Biden Campaign Memo: Donald Trump Will Ban Abortion Nationwide

To: Interested Parties

From: Julie C. Rodriguez, Biden-Harris 2024 Campaign Manager

Date: April 8, 2024

Subject: Donald Trump Will Ban Abortion Nationwide

Donald Trump brags about being the most anti-abortion president in American history, and he’s right. Trump vowed to put “pro-life justices on the court,” and he did. Trump brags that he was the one to overturn Roe. Trump says women should be punished for having an abortion. The aftermath that has followed Trump’s actions has been devastating: women’s lives put at risk, doctors threatened for doing their job, attacks on birth control, and threats to IVF fertility treatment – it is a dark preview of what Trump and his Project 2025 extremists will inflict on America.

This morning, Trump once again took credit for dismantling reproductive freedom in this country and every extreme law that threatens women’s lives and criminalizes physicians and nurses. He looked straight into the camera and bragged about being “proudly the person responsible” for overturning Roe and enabling the extreme, dangerous bans that have followed.

As Trump encourages more states to follow the lead of states like Missouri, Idaho, and Alabama to enact draconian abortion bans, he has already told us what he will do if he wins. His advisors have prepared a comprehensive strategy for a Trump administration to ban abortion access in all 50 states through executive action – without Republicans in Congress passing a national abortion ban. Let’s be clear: Trump and his allies won’t stop until abortion is banned nationwide.

In the nearly two years since Trump overturned Roe, a majority of voters have made their voices heard in election after election to reject Trump and his extreme MAGA allies’ attacks on reproductive health care. This November, voters will stop Trump and his MAGA allies’ attacks on abortion again.

Trump’s first term set reproductive freedom back 50 years – and the consequences have been devastating.

As a candidate for president in 2016, Trump vowed to put “pro-life justices on the court,” predicting that Roe would be overturned “automatically” because of his appointments. Once he came into office, as Trump himself proudly brags, it was his “honor” “to kill Roe v. Wade” – “the biggest WIN … in a generation.” At the same time, he slashed access to contraception and imposed a “gag rule” that reduced patients in HHS’s family planning grant program by 60 percent.

Because of Trump’s first term, 21 states have abortion bans in effect, the majority of which have no exceptions for rape or incest. These dangerous laws currently impact more than 1 in 3 women of reproductive age.

Donald Trump is taking credit for every dystopian impact from state abortion bans:

• Women facing life-threatening pregnancies are being turned away from emergency rooms.
• Victims of rape and incest, including children, are forced to travel across state lines and even thousands of miles for care – if they can make it.
• In nearly every state with an abortion ban, doctors can be charged with a felony and thrown in prison for providing reproductive health care services. In states like Alabama and Texas, physicians can be sentenced to life in prison for providing abortion care.

Donald Trump is personally taking credit for each and every dangerous abortion ban. Just a few examples:

• Alabama has an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest that threatens physicians with life in prison for providing abortion care. Earlier this year, the state’s so-called “personhood” law led to an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that ripped away access to IVF treatment for those desperately trying to grow their families.
• Arizona has an abortion ban in effect with no exceptions for rape and incest and carries felony charges for health care providers. Yet Republicans in the state are attempting to bring back an even more extreme abortion ban from 1864, that also has no exceptions for rape or incest and would criminalize providers.
• Florida has two abortion bans. Last week, the Florida Supreme Court triggered an extreme abortion ban that will soon go into effect and impact the entire region.
• Georgia bans abortion before many women even know they are pregnant, and has a dangerous “personhood” law that could put IVF at risk.
• Idaho has a ban that criminalizes health care professionals for providing abortion care even in emergencies.
• Louisiana has a ban with no exceptions for rape or incest and penalties of up to 15 years in prison for physicians who perform abortion care.
• Missouri has a ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. Following the overturning of Roe, one hospital system temporarily stopped providing emergency contraception to rape victims due to fear and legal uncertainty around the ban.
• In North Carolina, Republicans enacted a abortion ban over Gov. Cooper’s veto that is driving out health care providers from the state.
• Oklahoma has multiple extreme abortion bans on the books. A total criminal ban from 1910 with no exceptions for rape or incest is currently in effect.
• South Carolina has an abortion ban that threatens physicians with years in prison for providing care.
• Texas has three dangerous abortion bans, none of which have exceptions for rape or incest. Physicians in Texas are at risk of life in prison for providing abortion care, and SB 8 allows any individual – even a rapist – to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion, including a physician or a patient’s friends or family.
• Wisconsin Republicans are fighting to take a law from 1849 and use it to eliminate abortion access in the state.

