State Democrats are leading on abortion policy. D.C. Democrats don’t want to get left behind.

WASHINGTON — After several successful state efforts to codify abortion access, Democrats are marking the 51st anniversary of the defunct Roe v. Wade ruling with an all-out reproductive freedom campaign — in an election year when abortion rights could once again help determine the balance of power in Washington.

Senate Democrats held a briefing on abortion access Wednesday focusing on the impact of state abortion bans. More than half of the Democratic caucus, including Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, heard from and questioned medical professionals and experts.

“I was thrilled to be pregnant for the fifth time,” said Dr. Austin Dennard, a Texas OB-GYN and plaintiff in a lawsuit brought against the state by people denied abortions since the Dobbs decision. “Then, a routine ultrasound showed devastating — the brain and skull had not formed. It was anencephaly. The most severe neural tube diagnosis. Although relatively rare, this is fatal,” she said, holding back tears.

Vice President Kamala Harris is gearing up for a national tour next week to champion the issue of abortion, a sign of how the Biden campaign plans to put a big focus on reproductive access and efforts to restrict abortion in Republican state legislatures.

And while Democrats in Washington are largely stuck on the issue in the face of a GOP-controlled House and a 60-vote threshold to overcome filibusters in the Senate, they are looking to the success of abortion-rights advocates in the states as a model for how they can better message, campaign and, they hope, eventually legislate on the issue.

“If this is a silent story that women don’t talk about, which has been our past, then women won’t know that they need to go out and fight for their rights,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who organized the briefing Wednesday and has long been a proponent in Congress of codifying abortion access into law.

After the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision ended the national right to abortion in 2022, Murray worked to secure support for the Women’s Health Protection Act and advocated that leadership force votes on the bill, which was stopped in the Senate when conservative Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia joined with almost all Republicans. Senate Democrats again took to the floor to push reproductive health legislation one year later, though the effort was largely seen as symbolic.

The federal stasis on the issue could not be more different from the situations in individual states, where there has been a wave of new legislation — and where reproductive rights advocates and Democratic operatives have seen major victories transcending party lines to counter abortion bans in purple and even some red states.

A reproductive rights advocate working on ballot initiatives in a purple state recalled needing to “clobber” high-level party strategists with data points and polling to illustrate what a winning issue reproductive freedom could be.

“I remember early on [after Dobbs] you had to convince moderates to even say the word ‘abortion,’” the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There are plenty of people in the Democratic Party who still just don’t get it.”

While the majority of congressional Democrats do support legislating a national solution to reproductive access, it can also be a politically divisive issue for Democrats, some of whom are up for re-election in ideologically mixed states.

“I think that people are more comfortable today talking about the realities of having a pregnancy that either you don’t want, can’t have or you are pregnant and need to have an abortion for whatever reason. They’re more comfortable about talking about it today than I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Murray said in an interview in her Capitol office.

But Murray acknowledged that even in 2024, the burden has been on women to be loud and in front about reproductive access.

“Actually, we want [men] out there more,” she said. “I’ve always seen that women lead this fight because they know the impacts. But more and more men are seeing this happen to their daughters, their neighbors, their friends, their relatives and even their own wives or girlfriends.”

There is no man more powerful than the president of the United States, and Joe Biden’s long political career includes a complicated relationship with abortion policy. While he supported Roe as a senator and as vice president, Biden also backed some restrictions on the procedure in an era before the Democratic Party was down-the-line pro-abortion rights.

Now, advocates are looking to Biden, the leader of today’s Democratic Party, to drum up enthusiasm and support among voters who see reproductive access as a basic right and would descend on the ballot box to send pro-abortion-rights Democrats to Congress.

Jessica Valenti, a feminist author who has written about abortion, women and politics for two decades, testified at Democrats’ briefing Wednesday. Valenti said the movement requires “a strong stance from the top” on abortion rights, referring to Biden’s role.

Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, said in an interview after the briefing: “I think that [Biden] definitely supports abortion rights, as does Kamala Harris. But what I’d like to see is basically people in this country to support individual rights to control our own bodies, and that’s men as well as women, to connect the dots and basically vote accordingly.”

That’s going to be a big part of Democrats’ 2024 strategy — trying to pair up action at the top levels of government with grassroots-level activism. So far, the grassroots level is seeing more results.

State activists lead the ballot measure fight on abortion

Three years before the Supreme Court overturned Roe, reproductive rights advocates in Michigan began laying the groundwork to chip away at the state’s abortion restrictions in hope of one day codifying the right to abortion into law.

That effort paid off months after the Dobbs decision: In November 2022, voters approved an amendment to enshrine reproductive freedom into the state’s constitution with 56% of the vote, part of a big Democratic victory up and down the ballot in Michigan.

The next year, 57% of voters in Ohio, a reddening state, did the same, reversing the state’s six-week ban and codifying the right to abortion up to 22 weeks. Reproductive rights advocates in at least 10 states where citizen-initiated ballot measures are allowed aim to follow suit, using Michigan’s model as the blueprint.

“Listen, there’s no question that abortion will continue to be a central issue for voters,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in an interview last month. “You look at the new speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and how backward his positions are. He’s the top Republican in this country. You listen to what all the Republican candidates for president say on that stage.

“Sure, some of them might say it in a way that seems a little nicer or softer,” Whitmer added, with a warning to pro-abortion-rights Washington Democrats who may underestimate the right. “But the fact of the matter is every one of them has vowed to sign a national abortion ban.”

On Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., will keynote the March for Life in Washington, an anti-abortion-rights rally that attracts thousands of supporters every year. Just before the event, Johnson set up votes on anti-abortion-rights messaging bills in the House.

The state-by-state fight over abortion policy could hit the ballot this year in Arizona, a swing state where abortion-rights advocates are working to secure a ballot initiative for the November elections that would establish a constitutional right to the procedure. The battleground state bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy with limited exceptions. Arizona for Abortion Access has already collected 250,000 of the 384,000 signatures needed.

In Florida, advocates have collected enough signatures for their own ballot measure, which, if successful, would enshrine abortion access in the state constitution. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a six-week ban into law last year, but both it and a previous 15-week ban are stalled in ongoing legal challenges.

About half of states allow for citizen-initiated ballot referendums, but even in states where it is possible, the initiatives are costly and require significant levels of coordination.

“There are two ways to protect our rights: In some states, ballot initiatives can codify our work, although that’s not an option in every state,” said Christina Reynolds, a spokesperson for Emily’s List, an organization that supports Democratic women who are pro-abortion rights.

“The other way is to elect people who will support abortion rights and defeat the people who won’t, and Democrats are very committed to that,” she added.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com