Last week, Donald Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, made headlines for implying that “suburban women” don’t care about abortion rights.
“What do you say to suburban women out there who are marinating in this propaganda?” Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked Vance, claiming that some women believe that abortion is banned nationally.
“Well, first of all, I don’t buy that, Laura,” Vance replied. “I think most suburban women care about the normal things that most Americans care about.”
The subtext being that such concerns don’t include abortion.
Notably, these comments happened the same week release of a KFF poll told a different story. According to the poll, 53 percent of Republican women voters someway or strongly oppose leaving abortion rights up to the states, in addition to 86 percent of Democratic women. Seventy-three percent of independent women voters also polled that they opposed leaving abortion to the states. When looking at women in the suburbs and urban areas, 74 percent of urban and suburban women said they opposed leaving abortion rights to the states.
Brittni Frederiksen, one of the senior authors of the KFF poll and associate director for Women’s Health Policy at KFF, told Salon the survey polled over 4,000 women of reproductive ages, between 18 to 49. When asked if they’d ever had an abortion in their lifetime, one in seven said “yes.”
“And this was similar across political affiliation,” Frederiksen said. “While abortion can be a very polarizing topic politically, we know that regardless of party ID, women may want or need an abortion at some point in their lifetime.”
A separate poll published in April by the Wall Street Journal found that abortion ranked above other issues in seven battleground states. Surveyed suburban women described it as a “make or break” issue in the election.
The contrast between Republican comments and polls brings to light the role so-called “suburban women” play in this year’s presidential election, and how they feel about the issue of abortion. Since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, 14 states have banned abortion across the country and 6 states have early gestational limits between 6 and 15 weeks.
While all 20 states have exceptions in place for when a pregnant person’s life is in danger, six states don’t have exceptions for when a pregnant person’s health is at risk, 10 states don’t have exceptions for rape or incest, and 13 don’t have exceptions for fatal fetal anomalies. The consequences have been catastrophic; not only changing the landscape of prenatal care, but a recent analysis of Texas’s abortion ban suggested it’s led to a 13% increase in infant deaths.
“I think women, in general, are going to have a lot of sway in this election, I think we could see the biggest gender gap ever in a political presidential election,” Betsy Fischer Martin, the executive director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University, told Salon in a phone interview. “But on the issue of abortion, it is not a winning issue for Trump in the Republican Party, and that was made clear in the 2022 midterms when it unquestionably drove Democratic turnout.”
Suburban women, Fischer Martin said, is a “general term,” and a “far cry” from the “soccer mom definition” that was used in the 1990s. Today, the term describes a “much more diverse electorate” reflecting the changing demographics of the suburbs. In other words, it’s not just middle-class women with children.
“People are moving out of cities and able to work from anywhere, so those suburbs are really becoming much more diverse and different,” Fischer Martin said. “Women at different stages of their lives, women who don't have children, women who have grown children, it's a wide swath of voters.”
As Fischer Martin said, suburban women and their stance on abortion won’t only affect the presidential election, but their presence will be apparent when it comes to voting for state ballot measures, too. This week, Montana became yet another state to put an abortion question in front of voters this November. While abortion is legal in Montana at any point before fetal viability, abortion rights advocates are pushing for extra protections in the state.
“Since Roe was overturned, extreme anti-abortion politicians have used every trick in the book to take away our freedoms and ban abortion completely,” Martha Fuller, president & CEO of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Montana said in a statement. “The government cannot overstep into our most personal healthcare decisions, and Montanans must vote Yes [on the measure] to protect their right to abortion and pregnancy-related care.”
Other states that will have the issue of abortion on the ballot are Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Nevada, New York and South Dakota, according to KFF. These ballot measures are expected to draw suburban women voters.
“I think it's a big push, and it will draw turnout,” Fischer Martin said. “For women in the suburbs, the Republican Party has two big problems: One is the name Trump, and the other is these restrictions on abortion.”
The combination of those two is a “turn-off combo,” Fischer Martin said.
Frederiksen, from KFF, said one of the key data points from last week’s KFF poll was that six and 10 women are concerned that they themselves, or someone they know, won’t be able to get an abortion in a “life or health circumstance.”
“Similarly, six in 10 women are concerned about the safety of a future pregnancy for themselves or someone they know,” Frederiksen said. “I think that there’s an overwhelming concern around these issues.”
