Two Imperfect Messengers Take On Abortion

In the summer of 2019, as a crowded Democratic primary was picking up speed, Joe Biden was on the defensive, pummeled by abortion-rights groups and his opponents for his support of the Hyde Amendment, a measure that prohibits the use of federal funds for most abortions.

He reversed his position, but the episode underlined his wobbly standing in the eyes of abortion-rights activists as he faced off in 2020 against Donald Trump, who became a hero of the anti-abortion movement by using his presidency to appoint Supreme Court justices who appeared likely to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Now, in 2024, the tables have turned.

This week, it was Trump angering abortion opponents as he sought to wash his hands of the matter and leave it to the states, while President Biden depicted himself as a direct champion of the cause, releasing a stark TV ad and excoriating Trump as he sought to position the issue at the center of his re-election campaign.

“I am determined,” Biden said, “to restore the federal protections of Roe v. Wade.”

If you were going to invent two candidates for the first presidential election since the fall of Roe, neither side of the abortion divide would probably design the exact candidate they have. They are both white men. They are both old. And neither has always said what their respective side of the debate wants to hear, although Biden’s shift on the Hyde Amendment is not as stark a reversal as Trump’s flip over the years from “pro-choice” to “pro-life.”

So the week’s events, with the Arizona Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday upholding an 1864 law banning almost all abortions, offered a window into an uncanny moment that for both has been a long time coming.

It is now Biden, a Catholic who has openly expressed personal misgivings about the issue, making abortion more central to a presidential campaign than any major-party nominee in history, while Trump, a former president who is usually happy to take credit for rolling back abortion rights, is trying to skirt it.