The Biden campaign plans to mark the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed the federal right to abortion by barnstorming the country with messaging and events aimed at contrasting President Joe Biden’s views with those of former President Donald Trump, according to information shared exclusively with NBC News.
During the weekend before and on the anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling, the campaign will hold more than 30 events to mobilize volunteers and contact voters in cities across battleground states including Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Las Vegas.
Campaign officials also plan to use the anniversary, which comes just days before Biden is scheduled to debate Trump for the first time this cycle on June 27, as an opportunity to talk about the stakes of the election and attack Trump’s past statements on abortion.
“What you’re going to see this anniversary is every arm, every single piece of muscle on this campaign is going to be mobilized on this issue and part of this effort,” Morgan Mohr, the Biden campaign’s senior adviser for reproductive rights, said in an interview. “We’ve seen it work and we’re really excited to leverage this moment. And we’re also excited to keep doing that every week for the next 20 weeks until we win this election.”
Mohr described the anniversary of the Dobbs decision as the “two-year mark of the devastation that Trump has unleashed across the country” and added that the campaign plans to “show voters exactly what he has done to women across the nation.”
The overall strategy comes as the Biden campaign sees abortion as a uniquely mobilizing issue, with several state ballot measures set to put the question of abortion access to voters in November. In interviews and in several polls, Americans have repeatedly said that abortion is an important issue that will affect how they vote.
As part of the push, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, along with several campaign surrogates and celebrities including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tina Smith and actor Lisa Ann Walter, will call attention to what they say are the dangerous consequences of overturning Roe v. Wade that have swept across the country.
The Biden campaign, which has made telling the personal stories of women affected by abortion restrictions a key part of its messaging, will showcase more of those stories in new ads in the run-up to the anniversary.
The campaign also plans to hold virtual and in-person storytelling trainings to help women share their own stories and why they believe reproductive freedom is important. Women who have faced health scares related to abortion laws, including Kaitlyn Kash, Amanda Zurawski, Kaitlyn Joshua, Dr. Austin Dennard, Latorya Beasley and Lauren Miller, will also fan out across the country for campaign events.
The campaign also plans to have surrogates on radio airwaves and for popular internet creators and personalities to spread information and news updates about the Biden campaign at events and rallies.
In an interview with NBC News, Kash, a 37-year-old woman from Austin, Texas, said she welcomed the opportunity to share her story to help re-elect Biden. She said she traveled out of state for an abortion while 13 weeks pregnant with her second child after learning that the fetus had a fatal birth defect. She later gave birth to a healthy daughter via in vitro fertilization.
Kash was part of a group of women who sued Texas to get the state to clarify when exceptions to its abortion ban could be made. The Texas Supreme Court ruled against the women last month and said the medical exceptions in the Texas law were broad enough.
“I have to give my time and my story to a national level because my state won’t protect me,” Kash said. “My state has made it very clear that they do not care if I live or die, and they do not care about my rights to choose to do what I want to do. And so I need federal protection.”
She added that she hopes others will be empowered by hearing her story.
“I want women to hear our stories and to hopefully feel comfortable in talking to someone about their decision or what they needed to do, because you shouldn’t do this alone,” Kash said. “I also want to take the stigma away from this conversation. Abortion is health care, and health care is a fundamental human right. We have to talk about this and let women know that they are supported and we care for them and we love them and we want to help them.”
Kash also said she is motivated after the Supreme Court’s decision last week to reject a challenge to the abortion pill mifepristone, which meant the commonly used drug can remain widely available. She said while she is relieved the pill, which she used during a miscarriage, remains accessible, the ruling underscored to her that those who oppose abortion rights will continue to try to curtail access to the procedure.
“I definitely have a fear that we’re not going to stop with just these types of bans and that there is going to be a national ban,” she said. “I think it’s important, especially in battleground states, for women to hear, ‘You may think your rights are protected right now, but until we are able to do something on a federal level, it may not be.’”
And while Trump has said he wants the issue of abortion left to the states, the Biden campaign has said it will continue to say that Trump and Republicans can not be trusted and would push for a national ban on abortions if given the opportunity.
Asked how the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion medication this week factored into the campaign’s plans, Mohr said its message would be that the challenge to mifepristone is “just one part of a massive multipronged strategy to ban abortion nationwide.”
“We are seeing in real time the chaos, confusion, cruelty that he has caused,” Mohr said of Trump. “It’s not over. We have not hit bottom yet, but it has been awful enough. And what he has done could get far worse if he gets back into office and brings this devastation to all 50 states.”
