WASHINGTON – WASHINGTON (AP) – Planned Parenthood will spend US$40 million before the November elections to strengthen the president Joe Biden and top congressional Democrats, betting that voters angered by Republican-led efforts to further restrict access to abortion it could be the difference in major races across the country.
The political and advocacy arms of the nation’s leading reproductive health care provider and abortion rights organization shared the announcement with The Associated Press ahead of its wider release on Monday.
The group will initially target eight states: Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Biden is trying to defend his 2020 victories, as well as North Carolina, which the Democratic president’s campaign hopes to flip after Republican Donald Trump won it there ago. four years, and Montana, New Hampshire and New York, which have races that could help determine control of the Senate and House.
The initiative will attempt to reach voters with voluntary and paid campaign programs, phone banking, and digital, television and mail advertising.
“Abortion will be the message of this election and it will be the way we energize voters,” said Jenny Lawson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes.
The spending plan is not an election cycle record for the group. Spent $45 million before Biden’s defeat Trump in 2020 and US$50 million before the 2022 midterms.
That’s when Planned Parenthood supporters focused on investing money in contests where abortion access was on the ballot months later the Supreme Court overturned Roe v.the landmark 1973 case that created the constitutional right to abortion, a decision handed down two years ago on Monday.
“We continue to see the devastation that occurs when anti-abortion politicians have power,” Lawson said of the years that followed. “It just got worse.”
Abortion remains one of the country’s most important political issues, but the dynamics surrounding it have changed dramatically since the Supreme Court ruling. After the decision, most Republican-controlled states have imposed new restrictions on abortionincluding some prohibitions at all stages of pregnancy.
Meanwhile, voters in seven states — California, Michigan and Vermont, as well as generally reliably Republican Kansas, Kentucky, Montana and Ohio — supported abortion rights advocates in ballot measures.
In November, voters in several other states, including the battleground states of Arizona and Nevada, will have abortion referendums at the ballot box, as will Florida, a once presidential frontrunner that has become increasingly Republican in recent cycles. , but where the Biden campaign expects a turnout in the election on abortion. initiative can bring things closer together.
SBA Pro-Life America, one of the nation’s most prominent groups opposing abortion rights, announced in February that it plans to spend $92 million targeting voters in eight swing states: Arizona, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan , Ohio, Montana and Georgia.
In addition to national efforts, local Planned Parenthood advocacy organizations and political organizations in California, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio are planning advocacy campaigns before November.
Planned Parenthood’s advocacy efforts will also focus on some negative voter turnouts, such as helping Democrats seeking a supermajority in the Nevada state House or opposing two state Supreme Court justices running for re-election in Arizona after having voted in favor. allow authorities to enforce an 1864 law criminalizing nearly all abortions, which the state legislature has since voted to repeal.
“We can’t just vote on ballot initiatives,” said Lindsey Harmon, executive director of the Planned Parenthood Defenders of Nevada PAC. “We also have to support the infrastructure that makes access to abortion possible.”
