CHICAGO — It can be difficult to bring an arena of more than 20,000 people to a hush, but on the first night of the Democratic National Convention, Hadley Duvall did just that.
The abortion rights activist from Kentucky spoke near the end of Monday evening’s program, recounting how she had been sexually abused by her stepfather and become pregnant by him at age 12.
“I can’t imagine not having a choice, but today, that’s the reality for many women and girls across the country because of Donald Trump’s abortion bans,” Duvall said, referring to the many state-level abortion restrictions enacted after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. Trump, who as president appointed three Supreme Court justices who voted with the majority in the landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, has called the state-enacted bans “a beautiful thing.”
“What is so beautiful about a child having to carry her parent’s child?” Duvall asked rhetorically Monday, to stunned silence in the arena.
Duvall telling her story in prime time has been just one of the many ways Democrats have featured abortion and reproductive rights prominently at their convention in Chicago this year. Several speakers at the convention have shared their personal stories related to abortion, miscarriage and infertility — and how those struggles have been compounded by Republican-led restrictions on reproductive rights.
On Monday night, standing next to Duvall onstage, beneath a large screen that read “OUR FIGHT FOR REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM,” was Kaitlyn Joshua of Louisiana, who recounted how two hospitals in her home state denied her care during a miscarriage because of state abortion bans.
“I was in pain, bleeding so much my husband feared for my life. No woman should experience what I endured, but too many have,” Joshua said.
On Tuesday night, Kate Cox, a Texas mother who was denied an abortion by the state’s Supreme Court last fall despite being told that her fetus had a fatal genetic condition and that carrying the pregnancy to term could jeopardize her future fertility, announced to cheers that she was pregnant again.
The openness to talking about abortion at the convention has mirrored an increasing willingness by women running for office to discuss their reproductive history, once seen as a liability. Fighting for abortion rights is also seen as a winning issue for Democrats, whose voter base has been galvanized since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. In the two years since, every state ballot measure that has sought to preserve or expand abortion access has been successful, while those that have sought to restrict abortion access have failed — even in states that skew conservative.
“It is incredible to see our reproductive rights and abortion access being so prominently featured at the DNC. It’s time. It’s necessary,” said Lauren Blauvelt, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio who led the successful ballot initiative campaign to enshrine abortion access into the state’s constitution last November.
Blauvelt said their group’s efforts are now focused not only on the presidential race, but also on promoting pro-abortion rights candidates in House, Senate and other down-ballot races, so that Vice President Kamala Harris, if elected, has the Democratic majorities needed to pass legislation protecting abortion rights nationwide.
Several additional ballot measures concerning reproductive rights will also be decided by voters this fall, and Democrats are hoping that they boost turnout for their party. A recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that a quarter of Americans said that abortion was “one of the single most important issues” in their choice of who to support this fall, while a 62 percent majority of Americans oppose the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe. The poll also found Americans overall trust Harris over Trump to handle the issue, 45 percent to 33 percent, with an additional 20 percent saying they don’t trust either.
The approach to abortion at the Democratic convention has been in stark contrast to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month, where abortion was barely mentioned.
“Republicans are clearly running scared. They’re seeing the same polls we are, they’re talking to the same voters we are… they are seeing the same stories and they know how unpopular their position is,” said Ally Boguhn, spokeswoman for Reproductive Freedom for All.
Most Republican lawmakers and candidates have fallen in line behind Trump, who has defaulted to saying he believes that issues concerning reproductive rights should be left to the states. Republicans quietly adopted a party platform at their convention that echoed Trump’s position and removed language that explicitly called for a national ban.
However, Trump’s frequent and vague statements on abortion — as well as running mate JD Vance’s staunch opposition to abortion — have continued to trip them up, giving Democrats opportunities to attack the GOP. And abortion rights activists have continued to warn that Trump’s allies — including those behind Project 2025, an aggressive right-wing agenda — have not stopped calling for national restrictions and would in fact continue to erode reproductive rights if Trump is reelected.
“A second Trump term would rip away even more of our rights: passing a national abortion ban, letting states monitor pregnancies and prosecute doctors, restricting birth control and fertility treatments,” said Amanda Zurawski, a Texas mother who was sent home from a hospital despite going into premature labor at 18 weeks because her condition was not deemed life-threatening enough to qualify for the abortion care she needed. Zurawski also spoke onstage Monday night.
“We cannot let that happen,” she added. “We need to vote as if lives depend on it. Because they do.”
Over the last year, Democrats have also broadened their messaging to warn that Republicans are threatening an array of reproductive rights, especially after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February that frozen embryos are people, threatening the practice of in vitro fertilization. On Tuesday night, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and former first lady Michelle Obama both spoke about how they were only able to conceive their children through IVF.
“My struggle with infertility was more painful than any wound I earned on the battlefield,” Duckworth said.
It is unclear how much the atmosphere at the convention would have changed if President Joe Biden had remained the nominee instead of announcing one month ago that he would not seek reelection after all. Though Biden’s stance on abortion has shifted over the years, he has in the past refrained from using the word “abortion.” Some abortion rights activists previously expressed concern that Biden was not the best messenger on what has widely been viewed as a slam-dunk issue for Democrats, especially when he fumbled an answer about abortion rights during his June presidential debate against Trump.
In his speech Monday night, in which he recapped his administration’s achievements and passed the torch to Harris, Biden mentioned abortion only briefly.
“You know Trump will do everything he can to ban abortion nationwide. Oh, he will,” Biden said. “You know Kamala and Tim [Walz] will do everything they possibly can to stop him. And that’s why you have to elect senators and representatives who will restore Roe v. Wade.”
But abortion rights activists at the Democratic convention said they would not have been surprised if the issue had been put front and center even if Biden had still been the nominee.
“We know that abortion is an issue that’s really top of mind for voters this election cycle. This is something they really care about,” said Boguhn, of Reproductive Freedom for All. “I do think that it is something we would have seen regardless but Kamala Harris has been such a great champion for reproductive freedom since day one.”
Blauvelt, of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, said Harris moving to the top of the Democratic ticket has only supercharged Democrats and activists on the issue.
“She has been the leader and the champion at the White House for reproductive rights, for abortion access. … She is our champion, and absolutely her being at the top of the ticket shows how seriously we are about taking back our bodily autonomy,” she said.
Reproductive rights once again took center stage at the convention Wednesday night, themed “A Fight for Our Freedoms.” Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson noted that more than 1 in 3 American women, including nearly half of Black women, live in states with abortion bans, and tied it to the Harris campaign’s general message of freedom.
“We cannot call ourselves a free nation when women are not free,” she said. “In no way are Donald J. Trump and JD Vance more qualified than doctors and women to make these decisions.”
Emily Guskin in Washington contributed to this report.
