Biden's uneasiness on abortion riles progressives — again

Joe Biden is highlighting on the campaign trail stories of women struggling to access reproductive health care. But he’s only telling certain kinds of stories.

The State of the Union last week was the latest example of how the president is most comfortable lifting up women who have not been able to receive fertility care, contraception and abortions in cases of rape, incest and medical emergencies to demonstrate the consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. He appears less willing — to the chagrin of some abortion-rights advocates — to talk about women who have struggled to terminate unwanted pregnancies for other reasons.

That has left activists and elected officials dismayed by what they see as a harmful divide between “good” and “bad” abortions that threatens to undermine a core tenet of the abortion-rights movement: that the decision to terminate a pregnancy should be between a patient and their doctor.

“The president is part and parcel of the culture of stigma and shame that surrounds abortion care,” said Dr. Jamila Perritt, president and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health. “Privileging certain stories allows us to ‘other’ people.”

Biden’s rhetoric is resurfacing long-standing resentments between the progressive wing of the abortion-rights movement and the Democratic Party — which have previously clashed over the “safe, legal and rare” framing as well as language inclusive of transgender people, parental notification policies for minors seeking abortions and whether to allow states to ban the procedure after fetal viability. And Biden in particular, a practicing Catholic, has had a complicated history with the movement and has never seemed at ease discussing abortion throughout his five-decade career.

The tension was further inflamed when Biden deviated from his prepared remarks and skipped the word “abortion” during the State of the Union address — even as he sought to contrast his own support for reproductive rights with former President Donald Trump, who has bragged about appointing the justices who helped overturn Roe.

Still, many Biden allies see his approach as a politically smart appeal to independent and moderate Republican voters, arguing that much of the electorate identifies with the president’s views on the issue rather than progressives’. They also believe Biden’s post-Dobbs policy record will outweigh any angst over his word choices from the left.

"I’ve had women tell me the reason they support a right to choose is because of cases of rape and incest and the very common experience of miscarriage,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who is running for Senate in the swing state, told POLITICO. “Is that the only reason why people ever get an abortion? No. But if I’m trying to get women in my state the right to have an abortion, I need the help of women who consider themselves pro-life.”

Biden aides said that spotlighting issues like IVF and emergency abortions will allow the president to expand his base and help more people see themselves in the fight for reproductive rights — without alienating the progressive base. Recent polling shows that 86 percent of U.S. adults think IVF should be legal and support protecting access to abortion for patients experiencing pregnancy-related emergencies — far more than support a blanket right to abortion for any reason.

"Donald Trump and Joe Biden's records speak for themselves: The President has fought to protect a women's right to access abortion and reproductive health care, while Donald Trump says he is proud to have appointed the Justices who overturned Roe,” said Lauren Hitt, a spokesperson for the Biden campaign.

Biden’s position on abortion has evolved over his political career. As a young senator, Biden said Roe went too far. As chair of the Senate Judiciary committee, he focused his questions to Robert Bork, a nominee to the Supreme Court, on contraception rather than abortion as his colleague Sen. Edward Kennedy did. And he long opposed federal funding for abortions — only reversing his position after taking heat from the left during his 2020 campaign.

Just in the past few months, he’s distanced himself from the abortion-rights movement in speeches and interviews, saying, “I’ve never been supportive of, you know, ‘It’s my body, I can do what I want with it’,” “I don’t want abortion on demand,” and “I’m not big on abortion.”

His policy record tells a different story. Since the Dobbs decision, Biden has used executive authority to expand and protect abortion access, and on Monday he released a budget that would repeal the Hyde amendment and allow federal funding of abortions. Biden has also vowed to sign bills codifying Roe-like protections in federal law that would allow people to terminate pregnancies until fetal viability for any reason.

“Words are important. Actions are even more important,” Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), who co-leads Congress’ Pro-Choice Caucus, told POLITICO. “And the president has shown time and time again that he will act.”

The country’s biggest abortion-rights groups, including Reproductive Freedom for All, are standing by Biden’s messaging approach and praised him for speaking forcefully about the issue during the State of the Union.

“During the State of the Union, President Biden used this tremendously visible platform to highlight to the American people exactly how high the stakes are in the fight for reproductive freedom,” said Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All. “He spoke powerfully about the harms of abortion bans and attacks on IVF, and he made it clear that he won't be backing down from this fight. And it’s worth noting his administration has the record to back it up."

Even the most progressive abortion-rights advocates credit Biden with featuring the issue prominently at the beginning of his address and highlighting stories of people who have been affected by Dobbs — even if he didn’t highlight all the different situations.

“There’s a lot of people telling their post-Dobbs abortion stories that are wanted pregnancies where there was a fetal anomaly, and I think those are valid and those are real stories, but it’s not the majority of abortions in this country,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder of Whole Women’s Health, which operates abortion clinics in four states. “We have to make sure we lift up all people.”

Biden aides said that the president’s rhetoric — and his personal views on abortion — make him an effective messenger to middle-of-the-road voters and allow him to sidestep accusations from Republicans that Democrats want to allow “abortion on demand” at any point during pregnancy. But progressive activists worry about the long-term consequences of this approach as they fight to change public perception on abortion access.

“What are you willing to say and who are you willing to throw under the bus in order to win?” said Garin Marschall, an abortion-rights activist who co-leads the group Patient Forward. “We do not see this as a harmless approach because of all the ways it promotes stigma.”

Some activists and elected officials — including close allies of Biden — also worry his verbal reticence could undermine the broader fight for abortion rights and demoralize voters heading into an election where control of Congress and the White House hang in the balance. And with Biden’s campaign struggling with voter apathy among young people and people of color — the groups most motivated by abortion rights, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation — they can’t afford to lose any of them to lackluster messaging.

“A lot of people are disillusioned with the two-party system in general and Biden in particular,” said Eloisa Lopez, the head of Pro-Choice Arizona. “What we want is not what most politicians want to promote and talk about, which is unrestricted abortion care. To not capitalize on the current momentum and to just settle for the Roe standard is upsetting to a lot of us.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misidentified Whole Woman’s Health.