This story was written by one of Teen Vogue’s 2024 Student Correspondents, a team of college students covering the election cycle from key battleground states.
Fourteen states across the country have instituted bans on abortion at every stage of pregnancy after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, with several more severely restricting access to reproductive care.
At the most recent State of the Union, President Joe Biden called on Congress to restore abortion protections in federal law. Yet Democrats’ slim margins in the Senate make that unlikely, reports Politifact’s Amy Sherman. Meanwhile, Donald Trump told TIME that if he won the 2024 election, he’d leave it up to individual states to decide if they wanted to monitor pregnant people and prosecute them for seeking abortions. Trump applauded the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe at the first presidential debate last month.
But in many places, the right to abortion will be put before the people to decide. This year, up to 10 states will allow residents to vote on ballot measures that would expand or protect access to abortion.
Abortion ballot measures could be an additional way to engage youth in an election year. According to a Tufts University study, exit polls from the 2022 midterms showed abortion was the top issue that influenced young people’s vote. Run for Something cofounder Amanda Litman, whose organization works with people who are thinking about running for local office, called it an “invitation to the polls.”
“Young voters who are, maybe, a little bit or a lot disillusioned or actively unenthusiastic about voting for Biden, this gives them another reason to show up,” Litman told Teen Vogue. “These ballot initiatives and the state and local candidates who are making this a concrete issue can be really powerful drivers.”
According to this spring’s Harvard Youth Poll, half of 18- to 29-year-olds say women’s reproductive rights are among their top 2024 election issues, with 68% of Democrats, 24% of Republicans, and 49% of Independents.
Reproductive Freedom for All president Mini Timmaraju told Teen Vogue that young folks, the “18 to 35 cohort, are much more willing to cross party lines to support reproductive freedom [like abortion access], birth control, IVF.” The constitutional right to abortion lost in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was also part of a broader “right to privacy,” writes Vox’s Ian Millhiser.
Abortion bans and restrictions affect folks who are already marginalized from the nation’s health care system, including LGBTQ+ youth, immigrants, BIPOC, and people living in rural areas or without access to a provider. “At the end of the day, someone shouldn’t have to decide where they go to college or where they take a job based on their ability to have a fundamental freedom and have their bodily autonomy respected,” Timmaraju said. “But, that is the world we’re in.”
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