Abortion message shifting at DNC

Aug 22, 2024

Driving The Day

Josh Zurawski and Amanda Zurawski speak onstage during the first day of the Democratic National Convention.

Texas residents Josh and Amanda Zurawski speak onstage at the DNC about their experience when a hospital wouldn't terminate her nonviable pregnancy. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

BREAKING THE TABOO — Democrats have spent two years running on the demise of Roe by focusing on women with wanted pregnancies who were denied emergency abortion care.

Not this week. The Democratic National Convention spotlighted stories of unwanted pregnancies, a long taboo subject in politics, POLITICO's Alice Miranda Ollstein and Megan Messerly report. Men spoke, too — about concerns their wives would die for want of health care, about fears that IVF and fertility treatments would be harder to come by.

The new framing of an issue so important to Democrats is a notable contrast to President Joe Biden and other candidates who highlighted the stories of rape survivors or women with wanted but unviable pregnancies, leaving some on the left concerned about creating a distinction between “good” and “bad” abortions. Many speakers on Wednesday spoke of abortion as a choice that is valid for any reason.

The broader lens comes as Democrats hope that abortion — and other kinds of reproductive health care — will drive voters to the ballot box like it did during the midterms. Harris has always been a much more comfortable and savvy messenger on the issue than Biden — a devout Catholic who largely avoided saying the word “abortion” — expanding what she and other Democrats can talk about on the campaign trail.

“Look at the immediate shift that we’ve seen with the vice president, around trusting women,” Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood’s CEO, 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.”

WELCOME TO THURSDAY PULSE. Second Gentlemen Doug Emhoff referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “my wiiiife” using a somewhat-convincing “Borat” voice at a DNC afterparty this week — and, of course, there’s video. Send tips to ccirruzzo@politico.com and bleonard@politico.com and follow along @ChelseaCirruzzo and @_BenLeonard_.

VETERANS' HEALTH

A veteran is pictured.

Democrats and Republicans are vying to win the votes of veterans. | Getty Images

PURSUING VETS’ VOTES — Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are trying to win over the millions of veterans in the U.S. ahead of the November election, Ben and Chelsea report.

More than a quarter of the 16 million veterans in the U.S. receive their health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In the June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden, Trump saw veterans’ health as a winning issue, but his record is complicated by controversial comments about veterans, which has angered many of them.

“There has been no greater advocate for our brave military men and women than President Trump,” Anna Kelly, an RNC spokesperson, told Pulse.

His platform calls for expanding the choice for veterans in private health care and using savings from ending “luxury housing and Taxpayer benefits for Illegal Immigrants” to care for homeless veterans.

Here are some key veterans’ health issues:

Benefits: The Biden administration signed legislation two years ago expanding benefits for veterans exposed to toxins. More than 1 million claims have been approved under the act, totaling $6.8 billion in benefits, though the implementation has been rocky at times.

Health care choices: As president, Trump signed into law the MISSION Act, which allows veterans to use VA-funded health care outside of the VA system. “It’s less expensive for us, it works out much better and it’s immediate care,” Trump said in 2018 when signing the bill.

Harris supported the bill when she was in the Senate but later signed a bipartisan letter criticizing the Trump administration’s implementation of the law and raising concerns it was pushing the VA toward privatization and increased costs.

EHR: Under Trump, the VA began a major modernization effort of its electronic health records, signing a contract with Oracle Health, known at the time as Cerner. The Biden administration continued the modernization but paused it last year after major fumbles. The modernization is set to resume in fiscal 2025.

In Congress

FUNDING PATCH IN THE WORKS? A stopgap funding patch that could include health care legislation is being eyed by lawmakers for when they return to Capitol Hill next month, POLITICO’s Jennifer Scholtes and Caitlin Emma report.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) told reporters during a pro forma session of the Senate this week that “there will be some efforts to get some traditional bills done, either through the continuing resolution or through some omnibus bill” in the coming weeks.

Cardin, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Finance Health Care Subcommittee, also mentioned housing legislation as a priority and the annual defense policy bill “if it comes together” as a possibility for September passage.

Why it matters: Everyone in Congress acknowledges that lawmakers will need to clear a continuing resolution next month to punt the fiscal 2025 funding deadline until after Election Day.

But the length of that patch is up for debate, as the House Freedom Caucus continues to root for pushing the funding cliff into the new calendar year. Cardin forecasts a much speedier timeline.

“There’s going to be a strong effort to get it done in the lame duck, and maybe even before Thanksgiving,” he said.

Public Health

STUDYING LONG COVID IN KIDS — An NIH-backed study on long Covid in children, published in JAMA on Wednesday, gives some clues into how it manifests in school-age children versus teens.

The paper is part of the NIH’s RECOVER initiative, which is a congressionally funded research consortium aimed at studying the origins of and treatment for long Covid, which is defined by a set of symptoms — ranging from annoying to debilitating — some patients experience after a Covid-19 infection.

Details: The study of more than 5,300 school-aged children, ages 6- to 11, and teens ages 12 to 17 used a combination of symptoms to identify the likely presence of long Covid. Both children and teens were found to experience prolonged symptoms after an initial infection, affecting nearly every organ system — symptoms differed across age groups.

School-age children had a distinct cluster of symptoms that included trouble with memory or focusing, as well as difficulty sleeping. Another cluster of symptoms in school-aged children was stomach issues. Meanwhile, a distinct cluster of symptoms in teens included a change in or loss of taste and smell, which wasn’t found in the younger children.

Why it matters: This study is one of the largest exploring long Covid in kids. NIH investigators estimate that it may impact up to 6 million children in the U.S., but much of the long Covid literature has been centered on adults.

What’s next? According to NYU Langone Health, which supported the study, researchers will now try to determine whether these symptom clusters are associated with different disease mechanisms, which can be useful in identifying treatment.

WHAT WE'RE READING

The New York Times reports on how U.S. farms could spark the spread of bird flu.

POLITICO’s Arek Sarkissian reports on a Florida Supreme Court decision keeping a financial statement as part of an abortion-rights ballot initiative.

NBC News reports that the FDA could approve a new Covid-19 vaccine as early as today.

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