Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech calls out the ‘power of women in America’
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- Hot topic. In an election year State of the Union address last night, President Joe Biden highlighted a key demographic: women. In a segment devoted to abortion, Biden told Americans that “those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade”—including his “predecessor”—“have no clue about the power of women in America.”
The lengthy segment devoted to abortion rights was a sign that Democrats see abortion as a winning issue at the polls. Abortion opponents “found out” about the “power of women” “when reproductive freedom was on the ballot and won in 2022, 2023, and they will find out again, in 2024,” Biden said.
He called out some of the worst results of abortion bans—“criminalizing doctors and forcing survivors of rape and incest to leave their states as well to get the care they need.”
Biden hammered home his message by inviting Kate Cox, the Texas woman who had to leave the state to end her pregnancy after receiving a fatal fetal diagnosis, to attend the speech. Biden told her story in his annual address. “What her family has gone through should never have happened as well. But it is happening to so many others,” he said.
Another Biden guest was Latorya Beasley, an Alabama woman whose IVF treatments were halted by the state's decision granting personhood to frozen embryos. The president framed protecting IVF as a bipartisan issue. “To my friends across the aisle, don’t keep families waiting any longer,” he said. “Guarantee the right to IVF nationwide.”
Biden promised to restore Roe as “the law of the land” and said he thought Roe “got it right.” In a forum in which presidents once avoided the word “abortion” at all costs, Biden's speech is a marker of Democrats' continued evolution on the issue—even if he only said the word once. The State of the Union is a sign of what's to come in 2024: Democrats are counting on women to win.
Also...If you'll be at SXSW this weekend, come check out my conversation on Saturday at 2:30pm CT with three CEOs building companies by women, for women. OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair, Sequel founder Amanda Calabrese, and Togethxr cofounder Jessica Robertson will talk about redefining decision-making in three wildly different male-dominated industries. Hope to see you in Austin!
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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