Davine Cortez first glances hesitantly at the two democratic activists who knock on her door in Arizona. But when she learns that they are collecting signatures to protect the right to abortion in this state in the southwest of the United States, she opens the door wide for them. “Of course I’m going to sign!” says this businesswoman who nevertheless says she is not usually interested in politics.
“No one should tell us what to do with our bodies”
This fifty-year-old from Phoenix quickly grabs a handful of pens to hand them to the volunteers: “Here, so other people can sign!” In the midst of the electoral campaign, this reaction reveals the importance of the theme of access to abortion, defended tooth and nail by Democratic President Joe Biden against Donald Trump, whose Republican camp suffered several electoral setbacks precisely because of the unpopularity of restrictions on this right.
“Women need to have an abortion in various situations and to take away this right is to take away a human right,” Davine Cortez told AFP. “No one should tell us what we should do with our bodies, whether it’s about abortion, vaccines or anything,” she says, signing the petition. With the 2022 reversal of jurisprudence by a United States Supreme Court largely overhauled by Donald Trump when he was president, abortion is no longer a nationally protected right.
“Taking America Back to the 1800s”
Since then, around twenty American states have banned or severely restricted access to voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion). Last week, the Arizona courts ruled that an almost total ban on abortion was applicable… which is 160 years old. Even if the application of this decision remains uncertain, Vice-President Kamala Harris, campaigning with Joe Biden, went there. Donald Trump “wants to take America back to the 1800s”, she tackled on Friday during this trip to Arizona.
“This is what a second Trump term looks like: more bans, more suffering and less freedom,” she lambasted. On the ground, volunteers or democratic activists are also mobilizing. Especially since, in 2020, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by a little more than 10,000 votes in this state. Originally initiated by apolitical associations, the petition in Arizona aims to include the right to abortion in the state constitution through a referendum…which would be held on the same day as the presidential election on November 5.
Organizers say they have already collected more than half a million signatures. “I hope that more people will register to vote” because “it matters for people’s lives,” Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly told AFP, on the sidelines of a meeting with volunteers and activists circulating the petition in Phoenix.
“Any sense”
Faced with “pro-life” Republican activists, that is to say hostile to abortion, this theme “will really help the Democratic campaign”, estimates Liz Grumbach, one of the volunteers. The right to abortion “is truly anchored in the history of this state,” this 37-year-old woman told AFP. “I feel like we’re going back a little bit. I think I’ve been concerned about abortion throughout my life as a woman,” laments Liz Grumbach, saying however she “hopes” that the disagreements do not prevent us from “talking about issues that are important to us” and finding “common ground”.
Donald Trump has long boasted about making the Supreme Court more conservative. But, aware of the attachment of the majority of Americans to the right to abortion, he is now showing unusual restraint on the issue, seeming to rule out the possibility of a nationwide ban. “We are no longer in the 1800s. We are much more advanced,” Lucy Meyer, another woman who willingly signed the petition, told AFP. For this 54-year-old banker, these restrictions are simply “ridiculous” and make “no sense”.
The most conservative fringe of Republicans is not giving up. And the few elected officials in the party in Arizona who sought to dissociate themselves from abortion restrictions were booed on social media. Yet Donald Trump himself acknowledged that the Arizona decision went too far.