Transcript of Will Arizona’s abortion access decide the US election? | BBC Americast

Americans have this great expression, drill down, get under the hood/bonnet of something, get into the weeds of what it actually means. We're going to do that today with two things, abortion, which is drilling down on an issue, but also the swing states. We're going to drill down into one of them, Arizona, because, Sarah, you are there.

I am. I'm here in Phoenix, so it's burritos for breakfast, tacos for tea when you're in Arizona, and the sun is shining, of course, which is great.

You have in Arizona two of the drill down things at hand because you've got the fact that it's a swing state, and it really is, but you've also got the fact that abortion is what, literally on the ballot.

Yes, it is. That's why I'm here doing a story about exactly that and whether the fact that there's a ballot initiative in which people are asked to vote, whether they want to enshrine abortion rights into the state's constitution, whether or not that's going to drive up democratic support, whether it's going to drive up support for Kamala Harris. One of the things we need to talk about is how can it that there's 60 odd % in the polls for this abortion measure, and she's below 50 %. A bit of a disconnect there.

Welcome to Américast.

Américast. Américast from BBC News. Hello, it's Sarah here. And as I mentioned, I'm in Phoenix, Arizona.

And it's Anthony. I am in the BBC Bureau in Washington, DC.

It's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of Américast in London, England.

And it is also Mariana, a. K. A. Misinformation abortion, also in the worldwide headquarters in London.

We're talking about abortion today, so we should start with the simple facts of where we are with abortion or where the United States is with abortion. It's pretty simple in a way. It used to be constitutionally guaranteed as a right for all American women because of the famous case Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case, went to the Supreme Court and was decided by the Supreme Court. That right was then taken away by the Dobbs decision and handed to the States. And that has been, it is fair to say, the cause of some considerable chaos when it comes to what abortion rights are available to women in the various areas of the US. And now, and this is what is really relevant to the election now, I guess, Sarah, now what we have is a situation where in some States, abortion is on the ballot because there are various measures to try to enshrine it in the state constitution so that it can't be overturned. Where you are, Arizona is one of those places.

Yeah, that's right. That's why I'm here in Arizona. Just to give you a picture of what it's like here in the south of the United States since that Dobbs decision, almost every Southern state has significant restrictions on abortion. Some of them ban it after 15 weeks of pregnancy, some after six weeks, some have a complete ban. They call it a heartbeat bill. As soon as a heartbeat can be detected. Some have exceptions for cases of rape, incest, the life of the mother. Some do not. There's a whole patchwork of laws across the United States now. In 10 different states, in this election, voters are being asked if they either want to completely ban abortion or if they want to protect abortion rights. One way or another, abortion is on the ballot because it's like a little mini-referendum where voters are being asked to choose what abortion laws they want in their state. This happened in the midterms in '22 as well. About five states voted on that. Every single one of them voted by decent margins to protect abortion rights.

Yeah, and I think one thing you have to keep in mind here is that the reason there's a disconnect between the popularity of abortion protections in these states and these laws banning abortion is that even a lot of these deep south conservative states, there are legislatures that are more conservative on abortion, state legislators that are more conservative on abortion than the population in general. And so instead of having the state capitals, the state legislatures, change the law to reflect public sentiment, The public has been having to go around the legislatures to put it directly on the ballot and have people vote on it. That's why you saw places like Kansas, where you have a very conservative legislature, end up legalizing abortion through a ballot measure instead.

Of course, the big question, and what we need to try and work out, is how this then might affect the presidential election or any of the other elections. Once you've got abortion on the same ballot paper, essentially, as you've got Kamala Harris and Donald Trump's names, what does it do to that?

I feel we know very well what Kamala Harris feels about abortion and how passionately she feels about it. I think it's probably fair to say she talks more passionately, vigorously, and coherently about this subject, actually, than any other. I just wonder, Mariana, whether that comes across in the world that you look at and inhabit, whether there is this sense that with Harris, you absolutely know what she thinks. With Trump, because of what has happened, because of the Supreme Court justices that he appointed, you're not so sure.

Yes and yes. I mean, so much of particularly the social media content that's been popping up, especially on my female undercover voters' feeds, not the male one so much, and that's across the political spectrum for the women, has been about this issue, about abortion rights, and What's interesting, I think, is how exactly that there is a very, very clear position across the board on the left in terms of activating voters, I guess, particularly targeting younger women. Whereas when it comes to the content that's being recommended to the it's leaning undercover voters, and the content is much more about based in religious belief and very, very strong opinions that are anti-abortion. But it tends to be less so from Trump's own profiles or those that relate to him, and more so from supporters and fans who are resharing what he said. That's all quite interesting. There's not a clear unified, this is what Trump thinks about this, and here you go.

It strikes me, Anthony.

