‘Everything is at stake’: How abortion became a key issue in the Georgia Senate runoffs

Anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List’s partner Women Speak Out PAC is on track to exceed its projected $4.1 million campaign on the runoff, according to the group’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser. The campaign, which is slated to reach 1 million voters and make 750,000 in-person voter visits, features hand delivered absentee ballot applications as well as digital and mail ads, she said.

Dannenfelser credits the rise of abortion as a focal issue in the race to the candidates deciding “that they’re going to communicate (their stances on abortion) as part of their overall leadership, one way or the other.”

“You’ve got complete clarity between the two sets of candidates, and when you have complete clarity, that’s a gift in politics, and it’s something that can be defined — you can mobilize a base,” she said, adding that, “I think in Georgia, it’s a set up for this to be the same dynamic as in many other type battlegrounds that … a reasonable abortion position puts you, gives you the edge.”

“We had not planned on that in Georgia, not necessarily foreseeing that we would be interacting with a lot of Spanish-speaking, pro-life voters, but as it turns out, we are,” Dannenfelser said, adding that “we want to meet people where they are.” The group anticipates strong voter turnout for anti-abortion candidates among Hispanic voters and young women between the ages of 18 and 22, she said.

On the other side, Planned Parenthood Votes has a six-figure campaign underway, according to Alicia Stallworth, the super PAC’s Georgia state director. The group has sent nearly 400,000 text messages, made hundreds of daily phone calls and is part of a coalition of progressive groups that is over 85% of the way to its goal of knocking on five million doors, Stallworth said.

Planned Parenthood Votes is canvassing in Cobb County, bordering Atlanta — Georgia’s third most populous county, and home to a Planned Parenthood health center — and targeting demographics that include their supporters: women under the age of 35, people of color, White suburban voters and White college educated women, Stallworth added.

“Our ground game and our strategy is to organize to turn out voters, to try to repeat the same thing that we did in the general election,” she said. She thinks that abortion has stepped into the runoff spotlight because Warnock “is a pastor and we are in the South, so it’s that outdated belief that he cannot be a minister and support women’s reproductive rights.”

Warnock under scrutiny

Some conservative politicians have accused Warnock, who was born and raised in Savannah and has served as the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta for 15 years, of misleading voters regarding his identity and failing to represent the state’s views.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin asked a Georgia rally crowd in December, “Is this a representation of the Democrats’ heart in Georgia, to have a pro-abortion pastor who’s running?” She said that “it’s all the more reason why we have those in the Senate, especially those representing Georgia, who understand the sanctity of life.”

Loeffler highlighted her divisions with Warnock over abortion during the only televised debate in the Senate runoffs, beginning her argument, “Look, I’m not going to be lectured by someone who uses the Bible to justify abortion.”

“Listen,” Warnock said as part of a broader response to the attack. “I have a profound reverence for life and an abiding respect for choice. The question is, whose decision is it. And I happen to think that a patient’s room is too small a place for a woman, her doctor and the US government — I think that’s too many people in the room.”

A divisive issue has a history in the state

“Particularly in the middle of a pandemic, the opportunity to talk about health care, to talk about the impact that not having access to basic health care, including access to abortion, or limitations on that, really resonates with people,” McGill Johnson said, adding that “I definitely feel as though this is a winnable race because of the climate that we’re in.”

Outcome in Georgia has national ramifications

None of this is lost on Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life Action, an anti-abortion group bringing over 200 students to Georgia with the goal of knocking on 70,000 doors and directly texting voters in a campaign costing at least $280,000.

To Hawkins, abortion has emerged as a key issue in the Georgia runoff “because the Supreme Court in 1973 handed down Roe v. Wade,” which she characterized as “hanging by a thread” in light of the multiple legal cases in the pipeline for the conservative-majority court to consider.

She pointed to the significance of Supreme Court picks as well as the multiple venues where the battle over abortion access is playing out. “We’re calling it the ‘Save the Senate’ campaign because it’s literally going to determine whether or not we can hold back taxpayer-funded abortion on demand and all nine months,” Hawkins said, referring to efforts to repeal the Hyde Amendment, “whether or not we can ensure that, you know, the Democrats do not try to pack the US Supreme court.”

Stallworth sees what’s riding on the runoff as similarly critical.

“Honestly, I think everything is at stake in these two Senate seats,” she said. “Especially when we’re talking about the fact that the two senators who we need to be elected will hold, will basically hold the fate of the nation in their hands when we know that women’s reproductive rights are constantly being attacked.”