MEMO: Voters continue to support abortion access

To: Interested Parties
From: EMILYs List, National Women’s Law Center Action Fund, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Reproductive Freedom for All 
Date: November 15, 2024
Re: Voters continue to support abortion access

The result of the presidential election is devastating, as we have always known that a second Trump administration intends to enact an agenda that will only further harm women, immigrants, the LGBTQIA+ community, and people of color across America. 

There was no greater champion for reproductive freedom than Vice President Kamala Harris. From the beginning, she had an impossible task. In just over 100 days, VP Harris became the Democratic nominee for president, pulled together a diverse coalition of supporters, raised over $1 billion, and inspired a nation with her joy and optimism for the future. We thank her for her unwavering commitment to protecting and advancing our freedom. Her leadership centering abortion — in rhetoric and action — reflects the clear will of the majority in this country who do not believe the government should control our personal medical decisions. The will of the majority was not lost on Trump, who read the polls this cycle and had to resort to hiding, lying, and gaslighting voters about his anti-abortion extremism as a core campaign tactic. 

It is a tragedy that America will once again have a president and Senate and House leadership whose agenda is so out-of-step with a country that has affirmed its wish for reproductive freedom. It will be more critical than ever to stop Trump and anti-abortion politicians from enacting their dangerous Project 2025 agenda of eliminating abortion access nationwide, attacking IVF and birth control, and further decimating our freedoms. 

The majority of Americans want reproductive freedom. 

This was clear going into the 2024 election cycle, and it remains clear as voters across the country in red states and blue states chose reproductive freedom on ballot initiatives and elected candidates who will protect these rights. Measures to restore and protect abortion rights passed in seven states — Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and New York — and further fortified critical protections that will be even more important as anti-abortion politicians become more emboldened to decimate access. Despite a state-funded disinformation and intimidation campaign in Florida, the majority of voters (57%) voted to end the state’s six-week abortion ban. But voters were disenfranchised by the state’s required 60% vote threshold for ballot initiatives — the highest in the country.

Candidates who centered reproductive freedom will head to office to fight for our rights and break down barriers. 

Women who ran on strong reproductive freedom platforms will head to the U.S. Senate, including Angela Alsobrooks (Maryland) and Lisa Blunt Rochester (Delaware), who will make history as the first Black women to serve at the same time in the upper chamber. They will join forces in the U.S. Senate with reproductive rights champions like Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin), Sen. Jacky Rosen (Nevada), and Sen.-elect Elissa Slotkin (Michigan), whose work to fight for our freedoms will be more important than ever. Reps. Emilia Sykes (OH-13), Jahana Hayes (CT-05), Lauren Underwood (IL-14), Janelle Bynum (OR-05), Andrea Salinas (OR-06), Emily Randall (WA-06), Laura Gillen (NY-04), and many others defeated opponents who repeatedly tried to lie their way out of their unpopular stances on abortion. And Delaware’s Sarah McBride — a proven champion for marginalized communities and women — will become the first openly transgender person in history to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

With anti-abortion politicians in power, abortion rights will only grow in salience for voters in elections to come.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated federal abortion rights, 21 states have banned abortion in all or some cases, leaving 28 million women of reproductive age across the country without control of their own bodies. Recent KFF polling found that 1 in 5 women of reproductive age who live in states with abortion bans know someone who has been harmed by these restrictions. With anti-abortion politicians’ plans to bring the fight for access to everyone’s doorstep and enact a de facto national abortion ban, there is no doubt that number will only grow. Americans will continue waking up to stories of women who died preventable deaths because they were denied access to essential health care and voters will continue to see these bans wreak havoc on their families and communities. 

Abortion rights is not going anywhere as an electoral issue. It will only become more prominent and more motivating for voters as the Trump-Vance administration and its allies move to enact their agenda. Anti-abortion elected officials will not be able to shy away or run from their hostile records on reproductive rights — we’ll make sure of it. Collectively, we will continue highlighting the disastrous consequences of these laws and how they are directly tied to people in power who acted against the will of their constituents. 

Vice President Kamala Harris and her historic campaign helped to solidify the message that reproductive freedom is worth fighting for. As we enter what will be a challenging next four years, we do so with the will of the majority on our side and with an array of bright spots in our elected leadership. During a second Trump presidency, we will continue to hold him and all anti-abortion politicians accountable for what they have already done and what they plan to do to destroy reproductive freedom. 

EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, works to elect Democratic pro-choice women up and down the ballot and across the country with a goal of fighting for our rights and our communities. Our work is centered around a fundamental vision: Run. Win. Change the World. EMILYs List has raised $850 million in service to that vision and has helped Democratic women win competitive elections by recruiting and training candidates, supporting and helping build strong campaigns, researching the issues that impact women and families, running one of the largest independent expenditure operations for Democrats, and turning out women voters to the polls. Since our founding in 1985, we have helped elect the country’s first woman as vice president, 175 women to the House, 26 to the Senate, 20 governors, and over 1,500 women to state and local office. More than 40% of the candidates EMILYs List has helped elect to Congress have been women of color. Visit www.emilyslist.org for more information.