The NPR Politics Podcast - Reproductive Rights Fight Continues To Define Campaign

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

Donald Trump's rhetoric on abortion care and reproductive rights has been all over the map this year, but his record — and that of the Republican party — is clear: he has bragged about ending the nationwide right to abortion access.The Kamala Harris campaign is intent on driving that message home for voters, including in a new ad highlighting the story of Hadley Duvall, who, as a child, was raped by her step-father.This episode: White House correspondent Deepa Shivaram, congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, and national political correspondent Sarah McCammon.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Good morning NPR politics team. This is Sunshine in Charlottesville, Virginia. I'm about to listen to yesterday's podcast while I clean trash off my back porch. A bear had a feast here last night and left all the mess for me. This podcast was recorded at 2.04 p.m. on Wednesday, September 18, 2024. Things will have changed by the time you hear it. Hopefully we'll be able to keep the bears away. Enjoy the show. Guys, I'm from Charlottesville.

That's so real. We have bears wandering everywhere. I didn't realize that. That's a little disturbing. Kind of cool, but also disturbing. Yeah, there's like a cute little family of bears that comes through every year. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House.

I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. And on today's pod, a look at one of the most prominent issues in this campaign, pregnancy, fertility, and abortion care. Donald Trump often takes credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, but recently he's been saying this. If I'm elected this November for the first time ever, your government will pay for or require insurance companies to pay for all costs associated with IVF fertility treatment. So what's your read on this? I mean, is this more of a strategy to win over voters or is this a policy proposal that we should take more seriously? This looks very clearly like a strategy to win over voters, Deepa. I mean, Trump knows what the polls say. And he's seen what's happened the past couple of years since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

There has been what really looks like a backlash from voters every time abortion was on the ballot, a backlash to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And this is, you know, this is an issue that Democrats are focusing on because they see it as a winning issue for them. And it's one that Republicans are on the defensive about. Trump's statement about either using government funds to cover in vitro fertilization or requiring insurance companies to cover it, it looks like an effort to mitigate that damage. A couple of things I want to say about that. I mean, there is very likely no near possible world where even if Trump were elected and proposed this, where this kind of proposal would advance. Think back to the fight over the Affordable Care Act during the Obama administration. The law ultimately included a contraceptive mandate, right, requiring insurance companies in most cases to cover birth control.

That got a lot of pushback from social conservatives and many in the Republican base. The other issue is that IVF is just really expensive. It can cost tens of thousands of dollars. And so I could envision all kinds of pushback just to the cost of this idea. But you're right, Deepa, this is part of a long pattern now for months of mixed messaging from Trump, on the one hand, bragging about being responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade when he speaks to socially conservative audiences, and on the other, suggesting he might oppose some of the state restrictions and now saying, you know, he supports IVF. Well, speaking of the pushback you were talking about, I mean, Deirdre, this is something that many conservatives, right,

the idea of the government supporting IVF or paying for IVF, this is something they really oppose because the process of IVF can involve the destruction of embryos, right? And this week there have been a lot of conservative members of Congress who are Trump allies, right, who definitely have some thoughts about this. They do. I mean, I think there's sort of the conservative and small government philosophy from a lot of Republicans about, you know, backing any sort of federal government pay for this expensive medical treatment that they push back on. And then there's the political issue that's really become a problem for Republicans campaigning in House and Senate races across the country. IVF is extremely popular. Republicans and Democrats alike say that they have family members. If it's not their family,

they know family members who've used IVF. And there's been a big rush following that Alabama Supreme Court decision back in February that deemed unused embryos as children for Republicans to come out and say, wait, wait, wait, we support IVF and try to get on the right side of the issue in terms of the public. Democrats used Trump's recent public support for IVF as a reason to bring up for the second time in recent months, a bill that they sponsored that would create what's called a nationwide right to these fertility treatments to IVF. And I spoke to Tammy Duckworth, the Illinois Democrat, who herself had two daughters using IVF, about why she felt like she needed to do this now. She said that she's calling out Trump and Republicans who say they support IVF to go on the record and actually vote for it. You can cover it all you want, but if there's nobody who can perform the procedure, then you don't have access to it. So his argument is really a red herring. And it's meant to fool and deceive the general public, which is a disservice to Americans. This is a challenge for Republicans in this campaign. And I think it's going to be a challenge going forward. Because for years, for decades, the anti-abortion movement has used

slogans like life begins at conception, abortion is murder. And if you apply those concepts to other types of care, like fertility care, even some types of contraception in which an embryo could theoretically be destroyed, that creates sort of a logical problem for people who have touted that idea if they don't want to then restrict these other types of care that are very popular with voters, including Republican voters. When this IVF bill was brought up for a vote in the Senate on Tuesday, Republicans blocked it, and they did not allow the issue to advance. The top Senate Republican leaders came out and said, look, we support IVF full stop, but they argued the Democrats were trying to create

a political issue where there wasn't one. And several Senate Republicans, including a couple in contested Senate races, like Rick Scott of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas, floated their own IVF proposals. But again, they have in the past voted for issues and bills that Sarah was mentioning in terms of more conservative positions on protecting embryos as deemed as persons. I feel like this whole back and forth from Trump and Republicans has shown how much fighting against abortion and access to abortion has been this losing fight for Republicans, especially at the ballot box, since the Dobbs decision. And it's come to a point where there was a recent ad that came out from a Republican candidate in California. His name is Matt Gunderson. And in this ad, he talked about supporting abortion rights. On a woman's right to choose, I'm pro-choice. I believe abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. I don't want politicians dictating health care for my daughters. You might disagree, and that's okay, but I bet there's more that unites us. You know, what's so interesting

about that is he uses this language, safe, legal, and rare, which historically has been a Democratic talking point. I mean, think of the Clintons in the 90s, but it's one that the abortion rights movement has moved away from in an effort to sort of destigmatize abortion. But now we're hearing it from Republicans, which just tells you how dynamic this issue has become. In my experience, I've covered a lot of House and Senate campaigns. It's really unusual for Republicans to be out front on an issue of reproductive health care. Most of their campaign ads usually focus on the messages they feel like they have the upper hand on, things like border security, crime, the economy. But this ad and other ads in competitive

