take care of her, and they certainly won't take care of me if I need another DNC for miscarriage, which is already heartbreaking.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: You know, and this is a friend of mine who says she's a Republican. She described in this really heartfelt text message going to the pool with other moms, other suburban Kansas moms, and having these really wrenching conversations.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Because I think for a lot of them, you know, people who may have seen this issue one way, to see the, again, the reality of it being manifest, it puts it into focus in a different way.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Democrats are really starting to campaign quite heavily on this. According to reporting from the AP at the end of September, Democrats had invested 20 times the amount in TV ads referencing abortion than they had in the 2018 midterms.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That figure was also bigger than the Republican Party's combined national investments in ads relating to the economy, crime, immigration.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Yeah, I think what you're seeing is Democrats, they're up against a couple of realities. One, obviously, this is a midterm. And so historically, midterms are not great for the party in power.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: So that's a challenge. Two, the economy's been difficult, right, the last several months. I mean, inflation's been all over the place. Gas prices are down a bit, but they were very high for a while there.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: And there's just a lot of uncertainty. And so that's something that Democrats have to offset. The abortion issue, I mean, again, this is a historic moment where suddenly what had been a right for almost 50 years is no longer a right unless a state decides that it is.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: And so, yes, Democrats are spending tens, hundreds of millions of dollars messaging around this issue, especially in key states. We're seeing groups like NARAL and other abortion rights groups as well spending heavily.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: I think it is an issue where Democrats see an opportunity to persuade voters, and they have good reason to think that. Again, looking at what happened in Kansas, a red state where voters were clearly not ready to go along with some anti-abortion activists who wanted to further restrict abortion in that state.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: To the point of Democrats kind of being on the offensive here on this issue in a lot of respects, do you think that Republicans anticipated this current political reality that they would be facing?
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Well, I think the big question is, you know, the metaphor that everyone's used to talk about this is has the dog caught the car?
--:-- Sarah McCammon: And this has been such a galvanizing issue for voters for so long that I think we won't really know for a number of years. It's not going to just be about one election.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: A lot of these fights are going to continue in state legislatures. And there will be more efforts next year as many states reconvene for their state legislative sessions to tweak existing abortion laws.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: I've already talked to, you know, advocates who want to see state lawmakers try to find ways to, if not restrict people from crossing state lines, which is very difficult to do, sort of get at some of the interstate issues that this raises.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: For example, the mailing of abortion drugs into states where abortion is illegal. That's something I spoke to an advocate in Texas about recently. He said that's something he really wants his state lawmakers to work on, trying to clamp down on.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: And then you'll see, you know, states like California just passed a legislative package designed to expand access to abortion and doing that, for example, through expanding the number and the types of providers who can provide abortions, that kind of thing.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: So we're going to continue to see a tug of war over this issue. And I think that, first of all, the states where abortion is heavily restricted are already pretty red states.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: So we're going to see, I think, an intensification of the polarization that we see in so many areas and along so many issues in this country already.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: But how it shakes out long term as more and more states implement these bans and more voters see the impact of them, I don't know.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: I don't want to really predict because I think, you know, there is a scenario in which this could become a new normal and people could get used to it.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: And also, you know, keep in mind that wealthier people will always be able to travel and will always be able to find a way. These bans are going to hit low income people and people of color the hardest.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: And the people who are already in many cases on the margins. And so for me, it does raise the question of like, will there be sustained interest and concern around this issue?
--:-- Sarah McCammon: And if so, in what direction and who does it benefit?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And let's put for a second to what's actually on the ballot in November. There are a number of states where abortion access is on the ballot itself. Can you give us a quick overview of some of those measures?
