Democrats at this week's national convention shifted the narrative on abortion by focusing on the freedom for women to choose abortions for any reason, not only for cases of emergency or in rapes, breaking a taboo that had been growing after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Stories of unwanted pregnancies were spotlighted at the Democratic National Convention, as well as with men speaking out about their concerns that their wives could die because of abortion rules and about their fears that fertility treatments could be hard to obtain should former President Donald Trump win, Politico reported Thursday.
"Look at the immediate shift that we've seen with the vice president [Kamala Harris] around trusting women," Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said in an interview. “From a messaging standpoint, it's really important because it's setting up a broader kind of values framework for the policy to live in."
President Joe Biden and other Democrat candidates in the past had tended to highlight the stories of women with pregnancies that were wanted but not viable, and of rape or incest survivors, both of which have been deemed by many as acceptable reasons for abortions.
However, this tendency caused some on the left to be concerned that there was a distinction being created between "good" or "bad" abortions.
Democrats are hoping that the topic of abortion and reproductive healthcare will get more people to vote, as it did during the last midterm elections.
Harris, the Democrat presidential nominee, has appeared to be more comfortable discussing the topic of abortion compared to Biden, a devout Catholic who often avoided using the word.