Biden, once uncomfortable around abortion debates, set to make it a central part of his reelect

President Joe Biden has never hidden the fact that his Catholic roots can make it difficult to be a politician in favor of abortion rights. In fact, he still rarely uses the word “abortion” at all.

But as the 2024 election comes into focus, Biden is poised to run the most overtly abortion rights platform of any general election candidate in political history as he and his team navigate the first presidential cycle in the post-Roe era.

“I think it’ll continue to be a really galvanizing issue, and we’ll continue to find ways to make it front and center,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez told POLITICO, arguing that abortion rights will increase in salience as more Republican-led states pass anti-abortion laws and news headlines showcase problems arising from the restrictions.

Abortion rights are “going to be a major theme in the 2024 campaign,” predicted Ron Klain, Biden’s former White House chief of staff.

“You’re going to have a Democrat, Joe Biden, who has stood up for a woman’s right to choose and is pushing for federal legislation to restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land against a Republican who obviously has a very different point of view,” he said, adding that it would be part of a broader rubric of issues, including LGBTQ rights and not banning books, where Democrats will draw contrasts with “MAGA Republicans trying to roll back those freedoms.”

The plans by the Biden campaign to make abortion rights central to its reelection campaign are quickly coming into focus, sparked, in part, by the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that ended a constitutional right to the procedure. At its heart will be a central promise — to codify Roe, a pledge the president has already made but will elevate in next year’s election, campaign officials told POLITICO.

There’s also an urgency to keep the issue in voters’ mind, to remind them of the significance of the ruling, particularly as more time passes from the high court’s decision.

Biden’s aides and top surrogates are planning to fan out across the country to push their message. His team believes abortion rights will prove to be a critical motivator for suburban women, older women and even young men. And they think that a key battleground state Biden lost in 2020 — North Carolina — is in play this time around in large part because of abortion.

How well abortion rights works politically for Biden could very well determine whether he gains a second term in office. Democrats struck electoral gold in 2022 when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, beating back the scale of an anticipated red wave by tapping into voters’ anger over the loss of abortion rights.

But that did not stop Republican-led states from passing abortion restriction laws. As voters get used to such laws being on the books, it’s possible the urgency that came with the Supreme Court’s decision and the potency of the issue politically will begin to fade — or economic concerns over Biden’s leadership take precedence.

Democrats are working to ensure that doesn’t happen.

The Democratic National Committee on Wednesday launched a new six-figure ad campaign, including digital ads and billboards in Washington, D.C., Times Square in New York City and the battleground states of Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Florida and North Carolina.

One billboard says “Biden-Harris Administration” with a photo of the president and vice president and, below them: “NO to Republican Abortion Bans! YES to a Women’s Right to Choose!” Another billboard features photos of GOP 2024 contenders Mike Pence, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott, and says: “Trump and MAGA REPUBLICANS WANT TO BAN ABORTION NATIONWIDE.”

For its part, the White House scheduled a number of events this week leading up to the anniversary. The first lady on Tuesday held a roundtable with women who were affected by the Supreme Court decision in states like Texas and Florida. And on Wednesday, Jen Klein, director of the White House Gender Policy Council, and Neera Tanden, director of the Domestic Policy Council, met with a group of reporters to discuss the administration’s efforts to protect reproductive rights. The administration officials wouldn’t confirm the details, but hinted another executive action was coming on Friday from the White House.

“We do not see this issue dissipating,” Tanden told reporters on Wednesday. “This is not our perception in any way shape or form.”

Mini Timmaraju, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, expressed confidence, based on her discussions with the Biden campaign as well as others, that abortion rights is “going to be a top issue, if not the top issue, driving the 2024 elections.”

The day Biden announced his reelection campaign, “we did the first event with Vice President Harris along with Emily’s List, Planned Parenthood and ACLU … and I think that says a lot,” she added. “The vice president and the president are really intent to keep abortion up front and center of the campaign.”

The fundamental question the campaign may face is whether Biden is the right vehicle for it, because of the measured path he’s taken publicly on abortion protections. Nor has the president seen tangible improvement in his personal standing with the public since the ruling.

“Look, thank goodness people evolve. And I will say he has come a long, long way. And I think he’s done it in such a responsible way,” said Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood and current co-chair of the super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, of Biden. “In many ways, his voice at this moment is singularly important because of his own faith, and his recognition that people of different faith traditions can have different attitudes and opinions about pregnancy, but fundamentally, it’s not the role of government to decide.”

Harris, in particular, will play a major role alongside Biden in pushing the party’s message on abortion. On Friday, she and the president, along with first lady Jill Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, will hold a political rally with reproductive rights groups to mark the first anniversary of the Dobbs ruling. Harris will continue this push Saturday in Charlotte, N.C., where a GOP supermajority last month banned most abortions after 12 weeks.

The vice president has helped lead the White House response to the Dobbs’ ruling, meeting with a myriad of stakeholders and lawmakers about abortion access and regulations. And her team believes she can effectively appeal to voters by addressing, head on, the same tension that has defined Biden’s own relationship with abortion rights — that a person doesn’t have to abandon their faith to believe the government shouldn’t interfere in decisions about a person’s health care.

“Our madam vice president talked about how many times faith is the reason for why people don’t want to move bills to protect women,” said Pennsylvania Democratic House Speaker Joanna McClinton, who was in the room when Harris spoke to a group of state legislators who met over two days at the White House to discuss abortion rights. But, McClinton added, Harris stressed that “one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs so that the government has to interfere in being able to access health care.”

Support for reproductive rights among voters has risen since the Dobbs ruling. A June 18 USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll found that more than three in four Americans said abortion would be an important issue for them in 2024, while 20 percent said it would be the single most important issue. One in four Americans said state efforts to impose further restrictions have made them more supportive of abortion rights.

In a new memo first shared with POLITICO, NARAL Pro-Choice America’s research team argued that Republicans are moving further away from voters — and even much of their own base — on abortion rights. Sixty-nine percent of voters oppose a nationwide abortion ban, according to the survey, including 87 percent of Democrats, 73 percent of independents and 48 percent of Republicans.

Whether abortion will be as potent of an issue as it was in the midterms is yet to be seen, said GOP pollster Whit Ayres. He said it’s too early to know whether other issues such as inflation or the border will overtake voters’ attention, but he does see a risk for Republicans moving further right on an issue that energized Democrats in 2022.

“The bottom line is Americans overwhelmingly reject both extremes — on either end of the spectrum. They reject the idea that there should be no abortion under any circumstances. They reject the idea that we should allow abortion at any time in pregnancy under any circumstances,” said Ayres, the president of North Star Opinion Research. “There is definitely a risk in getting too far outside the mainstream on an issue of critical importance to a great many Americans.”