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Yeah there are I believe five ballot initiatives on the ballot this fall Kentucky has an initiative coming up this November that very similar to the one that voters in Kansas rejected which is to say it would essentially state explicitly that there is no right to abortion in the Constitution
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Now, Kentucky already has essentially no abortion. Abortion restrictions are already in place there, and abortions have shut down at the abortion providers.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: However, there are ongoing legal challenges to those state laws on state constitutional grounds, and the courts are not supposed to make a final decision until after this vote.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: So whatever voters say in November very likely will have some bearing on the outcome of those cases.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Michigan has, I think, probably the other most noteworthy ballot initiative. It's in the other direction. This was a citizen-led effort to try to protect abortion access in the state constitution.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: And, you know, this was sort of through the petition process that you think of. Signatures had to be gathered. Then there were challenges to those signatures. Some anti-abortion groups tried to stop that initiative from getting on the ballot at all, but advocates for the petition prevailed.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: So that will go before voters. Michigan is a really interesting state because it's kind of a swing state with a Democratic governor right now who's been sort of holding the line against abortion restrictions.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: There's an old abortion ban on the books in Michigan from the 1930s that Governor Gretchen Whitmer fought in court. And if the governor's mansion were to flip, that would have huge implications for abortion access.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: That's also the case in several other states like Kansas, for example, and Wisconsin, states with Democratic governors where Republican legislatures would have free reign if the governorship flips.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And when you look at the whole map and you look at both the ballot measures and some of the gubernatorial elections, some of the other elections, how will what happens in November impact the future of access?
--:-- Sarah McCammon: You know, where does this actually go after the midterms?
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Well, again, I think state legislatures are going to continue to be a battleground for this, because what the Supreme Court did with Dobbs was say state legislatures now have the power to decide whether or not abortion should be legal or illegal.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: So, of course, governorships, again, become really significant. Governors have the veto power. They can say no if the legislature tries to pass a law prohibiting abortion, for example, they also can advocate, as they have in some states, for abortion protections and expansion of abortion services.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: So state legislatures will be really key. And I would also just point to the fact that there is a push for national legislation, in part because I think advocates on both sides of this issue find it very frustrating that we have a patchwork system and both would like to see their policy of choice prevail.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: So So we've seen, for example, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina within the last several weeks proposed a nationwide 15-week ban, which would sort of mirror the Mississippi law that the Supreme Court upheld in the Dobbs case.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: That would ban abortion nationwide after 15 weeks. Now, there aren't the votes in Congress for that now for either side, but I think this is something in terms of the long-term game, the long-term effort here that both sides have their eye on.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: And, you know, when I've talked to people about this question, you know, would there ever be a nationwide abortion ban? Folks have pointed out to me, well, I think there was a time when people thought that Roe would never be overturned.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: So it just underscores that every race is important. Every election is important.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And I want to sort of close by returning to a point that we were talking about before, which is that banning abortions has been a major cause for the religious right in the U.S. for years and years.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And so I'm curious, as a person who has been covering this for so long, was there ever an expectation from groups within that loose framework that this would actually happen?
--:-- Sarah McCammon: I think they did. I mean, I can't read anyone's minds, but Mike Pence, when he was running for vice president in 2016, vowed to put Roe v. Wade on what he called the ash heap of history.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: And I think he meant it. I think that they've all meant it. Whether or not it seemed like a realistic achievable goal is one question.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: But I mean, this has been a very strategic movement. It's not a movement that looks like it's just playing. And I think that's why they've been so successful, because at least some of them believed it was possible and that they would eventually succeed.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: Now, I think the speed with which this has happened in the last several years surprised a lot of people. I remember doing interviews in 2018 with folks who were saying, you know, if the Supreme Court moves to the right, you know, it's not going to be immediate.
--:-- Sarah McCammon: We're not going to overturn Roe v. Wade right away. There will be sort of incrementalism, incremental changes. But, you know, they got, under Trump, three nominees confirmed. And so I think the anti-abortion movement was able to, within the last few years, move very, very fast to achieve a lot of their goals.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Sarah McCammon is a national correspondent for NPR covering abortion politics and policy. We'll have another episode of our special Apple News Today 2022 midterm series next week. Talk to you then.
