President Joe Biden had plenty of opportunity during the presidential debate to lay out a clear vision regarding abortion rights in the face of growing restrictions since the fall of Roe v. Wade, something his campaign sees as a major motivator for voters.
That's not what happened.
Biden's jumbled and even nonsensical responses Thursday night to questions about abortion rights — coupled with Trump's largely unchallenged contentions about Democrats' views — were panned by some abortion rights advocates who suggested the performance was a failure.
“Look, no one who cares about abortion access felt good about Biden’s comments or his performance last night,” said Kellie Copeland, the director of Abortion Forward, an advocacy group in Ohio. “We need better — we need a lot better.”
Put more bluntly: “He failed us last night,” said Sarah Garza Resnick of Personal PAC, an Illinois group that supports candidates who back abortion rights.
Reproductive rights have already proven to be a potential linchpin issue for Democrats. On ballot initiatives, voters consistently choose to safeguard abortion rights. About two-thirds of U.S. adults and nearly 9 in 10 Democrats say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to AP-NORC data from last June.
The president recovered a bit on Friday, telling supporters at a North Carolina rally: "Folks, for all his lies, we learned some important truths about Donald Trump last night. We learned he’s still proud to be the person that killed Roe v. Wade.”
But the night before, Biden seemed unable to explain the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.
When asked by the moderators if he supports some restrictions on abortion, Biden said he “supports Roe v. Wade, which had three trimesters. The first time is between a woman and a doctor. Second time is between a doctor and an extreme situation. A third time is between the doctor, I mean, between the women and the state.”
Abortion rights advocates lamented a missed chance to clearly lay out the stakes.
“Biden had a wonderful opportunity to really show the difference between him and Trump in who stands for abortion access and who doesn’t,” said Nourbese Flint, president of the national abortion justice group All Above All Action Fund. “And I think he really missed the mark.”