That's because there isn't a clear unified I have view of what Trump thinks about this. He says different things all the time. He's asked if he would support a nationwide ban on abortion. He doesn't say either way, in fact, but he refuses to rule it out. He said both. He will not rule out. Yeah, exactly. He says that abortion rights will be protected with him, but then he boasts that he was the President who appointed the Supreme Court justices, who appointed the Supreme Court justices, who got rid of Roe versus Wade. He's trying to have it always on abortion. I think he knows it could be a problem for Republicans, but at the same time, he wants to take credit with anti-abortion voters who like what he's done. So it's a very muddled position.

On the right, you have this range of people, and we've all met them, some of whom are absolutely happy with abortion rights, indeed, support abortion rights, and some of whom wouldn't support any abortion rights at all for anyone, even in the most extreme cases of rape and incest. And it has opened up an issue, it seems to me, Anthony, that's not just... I mean, abortion is important, but it's actually not just about abortion, is it? It throws a whole thing open, which is the extraordinary physiparousness, if that is a word, of the Republican coalition.

Yeah, it's a challenge for Donald Trump to try to keep the people within his coalition who believe that abortion is murder. If they believe abortion is murder, then they think it should be banned, not just in certain states, but everywhere. You can't allow murder to take place in California, but banned it in Texas. They have this hard line, and Donald Trump is trying to keep them happy to point out how Roe v Wade got reversed while also trying to convince the suburban women Republicans who really care about abortion rights and care about women's autonomy over their own body, keep them from bolting to Kamala Harris.

It's such an interesting point that you raise there, Anthony, because for all that, Kamala Harris is very passionate and very eloquent on the subject of abortion rights. In fact, it's something that she was on from the minute Roe versus Wade was overturned. She's been campaigning on. But a vote for her does not guarantee any more abortion rights in any way at all. There's so little actually that the President can do about that. If it would be close to impossible for her to ever pass a federal law through Congress guaranteeing the right to abortion, it's not abundantly clear what a Harris vote will necessarily do for someone who cares about abortion rights.

I suppose one of the things it might do if she were in for eight years, I know I'm getting a bit ahead of us all now, but she were in for eight years and there were Supreme Court justices to be appointed. That's where this thing is played out, as we know, with Roe v Wade ending and all the rest of it, and indeed with Roe v Wade in the first place. It's not going to be a legislative thing. It is in the end, going to go back to the Supreme Court and a change in the mood of the court and the personnel on the court.

It was a 50-year battle for Conservatives to get justices on the Supreme Court who would ultimately overturn Roe v Wade. You could see Democrats waging a lengthy battle to get more liberal justices on the court. That could find another reason to re institute Roe v Wade, maybe a different constitutional reason that legal scholars on the left might feel more comfortable with because there were some concerns about that Roe v Wade decision back in 1973. It is going to be a challenge for Democrats no matter what. It's not going to happen instantly. And what might happen is what Kamala Harris doesn't do if she becomes President rather than what she does. Because if Donald Trump becomes President, there are things that he could do as President, such as limiting the male transmission of abortion pills, finding new ways to restrict access to these medicated abortions. That would make it much harder for women to have abortions, and certainly much harder for women to have abortions who live in states that have these bands already in place.

Yeah, and she says he's going to do those things. But here's the thing, though, Sarah. I just wonder in all of this whether Donald Trump has a get-out-of-jail free card, though, which he's playing, albeit that we're trying to pin him But actually, the fact that you can't pin him down is because a lot of people genuinely believe that in his heart of hearts, he's quite a social liberal, if not a libertine.

Well, let's look at what he's done. None of his actions would make you think that he's going to govern in a way that's liberal on abortion, even before he'd managed to appoint all those Supreme Court justices who would rule in an anti-abortion way.

It is my profound honor to be the first President in history to attend the March for Life.

He's campaign pretty hard on this, actually. He's trying not to lose the votes now of people who are a wee bit more moderate about it, but there's no reason to think he would be liberal in any way because he sees political advantage in the route that he's gone down so far.

And he said in 2016, he would appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v Wade. He got elected, and he did that. So they do see that. Although I think, Justin, what you're saying, that could explain the disconnect between these popular ballot measures protecting abortion rights in swing states, and the fact that Donald Trump still, in places like Arizona, actually has a lead, or at least is within the margin of error there. So maybe the voters, by telling pollsters this, they are demonstrating that they don't think that Donald Trump really is a threat to abortion rights, even if the evidence over his four-year term as President seems to point in a different direction.