Now, Trump and his allies have plans to take the nightmare they have already unleashed to all 50 states.

As President Biden said this morning, “Let there be no illusion. If Donald Trump is elected and the MAGA Republicans in Congress put a national abortion ban on the Resolute Desk, Trump will sign it into law.”

Trump has called for “punishment” for women who have an abortion and said doctors, nurses, and anyone who helps a woman get an abortion should be “held legally responsible” and punished under the law. Trump and his allies won’t stop until every state has an abortion ban on the books.

Trump’s advisors have already drawn up plans to achieve a national ban without the help of Congress or the courts. His allies and advisors at the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 have published plans for the next Trump administration to ban abortion in all 50 states through executive action – without Congress. Their plans include revoking the FDA’s approval of medication abortion, which makes up 63% of abortion care nationwide, and attempting to criminalize anyone who sends or receives medication abortion in the mail by enforcing the Comstock Act, an ancient “zombie law” from the 1800s.

As the plan’s author and former Trump HHS official Roger Severino recently put it: “[Trump] had the most pro-life administration in history and adopted the most pro-life policy in history. That’s our best indicator as to the type of policies that he would implement the second time around.”

And let’s not forget, Trump has refused to support federal legislation to protect access to IVF for families across the country, letting Senate Republicans block the bill.

This election, reproductive freedom hangs in the balance – and voters are ready to reject Trump’s extreme agenda.

Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, voters have turned out time and again to defend reproductive freedom.

In all seven states that have seen ballot measures on abortion, from Michigan to Ohio, Montana to Kentucky, voters have cast their ballots to protect reproductive health care access. Reproductive rights paved the way for Democrats’ historic victory in the 2022 midterms – almost two-thirds of those who voted for Democratic House candidates said the Dobbs decision had a major impact on which candidates they supported. In Michigan, reproductive rights propelled Gov. Whitmer to reelection and led Democrats to flip both chambers of the state legislature, establishing a Democratic trifecta in the state for the first time in 40 years. In Pennsylvania, Democrats won the gubernatorial, U.S. Senate, all three swing U.S. House seats, and took control of the state House for the first time in more than a decade. A CBS Pennsylvania exit poll found that abortion was the top issue for voters in the state.

And just last month, Democrat Marilyn Lands won a landslide 25-point victory in a state legislative election in Huntsville, Alabama by running on defending access to abortion and IVF, including sharing her own abortion story. The district went for Trump in 2020, and Lands’ election was the first in the state following the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision which paused IVF services.

Headed into the 2024 election, President Biden and Vice President Harris remain on the right side of voters when it comes to fighting back against extreme MAGA bans – including in the key states that will determine this election.

• In Arizona, 62% of voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
• In Nevada, 80% of voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
• In Wisconsin, 64% of voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
• In Michigan, 66% of voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
• In Pennsylvania, 61% of voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
• In North Carolina, 62% of voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
• In Georgia, a 62% majority of voters oppose the state’s extreme abortion ban.
• In Florida, 64% of voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Across the board, voters support the Biden-Harris vision for reproductive freedom and are ready to hold Trump accountable:

• Four in five (81%) of Americans agree that abortion issues should be managed between a woman and her doctor, not the government. A record number say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
• Two-thirds of the public, including the majority of independents (67%), support a law guaranteeing a federal right to abortion.
• 88 percent say it’s important that Americans have the right to contraception without government interference and 86 percent support keeping IVF legal.
• By a two-to-one margin, Americans say the overturning of Roe v. Wade has been bad for the country, including 58% of voters, 80% of Democrats, and 62% of independents.
• Two-thirds of voters (65%) say Trump had at least some responsibility for the overturning of Roe, including Democrats (83%), independents (64%), and Republicans (50%).
• Nearly six in ten voters are concerned by Trump’s statement that women who have an abortion should be punished, including 66% of all women voters.

Bottom line: This election will determine the fate of reproductive freedom in all 50 states. The choice is simple: President Biden and Vice President Harris believe women’s reproductive health care decisions should be made by them and their doctors, not politicians. That’s why they’re running to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade and will never allow a national abortion ban to become law. Donald Trump believes women should be punished and criminalized for having an abortion – and will ban abortion nationwide if he returns to the White House.

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Paid for by Biden for President