Last fall, Hannah Dasgupta spent her days focusing on politics, channeling her fear and anger about President Donald J. Trump into activism. While the Trump administration was concerned about the future of abortion law, she joined a group of suburban Ohio women who were working to vote for Democrats.
A year later, Ms. Dasgupta, 37, is still just as concerned about these issues. But she has no plans to take part in a nationwide women’s march for the right to abortion on Saturday. In fact, she hadn’t even heard of it.
“I don’t watch the news every night anymore. I’m just not nearly as concerned, ”said Ms. Dasgupta, a personal trainer and school assistant who turned her attention to local issues such as her school board. “When Biden was finally sworn in, I thought, ‘I’ll be out for a while.'”
Ms. Dasgupta’s inattentiveness underscores one of the major challenges facing the Democratic Party with regard to the mid-term elections. At a moment when the right to abortion is facing the greatest challenge in almost half a century, part of the democratic base would like to take, in the words of Ms. Dasgupta, “a long respite”.
Saturday’s march, sponsored by a coalition of nearly 200 civil rights, abortion and liberal organizations, provides an early test of democratic enthusiasm in the post-Trump era, especially for the legions of newly politically engaged women joining the party helped take control of Congress and the White House.
In 2017, the first women’s march drew an estimated four million protesters onto the streets across the country to express their outrage over the inauguration of Mr Trump. Many cited abortion law as a motivating topic, according to surveys of respondents. Since then, the annual events have attracted fewer people, and the organizers have been plagued by controversy and internal disputes.
Organizers of Saturday’s March for Abortion Rights are trying to dampen expectations, citing the event as the beginning of their efforts to fight restrictions and citing public health concerns as the reason for the expected low turnout. They expect about 40,000 attendees at hundreds of events in cities across the country – just a fraction of the millions who protested during the Trump administration.
There are many reasons for not taking part: The coronavirus pandemic; a feeling of political fatigue after a divisive election; other issues that seem more pressing than abortion, such as racial justice or transgender rights.
“There would have been a time when a march like this would have been a three-generation event,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster advising the White House and the Democratic Party. “Well, the 8-year-old girl is not vaccinated and you are afraid that mom might get sick. People are just exhausted and check out on purpose. “
Even if the Democrats see the fight over abortion law as a winning political struggle, party strategists fear that a drop in enthusiasm could be another harbinger of what is likely to be a difficult mid-term election for their party next year.
The Democrats are already struggling to respond to a number of public health, economic and foreign policy crises. While the party factions quarrel and the approval ratings of Mr. Biden fall, his domestic political agenda remains entangled in a legislative stalemate in Congress. Other issues that would motivate the Democrats’ grassroots, including laws that could enshrine abortion rights in federal statutes, are on the brink of a steep rise in the face of the party’s razor-thin congressional margins.
In interviews and polls, voters who believe abortion should remain legal say they are concerned about the future of abortion rights and say restrictions, like a new law in Texas that bans abortions after about six weeks, are theirs Increase the likelihood of participating in the mid-term elections.
However, they are also skeptical that the constitutional right to abortion will be completely overridden and consider dealing with the pandemic much more urgent. And some of those who turned activists during the Trump administration prefer to focus on state and local politics now, where they see more opportunities to make change. Other solutions proposed by liberal groups to protect abortion law – including the expansion of the Supreme Court – remain controversial among independent voters.
Abortion rights advocates warn that this is no time for complacency. The Supreme Court is preparing to open an abortion case – the first to be tried in court with all three Conservative appointees of Mr Trump – that has the potential to completely lift federal abortion protection.
“We’ve had legal abortion for nearly 50 years,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, executive director of Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four clinics in Texas. “People don’t think it could roll back.”
Some proponents believe that if other Republican-controlled states pass bills similar to Texas law, voters will become more involved. Aimee Arrambide, the executive director of Avow Texas, an abortion rights organization in Austin, struggled to attract attention when Texas law was first introduced. Since the bill went into effect last month, her organization has raised $ 120,000 in donations, an amount that would normally take six months to complete.
“It’s a little frustrating because we’ve been sounding the alarm for years and no one has really paid attention,” she said. “People realize the threat is real.”
For decades, opponents of abortion law have drawn large crowds to Washington’s National Mall for the March for Life, an event that often attracts thousands of activists and features high-ranking Conservative politicians and religious leaders. Thousands gathered outside the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg on Monday to press for an anti-abortion law to be passed.
The liberal movement that exploded in the streets in 2017 was led and fueled by women, many of them college graduate and often middle-aged. They gathered for huge marches and almost weekly protests, huddled together to discuss door knocking strategies in exurban Paneras and to found new democratic groups in tiny, historically conservative cities. Many of the protesters came to these events with their own pressing issues, but polls showed that the stubborn protesters had the most common abortion rights, said Dana R. Fisher, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland who has conducted polls among activist groups and at large Marches.
These motivations began to change over the past two years. With the Covid-19 threat keeping many of the elderly activists at home, the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 sparked an even bigger wave of demonstrations across the country, fueled by younger crowds motivated by another group Subjects.
In polls taken at marches following Mr Floyd’s murder, as well as the organizers of last year’s Earth Day demonstration, the percentage of people citing abortion law as the main motivation for activism was much lower, Ms Fisher said.
And while Mr Trump may have been defeated, the problems his tenure as president highlighted for many activists have not gone away.
“It feels like people are just hopeless,” said Judy Hines, a retired physical education teacher in a conservative rural county in western Pennsylvania who is active in democratic politics.
Ms. Hines welcomed the new energy that followed the 2016 elections: local gatherings were full, political newbies were running and hundreds took part in marches in the county seat. Later, when the energy was starting to wear off, the coronavirus turned it off “like a switch,” she said. Ms. Hines has not been on a march in over a year and a half, and since she has a family member with health problems, she does not plan to go on Saturday.
“I hope the fight is still in the people, but it’s not,” she said. “We see our Supreme Court. We know how they will vote. “
David Montgomery contributed the coverage from Austin.
source https://www.bisayanews.com/2021/10/02/supporters-of-abortion-rights-struggle-to-gain-marchers-and-momentum/
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