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CNN
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It took just one day to disprove Donald Trump’s claim that he had made abortion “almost off the table” in the run-up to the 2024 election, and reinstated Civil War-era abortion bans in key battleground states. A surprising court decision was made.
The presidential election and its fate could be decided after the Arizona Supreme Court ordered the state to enforce a 160-year-old law with a single exception to save the lives of pregnant people. It opened up a huge avenue for the state’s Democratic Party. of the Senate. Democrats see an opportunity to appeal to suburban women in particular by campaigning on reproductive rights, an issue that has been a winner for them recently.
The ruling is the latest in a series of tough court rulings and moves by conservative state legislatures after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. The ruling marks another significant victory for the 50-year-old abortion movement. Anti-abortion activist. And there is a risk that there will be more areas in the United States without access to abortion services.
For President Trump, the timing of the ruling could not be more obvious.
On Monday, the presumptive Republican nominee sought to neutralize the abortion issue, one of his biggest weaknesses in his bid to return to the White House. President Trump’s statement that he would leave all abortion policy up to the discretion of each state comes despite Trump having previously teased the possibility of banning abortions at 15 weeks. It appears that the intention was to give the impression that The Biden campaign complained Tuesday that some reporters took the former president’s words on Monday at face value, noting that he does not specifically oppose abortion bans.
If what happened in Arizona is what happens when abortion is left up to the states, President Trump’s damage control efforts were even weaker than they appeared on Monday. For abortion rights campaigners, the Arizona decision is a symptom of the nationwide turmoil and rights division caused by the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And for them, it’s easy to point to who’s to blame — Trump did it for them.
The former president said in a video Monday that he was “proudly responsible” for ending the nation’s constitutional right to abortion through the solid conservative majority he built on the U.S. Supreme Court. . He is loath to deny his most important accomplishment, which was cementing his ties with social conservative voters as he won his third Republican nomination this year. At the same time, Mr. Trump, who is a keen reader of changing political winds, knows that an election on abortion could dash his hopes for a second term. His “leave it to the states” policy therefore appears to be an attempt to put himself in the most defensible political position possible, even though he knows he is still in a very weak position on this issue. Ta.
Just how exposed President Trump is can be seen in the renewed Democratic attacks in the wake of the Arizona ruling. Vice President Kamala Harris, who is scheduled to visit the state on Friday, echoed the former president’s own words, saying that Biden’s leadership in the state, which the president narrowly won in 2020, was at best a coup for him. used to criticize the state. this year. Democrats desperately needed to turn things around, with voters dissatisfied with Biden’s leadership on the global crisis and his handling of immigration, high grocery bills, gas prices and still-high interest rates.
“Arizona just turned back the clock to a time before women could vote, and by her own admission, Donald Trump is in charge,” Harris said in a statement. . The vice president’s comments will be heard by Americans thousands of times between now and Election Day, as Democrats blame President Trump every time the abortion controversy arises.
The Biden campaign released a heartbreaking ad this week highlighting the plight of women in Texas. The woman nearly died from the infection and was denied post-miscarriage treatment under the state’s restrictive new abortion laws, meaning she may never become pregnant again. At the end of the ad, a black screen reads, “Donald Trump did this.” The case highlights how even women who become pregnant voluntarily and want to carry their babies to term can be put at risk by restrictive abortion laws.
President Trump reacted angrily to criticism from some Republicans of his newly announced position on abortion policy, even from longtime ally Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Was. Speaking on social media, the former president warned Republicans that the conservative movement’s greatest victory of the modern era could paradoxically have negative electoral consequences for years to come.
His position on the issue provided an interesting snapshot of Trump’s political brain. As always, he prioritizes political expediency over policy or ideological commitments, is concerned with his own electoral prospects above all else, and even abandons his political allies, even if he abandons his political allies. demanded loyalty.
“We cannot allow our country to suffer further damage by losing elections on issues that should always be and will be decided by the nation!” Trump said Monday. wrote this on Truth Social. “By leaving the decision up to the states, we have largely ignored the issue of abortion,” Trump wrote.
Trump’s claim that he put the issue “off the table” is unlikely to be borne out. It’s not just because Democrats believe they have Trump in a vise on issues that could help them win the election.
Returning abortion to the states (a central rationale for the conservative Supreme Court majority in overturning Roe v. Wade) does not mean that everyone will tacitly agree to decide the issue. The opposite is already happening. The Supreme Court caused nationwide chaos. Anti-abortion rights activists have eagerly moved on to the next phase of the fight, often seeking to eradicate abortion completely. Conservative Congress and judges are working together to pass and uphold even stricter conditions. Florida, for example, is enacting a six-week abortion ban that the judiciary supports. In Alabama, IVF fertility treatment was temporarily halted after the state Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos should be considered infants. And an attempt to limit the nationwide use of mifepristone, a widely used abortion drug, recently reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, abortion rights campaigners are among the first liberal movements in recent decades to believe there are issues that could drive women, suburban, and young voters to the polls despite widespread disappointment with Biden. It captures Roe v. Wade’s biggest failure, the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Democrats have scored important victories in recent years, even in conservative states like Ohio and Kentucky, where abortion is allowed on the ballot. They believe that if Florida holds a vote this fall on whether to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution, turnout could soar and a state that Trump won twice could win again. He believes that there is a possibility that the important Senate race could also be in jeopardy.
Arizona law dates back to 1864, before Arizona became a state, and was codified in 1901. Abortion providers face two to five years in prison. The bill would make Arizona one of the nation’s strictest states with abortion laws, along with Texas, Alabama and Mississippi, where abortion is almost universally prohibited. The state Supreme Court delayed implementation of the law for 14 days to allow for challenges in lower courts.
Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs said the court’s decision shows that “the fight for reproductive freedom is far from over.” And the state’s Democratic attorney general, Chris Mays, vowed, “As long as I’m attorney general, no woman or doctor will be prosecuted under this draconian law.” Not by me, not by any county attorney working in our state. It’s not on my watch. ”
The potential for Arizona’s decision to damage the Republican Party was illustrated by the state’s Republican leaders who voiced their opposition and, in some cases, rejected their previous support for abortion bans.
“I oppose today’s ruling and call on Katie Hobbs and the state Legislature to immediately come up with a common-sense solution that Arizonans can support,” said Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake. Ta. On June 24, 2022, in an interview on the podcast “The Conservative Circus with James T. Harris,” Lake, who was running for governor at the time, said: On the book. Since this is his ARS 13-3603, I believe abortion will be prohibited in Arizona unless it saves the mother’s life. ” ARS 13-3603 is a law banning nearly all abortions that the Arizona Supreme Court asked the state to enforce on Tuesday.
Lake’s Democratic rival for the state’s open Senate seat, Rep. Ruben Gallego, was quick to highlight the contradictions, calling Lake an “extremist who is forcing his way into clinics and taking away women’s right to medical care.” He described him as a typical politician. own medical decisions; ”
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