Youth voter group NextGen hopes outrage over abortion access drives Democrats to polls
Only one in 10 Americans ranked abortion as a main issue, a new poll found.
Molly Merkley spent Monday morning quietly sobbing outside the Supreme Court as she protested the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade.
It's been more than two weeks since a five-justice conservative majority ruled that, five decades after Roe, there was no constitutional right to abortion.
Monday also marked two months since the Baltimore resident said she had an abortion herself.
"I was sexually assaulted by a guy I trusted with my body. And he just decided to do what he wanted for his pleasure," she said told ABC News.
"And now, Roe v. Wade is overturned and once that was overturned, the only thing on my mind was the children and women and people with uteruses who are in the situation I was in -- but cannot get the care that they need, they don't have the access to the care," she said.
Abortion opponents hailed the high court's decision as the culmination of a 50-year project to widely restrict the procedure.
For many advocates of abortion rights, the ruling was a call to action.
Surrounded on Monday by members of the youth voter organization NextGen America, Merkley helped lay 140 white chrysanthemums in front of the court as a trumpet rang in the background. Each of the flowers was meant to symbolize one of the 140 people NextGen estimates will die in the next year as a result of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision rejecting Roe.
Merkley has been actively engaged in abortion access efforts since Roe was overturned, and she said she's not alone: During protests over the past two weeks, Merkley said, she has encountered equally enraged Americans ready to make their views clear at the polls this November.
"I've been very active, especially this weekend," said Merkley, who also participated in the Women's March outside of the White House on Saturday at the same time that President Joe Biden told reporters that advocates like her needed to "keep protesting."
"There's so many people who have been coming here just to protest … and from all different states," Merkley said. She believes "this is going to be a crazy election. This has to bring people to the ballot."
Leading Monday's small demonstration of around 10 people, NextGen America President Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez echoed Democratic leaders in arguing that keeping abortion access will be a key motivation for Democrats ahead of the increasingly competitive midterm elections that will determine who controls Congress next year.
On Friday, as Biden signed an executive order aimed at protecting access to abortion nationwide, he emphasized the need to vote for Democrats in record numbers this November so as to solidify -- if not grow -- the party's fragile majority in Congress, allowing them authority to act legislatively to protect abortions.
"Elected officials should not underestimate the power of a pissed-off generation ... And guess what? Young women tend to vote overwhelmingly for progressives and Democrats." Tzintzún Ramirez said at Monday's protest.
In the last week, NextGen has contacted more than 200,000 women in Arizona and Michigan, two key battleground states, Tzintzún Ramirez said. The group received "tons of responses" from people wanting to get engaged and make sure they were eligible to vote.
That outreach comes as abortion rights activists in Michigan on Monday dropped off record-breaking numbers of signatures to the state's Bureau of Elections in order to put an abortion rights amendment on the November ballot, part of an emerging strategy in various states to push ballot- and amendment-level initiatives to codify abortion access.
But additional polling has indicated abortion may not be so instrumental in driving voters across the country to the ballot box. The latest FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll found that despite the news about abortion in the past month, the Americans surveyed still did not view it as a major issue.
Only one in 10 respondents ranked abortion as a main issue, moving only five points month-over-month. Less than 13% of Americans from any party ranked abortion as a main issue for them personally or for the country, according to the poll.
Separately, ABC News polling continues to show that most Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Democrats are hoping the outrage in the days after the Dobbs decision is a springboard to increased voter turnout in November.
"What we're seeing is that there's an increased number of young people that are trying to find a way to get involved in the political system. NextGen is prepared to make sure that we're maximizing their impact and amplifying their voices," Antonio Arellano, the organization's vice president of communications, told ABC News.
"This is an issue that is galvanizing people to get engaged politically," he said.
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