While the Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate the constitutional right to abortion after almost 50 years does not alter Californians’ access to services, it has quickly become a rallying cry for Democratic leaders and progressive activists across the Bay Area looking to energize voters in the months ahead.
Standing in a sea of thousands of residents who gathered in front of San Jose City Hall on Saturday morning to protest the previous day’s decision, Milpitas councilwoman Karina Dominguez called on disheartened residents to make their voices heard.
“I want people to turn that emotion into action,” said Dominguez, clad in a shirt depicting former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s face aglow. “I want them to run for office and take up space. But most importantly, hold their elected officials accountable.
“We cannot lose the focus that we have right now.”
In the months leading up to California’s November midterm election, Californians can expect to hear abortion rights employed as a mobilizing force for Democrats, as candidates like Gov. Gavin Newsom promote their involvement with women’s advocacy organizations and Planned Parenthood and warn voters of cascading impacts that could take place if their opponents win. And for Republicans in this heavily pro-abortion state, it may become a subject to avoid in contested Congressional and state legislative elections.
“It’s very clear that the Democrats think this is an issue that is going to be of huge help to them,” longtime political analyst Dan Schnur said about efforts to boost turnout for the fall midterm election. “It took Newsom and the legislature several months to agree on a tax rebate. It took them less than a day to move to put an abortion rights initiative on the ballot for November.”
That new initiative, which is expected to win legislative approval in coming days, would ask voters to enshrine “reproductive freedom” in the California State Constitution.
Newsom on Friday also signed a bill into law that protects abortion providers and out-of-state patients from threats by other states to impose criminal penalties against them. Additional proposals are making their way through the state Legislature, including some that would offer financial assistance to people coming to California from other states to receive abortion-related services.
In front of a fired-up crowd Saturday outside the Planned Parenthood clinic in Hayward, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell wasted no time describing the state of the country in his view: “It’s on life support right now, folks.”
He laid out political imperatives for Democratic voters across the state — vote to cement abortion rights in the state’s Constitution, organize to flip Republican-controlled Congressional seats and fend off the possibility of a federal abortion ban. Control of the U.S. House of Representatives is up for grabs in November, with most pundits giving Republicans the edge prior to the Friday court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
“In 2020, we didn’t win the election — we hit a three-pointer at the buzzer and sent it into overtime,” Swalwell said, referring to closer-than-expected outcomes in a number of House races. “This is overtime.”
Pleasanton resident Donna Dubose was in the crowd holding a sign that read: “Our daughters deserve better… FOR SHAME!” Dubose, 63, said her 24-year-old daughter and nieces were all rallying Saturday in different parts of the country.
“I never thought this would happen,” Dubose said. “My daughter’s been trying to get all her peers — you know, young people haven’t been our strongest voters — to come out with her to rally as well. This is a direct assault on the country, and I hope it brings more people out.”
A recent survey from UC San Diego, which asked Californians about their likelihood to vote in November before and after learning the contents of a draft of the Roe decision that leaked in early May, found that it had a significant rallying effect on independent voters.
In San Jose, many demonstrators said they fear the Supreme Court soon could take away other fundamental rights, including same-sex marriage and rights for transgender and non-binary communities — a notion that resulted from a concurring opinion delivered Friday by conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, suggesting the court reexamine those issues using the logic it employed in overturning Roe.
“We feel like this country is trying to take us backward to the 1950s, and we’re here to say that we’re not going back, and we’re going to fight back,” said Nancy Robles, a San Jose resident and member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
While the fight over abortion rights may be top of mind for Democrats, it is not expected to be a focus of the campaigns of Republican candidates in California, according to Melissa Michelson, a political science professor at Menlo College. Instead, she said, voters will more likely hear Republicans in the Golden State push the court’s recent decision to give Americans a broad right to carry guns in public.
“The rolling back of Roe and restrictions on issues like same-sex marriage or contraception — I don’t think those are winning messages here in California,” she said.
That was apparent in some of the matter-of-fact statements released Friday by major Republican political candidates, including California Attorney General candidate Nathan Hochman and U.S. Representative Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, in response to the repeal of Roe vs. Wade.
“The only thing that the Supreme Court determined today is that the constitutional path to legislate on this issue is now at the state level,” Garcia said in a statement. “The events today will not change access to abortions as constituents in California.”
Garcia’s race, in which the incumbent will have to fend off Democrat Christy Smith, is one of a half dozen races for the U.S. House that are hotly contested. They’re all in Southern California suburban districts where married female voters could end up determining the election’s outcome, according to Schnur.
The Supreme Court’s decision on abortion creates a “huge motivator” for Democratic candidates with voters in those districts, Schnur said, but not necessarily for their counterparts.
“Republicans across the country spent a lot of time on Friday talking about how inflation and immigrants would still be the driving issues for voters in November,” he said. “That’s a tacit concession that abortion issues will not work to their benefit.”
