Biden’s Latest Abortion Fumble Is Particularly Distressing

President Joe Biden probably thought he did a good job at a Wednesday night fundraiser—he used the word abortion in a speech, which is, incredibly enough, a notable occurrence for the presidential candidate whose party should be running on abortion access. Here’s what he said: “I’m a practicing Catholic. I don’t want abortion on demand, but I thought Roe v. Wade was right.”

I bet he thinks this was an improvement because, as far as Joe Biden goes, this is about as close as he gets to saying reproductive autonomy is a good thing. I can actually imagine him thinking, Surely saying “I don’t want abortion on demand” is better than the last time, when I said “I’m not big on abortion.”

Is it better? Maybe, I guess? But what I can tell you definitively is that it’s certainly not enough. Instead, it’s yet another example of Biden assuming a defensive crouch on the Democrats’ most salient 2024 issue. It’s not the first time he’s said it either: Biden also noted his disapproval of “abortion on demand” during a White House meeting on the anniversary of the Roe ruling. Whether this comment is a favored ad-lib or something his speechwriters cooked up, it needs to go, immediately.

What’s the problem with “abortion on demand”? Although the phrase was actually used by abortion advocates in the years leading up to Roe, it’s since become a right-wing talking point that is designed to make women seem flighty and careless when they seek abortions. And if we have learned anything in the year-plus since Roe v. Wade was overturned, it’s how wrong this perception is. Women demand abortions because they need them, whether that’s because their pregnancy could kill them, their much-desired baby won’t survive, they have an abusive partner, or they can’t afford more children. Pregnant people are not disposable vessels for potential future lives; they are human beings who deserve to make their own choices and not have their health care controlled by politicians.

As a matter of strategy—and anything Biden says about abortion ought to be a matter of strategy given its potential to keep him in the White House—it’s almost inconceivable why he doesn’t say something more like “I’m a practicing Catholic, and I think it’s wrong that Republicans want to ban abortion nationwide.” He could even add, “I won’t let abortion access be further eroded, and I’ll fight to restore people’s rights.” But I think we all know the issue here: Biden’s long-standing personal distaste for abortion makes him incapable of forcefully campaigning for women to have more rights than fetuses.

Abortion is a winning issue—which the campaign knows because it’s running on it—but Biden seems to say the word abortion only when he wants to remind people that he doesn’t care for it. He also selectively invokes his faith regarding abortion, but not on other issues on which the church has a stance, like war or poverty. As Catholics for Choice president Jamie Manson told Jezebel last year, “It’s interesting how and when he chooses to qualify his positions with his Catholicism and not. Most Catholics support abortion rights not in spite of their faith, but because their faith taught them the principles of social justice and individual conscience.”

It’s all the more fitting that Biden made this statement the night before arguments in a high-profile Supreme Court case about the 2024 election. On Thursday morning, the justices heard arguments over whether Colorado can remove former President Trump from the ballot under the 14^th Amendment’s insurrection clause. Arguing for Trump at the high court was Jonathan Mitchell, the man who wrote S.B. 8, the Texas abortion ban that nullified Roe months before Dobbs. Mitchell is currently pursuing bans on interstate travel for abortions too.

Someone like Mitchell could serve in a second Trump administration. Even if he doesn’t, his legal theories and attempts to further restrict health care access are already being immortalized in a terrifyingly thorough playbook written for the next GOP president by a group called Project 2025. Activists from the Heritage Foundation and other organizations are already cooking up executive orders and legal memos that Trump could use if he wins, and they include Mitchell’s dream of using the Comstock Act to ban medication abortion, if not all abortions, nationwide.

This is what Biden is fighting against. (And after today’s oral arguments, it seems likely that the justices will let Trump remain on the ballot.) And yet, Biden continues to regurgitate abortion stigma rather than explain the true stakes of the election. He has not effectively signaled to the huge segment of single-issue abortion voters that he will do everything in his power to restore access. (His plans announced during the Roe anniversary meeting were not rousing in the least—mainly, he reminded hospitals they have to save pregnant women’s lives and encouraged access to birth control.)

As Moira Donegan recently wrote in the Guardian, “what the Biden campaign is offering American women—the ones who are angry and distraught, the ones that have suffered a blow to their dignity and an endangering of their safety—is that his administration might be willing to make minimal efforts to stop the people who are working maximally hard to make it worse.”

I shudder to think what he’ll say at the State of the Union, which is just under four weeks from today. We do know that Kate Cox, the Texas woman who sued unsuccessfully to end her nonviable pregnancy, will be at the address as first lady Jill Biden’s guest. The president should remember that Cox herself demanded an abortion. She had to travel out of state to get it, and her story is one of many around the country that he could absorb to make a much more forceful case for his candidacy.