“There has to be some form of punishment”
“For the woman?”
“Yes, for the woman”
A clip of former US President Donald Trump asking for women to be criminally prosecuted for accessing an abortion featured on the main screen of the Democratic National Convention, which was held in Chicago from August 19-22.
This was followed by three women who came on stage talking openly about late-term pregnancy complications, miscarriages untreated by the medical system and domestic sexual abuse. Hadley Duvall, a young survivor of sexual abuse by her stepfather, spoke directly into the camera, addressing Trump, “What is so beautiful about a child having to carry her parent’s child?” to a stunned silence in the room.
The 2024 Democratic National Convention was not a second show of the 2016 Hillary Clinton ascendance. Eight years ago, the question of whether the US was ready for a female president was encapsulated by a meme featuring her predator husband’s infamous words, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky”. It was a reminder of the looming shadow of insider politics that made the rules for women in DC politics.
Hilary Clinton had to remind people that she was much more than a former first lady – a capable administrator, someone who had run the State Department. She downplayed issues important to women and instead focused extensively on national security, affordable healthcare, jobs and education. In short, she showcased competence and specifically on issues that matter to men. In the end, twice as many white men voted for Trump as they did for Hillary Clinton.
In 2024, it’s a whole different story. The Kamala Harris campaign is unabashed about women’s issues leading the campaign. Contraception was a word best avoided in the Hillary years, but the Democratic National Convention featured a giant inflatable intrauterine device called Freeda Womb right at the venue. Cutting costs on Sanjay Gandhi’s radios, a street food stand gave away free hot dog coupons for visiting a mobile vascectomy van.
Donald Trump’s lasting contribution to American public life will be his rearrangement of power in the Supreme Court, which led to the dismantling of federally-guaranteed abortion rights in 2022. He became the hero of the Christian Right in that moment, but the reframing of the understanding of life at conception set off a new wave of panic. Red states went aggressive criminalising those helping others get abortions, banning people trying to get abortions elsewhere where legal, hitting a crescendo as a deep Republican Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are effectively children, and by logical extension, effectively banned in vitro fertilisation.
The outcomes of abortion bans have had a graphic effect – there is no shortage of horrific news stories of women being turned away by hospital lawyers to go home and miscarry rather than get medically-required abortions, families stopped from crossing state lines to get access to women’s healthcare. The right had poked women hard. Abortion is now polling as the number one issue for suburban women in swing states.
No lofty ideal of liberalism, inclusion, or any remnant of working-class politics or unionism has brought political success on a large scale for the Democrats as issues specific to women’s rights in recent years. Even unity in disdain for Trump is a distant second.
There is an important way in which Indians do not understand American politics. A two-party system truly forces a voter to choose the least odious of two options. Each year, there are single-issue voters whose decision, both, to show up to vote and the party they will pick, hinges on one thing they care the most about. Getting that one issue wrong is catastrophic in a two-party system.
This year, the Democrats have made it amply clear that there is absolutely no space for negotiation on women’s health on their ticket and that it is the one issue they will stand behind and make no concessions on – in 2024, only one representative on the Democrat side, Henry Cuellar of Texas, identifies as pro-life, while almost the exact opposite is true on the Republican side, where practically no representative outside of Nancy Mace of South Carolina will take a pro-choice stance.
The build-up has been electric: women standing for political office are openly discussing reproductive choices – pregnancies, miscarriages, abortions – once taboo in the American public sphere. Former first lady Michelle Obama, speaking at the convention, directly addressed using IVF for conception. Organisations like Planned Parenthood that the Democrats had to tread carefully along are now front and centre of the Harris ticket.
The Democrats will likely be supported by a number of abortion-specific ballot initiatives in several states at the same time as the general election. Democrats know this from the data in the swing states, which, for all practical purposes, are the only states that really matter given the vagaries of the US electoral college system.
In every such state in the US, Biden beat Trump among women, and Harris will almost certainly extend that gap. Unlike in multi-party democracies like India, Turkey, or Japan, where women tend to vote similar to male household members, in the United States, there is a significant gap between male and female voting patterns.
Put simply, women just do not do the bidding of their fathers, husband, brothers, or sons at the polling station. The more personal attacks Trump makes on Harris, the more he will do to piss off an already irate woman voter. And yet, nothing will stop him.
Joyojeet Pal is an Associate Professor of Information at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
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