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‘IF HARRIS WINS, IT’S BECAUSE OF ABORTION’  
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Carter Sherman
November 5, 2024
The Guardian
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_ Arizona is one of 10 states with abortion, a top voting issue, on
ballots. _

Dr Gabrielle Goodrick at Camelback Family Planning this week. Walls
and cupboards are covered with thank you notes sent by patients. ,
Kasia Strek/The Guardian

 

Leslie Lemus’s top issue in the 2024 election
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the economy. But she has a close second: “Them fucking with abortion
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Really, for the 26-year-old Arizona
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are one and the same. On Monday, she got an abortion at Camelback
Family Planning, one of the last abortion clinics in Arizona, in large
part because Lemus feels like she can’t financially care for a child
right now.

“I look at the world and it’s not very pretty. I’m not ready for
that yet, to bring a child into the world right now, where the economy
is not OK,” said Lemus, who said she lived paycheck to paycheck.
Some months, she has to choose between making her car payments and
paying off her credit card debt. “Everybody’s struggling left and
right.”

[A room with chairs in a row, a mural of a woman on the wall saying
‘If you want to achieve greatness stop asking for permission’ ]
Camelback Family Planning, one of the last abortion clinics in
Arizona.

Photograph: Kasia Strek/The Guardian

Lemus is registered to vote in Maricopa county
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which is home to 60% of the Arizona electorate and may determine
whether Kamala Harris
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swing state. Harris has made access to reproductive rights a key part
of her policy platform – particularly as a contrast to Trump, who
appointed three of the US supreme court justices who overturned Roe v
Wade [[link removed]] and who has
toggled between branding himself as a champion of reproductive rights
and as “the most pro-life president”.

Lemus is a passionate supporter of Harris, who she calls “my
homegirl”.

Majorities of Americans have backed abortion access and Roe v Wade
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was rarely their top issue in the voting booth. Now that the US
supreme court has overturned Roe, permitting more than a dozen states
to ban almost all abortions and several more to ban it at six, 12, or
– as in Arizona – 15 weeks, abortion may become the deciding issue
of the 2024 election. It is now the most important issue for women
under 45, like Lemus.

“If Harris wins the election, it will be because of abortion and
women voting for her in large part because of that issue,” said
Tresa Undem, a pollster who’s been surveying people about abortion
for more than two decades.

On Monday, Camelback had about 40 patients to see; at least one had
traveled in from Texas, which bans almost all abortions. Visitors to
the lobby were greeted by a sign urging them to register to vote while
they waited for their abortion. The sign advised: “The health of our
democracy is in our hands.”

‘THAT GIVES ME HOPE’

On Tuesday, Arizona will become one of 10 states
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where voters will decide whether to amend their state constitutions to
add or expand abortion protections. (In one of those states, Nebraska,
voters will vote on both a ballot measure that could expand abortion
rights and on the nation’s sole anti-abortion measure.) Five of
those states, including Arizona, have some kind of abortion ban on the
books. If any of the measures supporting abortion rights pass, it
would be the first time that a state has overturned a post-Roe v Wade
ban.

 
Democrats have long hoped these measures would boost turnout among
their base, but the rosy polling for the measures in steadfastly red
states indicates that a significant swath of voters are essentially
splitting their votes by supporting both abortion rights and
Republicans, the party that helped engineer Roe’s downfall. Although
the measure looks likely to pass in Arizona
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suggests that Trump will win the state.

Julio Morera helped collect signatures at the Arizona state fair in
order to get the measure on the ballot. His group’s booth, he
recalled, was set up next to a man who was hawking rightwing
memorabilia adorned with eagles, guns and the slogan “Don’t Tread
On Me”. When asked to sign the petition, the man demurred. “I got
customers to think about,” he said.

But at the very end of the fair, Morera said, the man added his
signature.

“That gives me hope that this is gonna pass,” Morera said.
“There are quite a few people that may not be Democrats or
left-leaning who would support this access to abortion.”

A vote for Trump, however, may ultimately cancel out a vote for a
ballot measure. If Trump wins the presidency
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he will be able to skirt Congress and use a 19th-century anti-vice law
known as the Comstock Act to ban the mailing of all abortion-related
materials – which would result in a de facto national abortion ban
and render these measures’ successes moot.

Project 2025 [[link removed]], an
influential policy playbook for the next conservative administration,
suggests using the Comstock Act to at least ban the mailing of
abortion pills, which account for roughly two-thirds of US abortions.
It also suggests rolling back privacy protections for abortion
patients and reshaping the nation’s largest family planning program,
which would curtail access to contraception, among a bevy of other
anti-abortion policies
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Harris, meanwhile, has forcefully defended abortion rights
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“Over these past two years, the impact of Trump abortion bans has
been devastating,” she told a rally in Texas
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in October. “We see the horrific reality that women and families
face every single day.”

For Lemus, abortion bans all come down to one thing: “Men being in
control of women.”

The economy was not the only reason that Lemus sought an abortion on
Monday. She is also worried about the mental toll of having a child.
At 18, Lemus gave birth to a son who was born prematurely and died
just a month after birth.

“I was there with all the medical stuff, seeing my child in the
incubator until he passed away,” she said quietly. Eight years
later, Lemus is not ready to have another one.

“We fought so hard to have choices,” she said. “Why do they feel
like we can’t have a choice?”

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* US Elections; Abortion; Arizona;
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