“We must remove the stigma”: For these Democratic women aspiring to office, Roe’s reversal is personal, #remove #stigma #Democratic #women #running #office #Roes #reversal #personal Welcome to OLASMEDIA TV NEWSThis is what we have for you today:
Washington- It was about three minutes after the Supreme Court released its decision to reverse the constitutional right to abortion when Jamie Cheney understood what to do.
Cheney, a Democratic primary candidate for New York’s 19th Congressional District, was meeting with a group of women — Republicans and Democrats — when the court overturned Roe v. Wade. She remembered how all the women around her reacted in the same way, crossing political affiliations and generations.
“For one person, women who were in the room, across the party lines, from their early 20s to late 60s, early 70s, had silent tears streaming down their faces,” Cheney told CBS News. “That was the moment I knew I would share this story.”
The story for Cheney is that of her own abortion, which she decided to have almost a decade ago during her first trimester of pregnancy. After she became ill due to a rare immune disorder, Cheney’s doctors found a drug that would fight the infection she developed during pregnancy, but they warned it carried a risk of causing significant health problems to the fetus.
Cheney and her husband already had three young children to care for, now aged 8, 10 and 12, and decided she would have an abortion as they determined it was best for their family.
Cheney, who started her own recruiting and consulting firm and runs a cattle ranch with her husband, had shared her experiences with her loved ones and some groups of voters earlier in her campaign. But after the Supreme Court dismantled nearly 50 years of abortion precedent in late June, she spoke to her husband about what she believes was a strong instinct to share their story more widely.
So on July 21, almost a month after Roe’s reversal, Cheney let go of her first TV commercial of the campaign, focusing on her decision to have an abortion.
“If there was a comprehensive understanding that no woman ever wants an abortion, no woman ever wants to be in that situation, in that context, these are not exceptions to the rule,” she told CBS News, which she said. her experience with access to abortion as part of women’s medical care is no exception. “It’s just things that have happened during being a woman and in the course of reproductive health, and we have to remove the stigma or the concept that these are the exceptions before we can treat this simply as the right to health care that it is. is.”
Jamie Cheney, a Democratic primary for New York’s 19th congressional district, shares her story of having an abortion in her first television commercial.
Jamie Cheney for Congress/YouTube
The seat Cheney was running for was held by Antonio Delgado, now New York’s lieutenant governor, and the district lines were redrawn after the 2020 census. Below the old boundaries, the seat of Republican control swung from 2011 to 2019 to Democratic control with Delgado’s victory in the 2018 and 2020 elections, and voters in the district voted for former President Barack Obama in 2012, former President Donald Trump in 2016, and then President Biden in 2020.
Cheney will face another Democrat, Josh Riley, in next week’s primary, which will take place on the same day as a special election to replace Delgado and serve the remainder of his term. The Democratic nominee will face Republican Marcus Molinaro, director of Dutchess County, in November. The race is rated as a toss-up by the Cook Political Report. Cheney has received a slew of endorsements ahead of the primary, including from Emily’s List, Planned Parenthood Action Fund and two incumbent congresswomen, Representatives Lois Frankel of Florida and Kathy Manning of North Carolina.
Republicans have been working to deliver the November midterm elections, which will give them the opportunity to regain control of the House as a referendum on Democrats and policies they say has fueled high gas prices and historic inflation.
But for Democrats, and especially Democratic women on the ballot, the Supreme Court decision put an end to the constitutional right to abortion, put the issue in electoral interest, and served as a springboard for them to share their personal experiences.
“We think this is motivating for people who support abortion rights. We think this motivates them to start voting for people who will support their rights,” said Christina Reynolds, spokeswoman for Emily’s List, which elects female candidates who support abortion rights. “We also think it’s a powerful thing when you can tell a story and connect with a voter, reminding them of the human side of the problem.”
Cheney joins a growing line of candidates and elected officials who have spoken publicly about their personal experiences with abortion, demonstrating the myriad reasons for terminating a pregnancy and seeking to challenge the idea that open discussion of the procedure is taboo. is.
In February 2011, Rep. Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, the first member of Congress to speak on the House floor about having an abortion, which she had when she was 17 weeks pregnant after learning the fetus was not viable.
