HARRISBURG, Pa. — In a tight race at the top of the ticket, the issue of abortion could be what’s keeping it close late in the game.
"I think abortion rights are part of what’s driving that," said Berwood Yost, director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College. "If this election were fought solely on the economy, I think Republicans would be winning more comfortably than they are."
Reproductive rights have been a talking point for both parties since the overturning of Roe V. Wade, something Former President Trump continues to say he contributed to.
"Former President Trump stand on abortion is fairly convoluted," said Dr. Alison Dagnes, chair of the political science department at Shippensburg University. "On the one hand, he takes great pride and credit for appointing the justices to the Supreme Court that in 2022 overturn Roe versus Wade with the Dobbs decision."
"I don’t think he’s got a coherent message around this at the moment," Yost said. "He has seemed to change his position or be uncertain about how to express it."
While he has not publicly expressed support for a nationwide abortion ban, the former president repeatedly emphasizes the role states now play in determining abortion access, claiming at times the public preferred it
"Every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote and that’s what happened," Trump said during the lone presidential debate between he and the vice president.
"He’s tried to distance himself by those unhappy voters by saying that moving it to the states is the most sort of democratic way of handling a very difficult issue," Dagnes said.
Meanwhile, Vice President Harris has repeatedly called out her opponent’s stance on the issue.
"He should take responsibility for the fact that one in three women in America lives in a Trump abortion ban state," Harris said in a recent interview.
"She’s not proposing anything that hadn’t already been accepted wisdom, but she is proposing that we not step back and start to really go back to a time where LGBTQ Americans didn’t have rights where women’s reproductive rights were taken away from them," Dagnes said.
Public support for abortion access has risen since the federal abortion rights were struck down, with Associated Press polling from the summer showing 6 in 10 Americans support abortion access.
Still, restoring reproductive rights nationwide could prove challenging for any Democratic administration.
"There’s such a strong core of anti-abortion sentiment in the Republican party that there probably won’t be a legislative solution unless you have either a change to the Senate filibuster rules or large majorities, which aren’t gonna happen," Yost said.
Election day is Nov. 5.
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