That disconnect is absolutely fascinating, isn't it? If you look at the polls here in Arizona, around about 60% of people are likely to vote in favor of abortion rights. At the moment, fewer than 50% say that they would support Kamala Harris. You are talking about voters who will go into a polling booth and vote yes on abortion rights and then vote for Donald Trump. Who could these people possibly be? Well, that's what I was asking some of the people I met yesterday. I went to a postcard party. I've never been to anything like this before. It was really interesting. Lots of campaigners writing out individual postcards with their own passionate reasons for supporting abortion rights and sending them off to voters whose addresses they got off the electoral role. I said to them, did they know anybody who was in this position? They said, yes, they meet Republicans all the time who are pretty passionate, actually, about abortion rights, but don't agree with Democrats on really much else, like Republicans on the economy have always voted Republican in the past, and don't actually see any particular disconnect between voting for Trump and abortion rights at the same time.

Anthony, it's about 60% of women, I think, maybe more, generally say they support abortion rights.

Yeah, that sounds about right, and that's pretty close to what it is nationally. Abortion rights generally are popular, and they are a winning issue for Democrats, and that is why you've seen Kamal Harris lean into this so hard in a way that Joe Biden never really did, too, because Joe Biden, actually, he's Catholic. He has a voting record when he was in Congress of being in favor of some abortion restrictions. If you want to look at what changed when Joe Biden stepped aside and Kamal Harris came in. Abortion being the central focus of the Democratic campaign, that really became one of the big differences. Now Democrats are leaning into, as you mentioned, these ballot measures the same way, and Justin, you probably remember this, back in the early 2000s, when it was Republicans putting ballot measures to ban same-sex marriages that they viewed as a way of getting their base voters out to vote in favor of traditional marriages. That was an electoral wedge issue that was difficult for the Democrats to try to campaign and explain away.

Yeah. To an extent, it worked as well. The question then for both of you, I guess, and Marion as well, because you're seeing all of this on social media, is whether it's working this time. Sarah, first of all, a blunt question for you. You're in Arizona, you talk to people about this issue. Is it going to swing it in Arizona for Trump v. Harris?

Very interesting question. What I've been trying to find out. Let me tell you a little bit about I've been doing. We had come here hoping that we were going to film with a group of anti-abortion activists who meet at their local church and they crochet baby blankets, and we were going to go and speak to them then. Unfortunately, their diocese decided that they didn't want us to come and do that. We found ourselves outside an abortion clinic where there is a vigil, a protest from anti-abortion campaigners, and they're determined to be there every day for 40 days to make their opposition clear and also to campaign on this issue and ask voters to vote against abortion rights in the ballot. As we were there, a young Latino woman came up very passionately arguing in favor of abortion rights, and we were able to hear just happening there, completely organically in the street, a distillation of the argument. This younger woman saying, It's absolutely nobody else's business what women choose to do with their own bodies, that the government shouldn't be involved in healthcare decisions, and how dare anybody tell her what to do if she was pregnant.

With this really passionate anti-abortion campaigner who does fervently believe that every abortion is murder, trying to persuade this woman, both to vote in favor of saving the lives of unborn babies. You hear this a lot from anti-abortionists saying, It's not fair to women because they're convinced that women regret abortions that they have had and that it ruins their lives, and actually, you would be saving women from this fate. They argued this out for a good half an hour in the street, I have to say. It is an issue in which you very rarely find any meeting of minds whatsoever. Then after this young woman went off, I was talking to the anti-abortion campaign, and she is pretty savvy, actually. She said she wants no exceptions, a total, total abortion ban because she thinks babies conceived of rape or incest are innocent children who should be allowed to be born regardless of the circumstances. But she knows the state of will never accept anything more than a 15-week ban. That's what she's campaigning for. That was it all summed up in a nutshell there.

I think it's been really interesting seeing how emotive often the content is that's being shared about this topic, zooming in on often very extreme cases that allow people, I guess, to... It's that whole thing of focusing on one story rather than dozens of stories because it then can hold people's attention and they understand the political argument at play. When I've been looking at my undercover voters' feeds, particularly progressive left Emma, who is young, furthest to the left of all the undercover voters, my fictional characters with social media profiles across all the main sites, both With her, and interestingly, A Political Gabriella, our undecided voter, have been recommended quite a few videos and posts from Kamala Harris's own campaign on this issue. It's interesting when it happens on TikTok, which is where it's happened for both of them, actually, it's not necessarily labeled as a political ad, but it is in the same format as a political ad that's run elsewhere, and it's being run like a video that then is being pushed to their feeds. In particular, there's been this campaign video, focusing on the story of Amber Thurman.

My daughter, Amber, made me so proud.

She was having complications.

Tonight, we are learning more about the death of Amber Thurman.

The death of Amber Thurman, which is was likely preventable if she'd had access to abortion care in her home state of Georgia. What happened to her was preventable. My daughter is gone because of what Donald Trump did.

For 54 years, they were trying to get Roe v Wade terminated, and I did it, and I'm proud to have done it.