More than a decade later, three more Democratic lawmakers—Deputies Barbara Lee of California, Cori Bush of Missouri, and Pramila Jayapal of Washington—testified publicly before the House Oversight and Reform Committee in September 2021 about terminating their own pregnancies.
New York Attorney General Letitia James revealed in May that she, too, had had an abortion shortly after she was elected to the New York City Council in 2003. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel told Fox 2 Detroit in April that while pregnant with triplets in 2002, she aborted one of the unborn babies on the advice of her doctors and to protect the other two, who are now in college.
“There are many different reasons for making this decision for yourself, and that’s exactly why it should be your decision,” Reynolds said. “Healthcare and family planning decisions, all those decisions are something I think are a fundamental part of freedom — your ability to decide how your life goes forward is critical to personal freedom, and that’s something that abortion rights give you.” to give .”
Jeannine Lee Lake, a Democrat active in Indiana’s 5th congressional district, had shared her experience only with family, friends and members of her church in Muncie. But the Supreme Court’s decision to roll back Roe was the catalyst for her to speak more broadly about having an abortion, and helped Lake get rid of the shame she said she felt.
“[Overturning] Roe v. Wade first made me think that we’re in a different paradigm and that I can’t be “Jeannine Lee Lake, a political figure” right now,” she said. “I should really be ‘Jeannine Lee Lake, a woman, a mother, a grandmother concerned about the reproductive rights of all women’.”
She added: “I’m not really talking from a political standpoint because frankly it’s nobody’s business if a woman chooses to have an abortion or not, and I come from a place where I’ve experienced this as someone who knows how it’s about feeling helpless and feeling like you have no other choice.”
For Lake, that place marks her freshman year at Ball State University in the spring of 1988, where she, the daughter of a Pentecostal pastor who promised *not to have* until marriage, became pregnant after being raped.
“I was always the good girl, the smart girl. I was the first girl in my family to go to college, the first person in my family to graduate. I don’t put myself in dangerous positions. I was ashamed,” she said. “I did something that I don’t think many Christians would approve of, but I did it because I knew it was right for me.”
Lake ran unsuccessfully to represent Indiana’s 6th congressional district twice, facing GOP Rep. Greg Pence, brother of former Vice President Mike Pence, in 2018 and 2020. In May, she defeated Matt Hall in the Democratic primary and will challenge the incumbent GOP Rep. Victoria Spartan in the November general election.
Congressional candidate Jeannine Lee Lake, second from left, takes part in an abortion rights demonstration in the Indiana United States House of Representatives.
Thanks to Jeannine Lee Lake
The district is judged firmly Republican by Cook Political Report, but Lake is encouraged by this month’s results of a ballot initiative in Kansas, another trusty red state where a proposed amendment to remove the right to abortion from the state’s constitution was outright rejected.
“[Indiana] may be a red state, but there are more women here than men, and they don’t want people telling them what to do with their own bodies, no matter the party. We’re tired of that,” she said. Lake calls the current political landscape a “watershed moment” and has a message especially for women: “If she’s not going to vote, then she’s just not paying attention.”
Looking ahead to November, Reynolds said the results in Kansas, the first time the issue of abortion rights has been on the agenda since the June 24 Supreme Court ruling, shows that access to abortion is a motivating issue for voters this election cycle.
A June CBS News poll found that 59% of voters disapproved of the ruling Roe quashed, including 67% of women. A Survey Kaiser Family Foundation released earlier this month found that 73% of female voters ages 18 to 49, the population group most affected by abortion restrictions, said abortion will be “very important” in deciding who to vote for in November. will be voted on, a jump of 14 percentage points from February.
“I think a lot of people didn’t believe that Donald Trump could take this right because of Roe v. Wade, because they thought there was a backstop,” Reynolds said. “If you take that backstop away, you completely change the dynamic.”
For Cheney, the candidate in New York’s 19th Congressional District, the Kansas results reinforced her belief that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority opinion does not reflect the opinion of the American public and suggests that politicians against abortion rights underestimate voters, and in especially ladies.
“A lot of assumptions have been made that ultimately turned out to be false, and it’s our job as representatives to make sure we never make assumptions. We are working in touch with the views and needs of voters in our district,” she said. “We need people who know they are not alone. They can be what’s considered responsible and make good decisions, and it doesn’t reflect on them.”
The battle for abortion
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