WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — Planned Parenthood will spend $40 million to strengthen the president ahead of the November elections Joe Biden and leading Democrats in Congress, who are betting that voters are angry at Republican-led efforts to further restrict access abortion could be the difference in key races across the country.
The political and advocacy arms of the nation’s largest reproductive health care provider and abortion rights organization shared the announcement with The Associated Press before its wider release Monday.
The group will initially focus on eight states: Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Biden wants to defend the 2020 victories, and North Carolina, which the Democratic presidential campaign hopes to turn around after Republican Donald Trump won four years ago, and Montana, New Hampshire and New York, where races exist that could help determine control of the Senate and House of Representatives.
The campaign will look to reach voters with volunteer and paid recruitment programs, phone banking and digital, TV and postal advertising.
“Abortion will be the message of this election, and it will be the way we energize voters,” said Jenny Lawson, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes. “It will allow us to win.”
The spending plan is not an election cycle record for the group. It spent $45 million before defeating Biden Trump in 2020 and $50 million before the 2022 midterm elections.
That’s when Planned Parenthood advocates focused on pouring money into contests with abortion access on the agenda months later. the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wadethe landmark 1973 case that created a constitutional right to abortion, a decision made two years ago Monday.
“We continue to see the devastation that comes when anti-abortion politicians gain power,” Lawson said of the years since. “It just got worse.”
Abortion remains one of the country’s most important political issues, but the dynamics surrounding it have changed dramatically since the Supreme Court’s ruling. After the verdict, most Republican-controlled states imposed new abortion restrictionsincluding some prohibitions at any stage of pregnancy.
Meanwhile, voters in seven states — California, Michigan and Vermont, as well as the usually reliably Republican Kansas, Kentucky, Montana and Ohio — sided with abortion rights advocates on ballot measures.
In November, voters in several other states, including battleground Arizona and Nevada, will hold abortion referendums on the ballot, as will Florida, a former presidential bellwether that has turned increasingly Republican in recent cycles but where Biden’s campaign hopes to boost turnout for the abortion vote. initiative can bring things closer.
SBA Pro-Life America, one of the nation’s most prominent anti-abortion rights groups, announced in February that it plans to direct $92 million to voters in eight battleground states: Arizona, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan , Ohio, Montana and Georgia.
In addition to the national effort, local Planned Parenthood advocates and political organizations in California, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio are planning campaigns ahead of November.
Planned Parenthood efforts will also focus on some lower voting rates, such as helping Democrats seek a supermajority in the Nevada statehouse, or thwarting two state Supreme Court justices who are up for re-election in Arizona after they voted for that. allows officials to enforce an 1864 law criminalizing nearly all abortions, which the state legislature has since voted to repeal.
“We can’t just vote for ballot initiatives,” said Lindsey Harmon, executive director of Nevada Advocates for Planned Parenthood Affiliates PAC. “We must also support the infrastructure that enables access to abortion.”