During an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Biden deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said Biden would prioritize abortion and restoring Roe v. Wade on the first day of his second term. When the Supreme Court issued its Dobbs decision in June of 2022, it overturned Roe v. Wade, a 1973 decision that had invented the Constitutional “right” to abortion.
“You talk about democracy being on the ballot. Some top Democratic lawmakers say, ‘Okay, good to be focused on former President Trump, but you’ve got to talk about what a second Biden agenda would look like.’ What would on day one President Biden’s top priority be?” NBC’s Kristen Welker asked.
“Well, look, the president announced this campaign with the moniker of ‘Finish the job, and protecting freedom and democracy.’ So when we talk about that, let’s look at it. First of all, Roe,” Fulks replied. “The president has been adamant that we need to restore Roe. It is unfathomable that women today wake up in a country with less rights than their ancestors had years ago.”
Fulks said Biden would also prioritize gun violence by “ban[ing] assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” and would work on lowering the costs of prescription medications and forgiving student loan debt — a promise from his first campaign that has so far proven fruitless.
Democrats have made abortion central to campaigns across the countries since the Dobbsdecision, painting the issue as one of freedom rather than one of life and death. In June, Biden’s former White House chief of staff Ron Klain predicted to Politico that abortion is “going to be a major theme in the 2024 campaign.”
“You’re going to have a Democrat, Joe Biden, who has stood up for a woman’s right to choose and is pushing for federal legislation to restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land against a Republican who obviously has a very different point of view,” Klain said, adding that abortion would be lumped in with other issues like LGBTQ rights and so-called book banning with the aim of contrasting Democrats with “MAGA Republicans trying to roll back those freedoms.”