The video continues on. It's got clips of Amber's mom, and you heard there, and friends and family, too. It's that content that I'm seeing a lot Sarah. Sarah, you've had a chance, haven't you, to speak to Amber's really close friend?

Yeah, I spoke to and I interviewed Ricaria Baker, who was best friends with Amber Thurman, actually involved in this story a little bit as well, because what happened was Amber Thurman was already a mother, got pregnant again and didn't want to have the baby. She discovered that she had just fallen foul of some quite tight abortion restrictions in Georgia, where abortion was banned after six weeks. The two of them drove off together to North Carolina, where for various reasons, Amber Thurman had to have a medical abortion where you take one pill in the clinic and then another one 12 months later, and that creates a spontaneous miscarriage. But what happened was not all of the fetal tissue was expelled. And a few weeks later, she had to go into hospital. She was in severe pain and at risk of infection. It's a really simple, quick surgical procedure that would sort that out, that gets done for women for all sorts of reasons all the time. But the doctors were of whether they were going to fall foul of George's new abortion laws if they did this. So they left her for almost 24 hours, during which time she got infected, it went septic, and by the time they went in to intervene, she died in surgery.

So it's a really sad story. And now our friend, Ricaria, and her family, as you heard there, are getting quite politically involved. People who said they never thought they would be campaigning or involved like this in politics before, but because they've been so affected by this tragedy for Amber. That's the thing, of course, that Democrats are hoping will happen, that people either hear this story or others, and suddenly, people who never cared about politics before, get interested and get out to the polls. That's the theory of how Aborted on the Ballet ought to help Democrats.

But what's interesting is that the swifty campaigns that have mobilized on social media and that I've been investigating for this other podcast I'm Why Do You Hate Me USA? They have quite specifically appealed to younger voters, and particularly younger female voters on this basis. This is vital that you come out and vote. If you look in the comments, you see both young women, but then actually quite a lot of mums and also grandmothers who are posting saying, You must go out and vote for your daughters and your granddaughters and so on. It's worth saying as well that my female right-leaning undercover voter, so that's Brittany, populace right, Brittany, she is very, very anti-abortion, and she has had lots and lots of posts about that, including coming, for example, from religious influences, people who post a lot about these kinds of issues, and will get thousands of views, tens of thousands of views. There's one that... Some of that has been based totally in evidence and opinion. Some of it has really drawn on Donald Trump's claims during the debate about killing babies right up until full term, which has been very strongly shut down by Kamala Harris and and the Democrats campaign.

But again, to counter the emotive videos we were just talking about, the personal stories, those other really appealing to people on the basis of people are being killed. Some of this language, again, that's being used online, is hyper emotive, and you can see how it motivates people who feel differently about abortion to act in a different way. That's where you get to this position where Donald Trump is appealing to those people on the basis of the economy or immigration or other issues. But it's less clear what Kamala Harris's messages to those voters Because it's so clear and strong when it comes to abortion.

Yeah, funnily enough, of course, we did another episode this week precisely about what men want. I have met lots of male voters who feel very, very passionately on both sides of the argument about abortion. But here, I've only spoken to women, and not by design. They've been the only people that I have come across campaigning for this. At this postcard writing party I was at last night, I did speak to a couple of young women who said it was the first political thing they'd ever done in their lives. They never imagined that they would be involved in campaigning, and that each of them had persuaded somebody, in one case, this woman's mother, to register to vote. Mother is 62 years old, never voted once. But she said, Look, you grew up with the constitutional protections of Roe versus Wade, and you didn't have to worry about abortion rights. I now do have to worry about that, so please register to vote and get out there and vote on this ballot measure to protect these abortion rights for me. And she figures her mom will probably vote for Kamala Harris while she's there. And it's that grassroots thing, of course, that the Democrats are really hoping might make a difference.

I still think even now with days really to go and with people already voting, that's the other thing we ought to say. People are already... Are they in Arizona, Sarah? Maybe not.

Yes, they can. I went past an early voting station. I couldn't find anybody in it to ask them how they'd vote. I don't know if they're rushing to the polls in Arizona, but hundreds of thousands, record numbers of people have voted in Georgia already. They are storming the polls there.

Yeah, it started. And so All the arguments that we're having and all the arguments that politicians are having and Trump and Harris are having, those people who have already made up their minds are already beginning to vote in large numbers. Of course, that also then brings up this whole business of how the votes are going to be counted and what the various legal ramifications of the various ways of voting in various states are going to be. It all brings us down to, I suppose, number one, we don't know who's going to win. Number two, though, we don't know whether there's going to be a result on the night or even in days afterwards. Talk about drilling down. We then get to this real issue of 2024 being really uniquely unpredictable in every possible way. That's it. That's all we got time for. If you want more Brilliant Analysis, you can listen to the podcast on BBC Sounds. Bye.

From BBC News.