Former President Trump and President Biden have set a late June date for their first debate of 2024. On the heels of the second anniversary of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision, which returned the right to protect unborn children to the people and their elected representatives, abortion is guaranteed to be front and center as an election issue.
Biden and the Democrats are spending millions of dollars on attack ads centered around abortion. Vice President Harris travels the country as Biden’s abortion czar and campaigned at an abortion center. Failing on everything else, they think this issue is their silver bullet. They even believe it gives them a shot at flipping Florida blue.
Yet the Democrats have a big vulnerability, one that plays right to Donald Trump’s strengths.
Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put a glaring spotlight on this weakness when he said in an interview that he supported “full-term” abortion. Amid blowback from the Trump campaign and many others, he walked it back, but not before Biden’s camp chimed in, “The president doesn’t support full-term abortions, as he’s made clear many times. He thinks Roe [v. Wade] got it right.”
The debate is a prime opportunity to clarify for voters: Got what right?
Team Biden knows “full-term” abortion is unpopular. Three-quarters of voters would limit abortion by 15 weeks of pregnancy, a point when babies feel pain, at the latest. Yet Biden won’t say what limits, if any, he actually does support. He rarely says the word “abortion” at all.
The media mostly let this artful dodgery slide, but Trump can expose Biden’s extremism and make it front-page news.
Many Americans, if they thought about Roe, thought it placed some kind of limit on abortion. Little did they realize the court also wrote a broad health exception that day that included “all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age.” Just like that, Roe allowed for painful second- and third-trimester abortions for any reason. To this day, the United States is one of eight countries — alongside China and Vietnam — with no federal limits at any point in pregnancy.
Even the abortion industry concedes most late-term abortions aren’t for medical reasons. One late-term abortionist in business for 50 years brazenly admits carrying out more than one abortion just because someone wanted a boy instead of a girl, or vice versa. In his view, every pregnancy is a health risk that justifies abortion — even as late as 22, 25, or 30 weeks.
Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood’s Missouri branch, testified to Congress in 2019 that her “practice includes [abortion] through the point of viability and … that could be at any point” or no point. In suburbs like College Park, Maryland, and Beverly Hills, California, abortion businesses continue seeking to open “all-trimester” facilities after Dobbs.
So what exactly does Biden think Roe “got right” — discriminatory sex-selection abortions? Partial-birth abortions (federally outlawed in 2003, but members of his cabinet ignore that)? Live dismemberment of babies old enough to undergo life-saving surgery in the womb and receive anesthesia for pain? How many weeks is too late? He never specifies. Neither does Harris, who had several chances in a network interview to name her specific limit and repeatedly declined.
If Biden were only trying to resurrect Roe, that would be bad enough. But it’s worse. Biden backs the so-called Women’s Health Protection Act (an Orwellian title) and urged Congress to “put it on my desk, so I can sign it into law.” This bill would overturn commonsense protections for babies and women in every state and force all-trimester abortion on the whole nation.
Even fellow Democrat Joe Manchin called him out: “They’re trying to make people believe that this is the same thing as codifying Roe v. Wade. And I want you to know, it’s not. This is not the same. It expands abortion.”
Moreover, Biden and other pro-abortion Democrats like Nancy Pelosi have made clear that, upon taking complete control in Washington, they will destroy the Senate filibuster to impose their agenda. This is one of the longstanding checks and balances that allow the minority party to at least have a voice and not be trampled entirely. They’re that radical.
Kennedy may have had his eyes opened on the inhumane reality of late-term abortion in America. Let’s hope so. His latest evolution supports limits at viability, while his own running mate would prefer 15-18 weeks. But he is unlikely to qualify for the debate. Most likely, it will be Trump and Biden, mano a mano.
One of the most powerful moves Trump can make is to hold Biden’s feet to the fire on where he draws the line on abortion (at any time up to and including the birth of the child) and contrast Biden’s position with support for a reasonable minimum standard with exceptions as he has in the past. Biden shouldn’t struggle to answer the question, “What are your exceptions?” — if indeed he has any.
Marjorie Dannenfelser is president of Susan B. Anthony List, a national pro-life organization dedicating to advancing leaders and pursuing policies to reduce and ultimately end abortion.
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