House and Senate races around the country show that Republicans know that this is an issue they are losing on and that they want to get out front of an attack from Democrats who continue to say, look at what former President Trump did when he was in the White House. He appointed the Supreme Court judges that overturn Roe v. Wade. If he gets back into power, if Republicans control the House and Senate, they're going to enact more restrictions on abortion and that will impact IVF. Again, it's just one more sign of the position that Republicans find themselves in after this Dobbs decision. It makes me think of former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley's rhetoric on abortion when she was running for the Republican nomination earlier this year. Now, she described herself as pro-life, but she also would repeatedly say on the campaign trail,

I don't judge you if you're pro-choice. So there's a sense that Republicans want to try to speak across the spectrum, sort of to the center left and center right on this issue and move away from sort of the political hangover of the Dobbs decision. who've been looking at these ads, who notice that Republican candidates in swing districts and states are focusing on support for IVF and trying to blur the lines in terms of positions on abortion because they feel like IVF is something that's popular that a lot of people from both sides of the aisle and philosophies support, whereas abortion has become more controversial and they have records on votes on abortion measures. Yeah. And that's where that Alabama case kind of comes back in and makes it really blurry there. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, how Kamala Harris is talking about fertility and abortion care in her campaign. And we're back. And reproductive rights has always been a focus of Kamala Harris's campaign,

but she's out with a new ad featuring Hadley Duvall. She's a young woman from Kentucky, and growing up, her stepfather sexually abused and raped her. She became pregnant at just 12 years old and ended up having a miscarriage. I was a child. I didn't know what it meant to be pregnant at all. But I had options. Because Donald Trump spoke at the DNC. And, you know, Sarah, I'm curious, how do you think this ad specifically with Hadley's story here plays out for voters? Because it's different than some of the other repro rights ads that the Democratic campaign

has put out. You know, this is another thing that's changed, another major change since Roe v. Wade was overturned. There are all of these stories now of women who've been affected by abortion restrictions or like Hadley Duvall could have been affected had the situation been slightly different. And these women telling their stories have become really central to Democrats' messaging. I mean, it's no longer a hypothetical what will happen if abortion is restricted. There are now many examples of the impact of these laws. Many of these women who are coming forward illustrate the kinds of situations that have broad support among most Americans for abortion access, situations like rape and incest, medical complications. Those have broad support. And so that's a message that's targeted to the swing voters who, you know, may or may not have some discomfort with abortion in general, but look at these situations and say, I really don't like having access cut off in these situations.

It is really interesting because it highlights access to safety. And that's something the Harris campaign has really been, you know, talking about recently because there was a story earlier this week of a woman in Georgia, she was 28, and she died because she was denied care due to Georgia's limits on abortion access. And, you know, it's not like Kamala Harris made a big address about what happened in Georgia, but her campaign did put out a statement. And I think to me, it just underscores how this is a literal everyday issue for Democrats and particularly for Kamala Harris and how that sort of plays out as the months go on. And as we only have a couple of weeks left until voting

ends. Right. You're talking about the case of Amber Thurman, a Georgia woman who, in a case first reported by ProPublica, died after waiting 20-some hours to be treated after having complications from using an abortion pill. She died not long after Georgia's abortion ban took effect in response to the Supreme Court decision. And Harris's campaign has been pointing directly to former President Trump and saying these are the consequences of his actions. I think it also complicates the response for Republicans on this issue, because after the fallout of the Dobbs decision, you know, Trump was all over the map. But his sort of latest answer is like, we're leaving it to the states. And he sort of falsely claims that that's what people across the political spectrum wanted when it came to to the states. And that sort of bolsters the

Democrats' arguments about a need for federal protections and their concerns about what would happen if Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress because, you know, top conservatives, people like House Speaker Mike Johnson, are on the record in the past voting for, you know, federal abortion bans. They've stayed away from that recently. But, you know, Democrats are quick to pull up those records. Yeah. And Deirdre, speaking of Congress, I mean, from your vantage point covering the Hill, abortion care and reproductive rights was such a critical issue for Democrats in 2022. And that was, you know, of course, the first big election after the Dobbs decision. But right now where things stand, I mean, the chances of Democrats taking control of the Senate looks really rocky. And we've talked about this on the pod races in Montana and

elsewhere. I'm curious, you know, from what you're seeing, how much momentum is there on this issue for vulnerable Democrats in these races? Well, I think that's a big reason why Senate Democrats put this issue on the floor this week. Democrats face extremely long odds at retaining control of the Senate. There's just a really rough map, as you mentioned, people who listen to the pod know about Jon Tester in Montana. He's the most vulnerable Senate Democrat right now, and he's been consistently behind in recent polls. If Republicans can flip his seat, and they're confident they will already pick up a seat of the retiring West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, that could be the ballgame. So I think this is one of those issues where they wanted to try to put Republicans and Republican challengers like Tim Shih in Montana on the defense.

In terms of House races, I'm told by House Democratic strategists that the issue of IVF and reproductive rights is playing out in every single competitive swing contest. There aren't a ton of those because of the gerrymandered nature of House districts, but they are confident that candidates and challengers are going to make this issue one from now until Election Day. All right, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Deepa Shivaram. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.