IN-DEPTH: Abortion a Top Issue Leading Into 2024 Election

Perspectives on abortion vary widely among candidates and voters.

Michelle Shelfer paints the faces of children as she imagines they might have looked if they had lived. Courtesy of Michelle Shelfer

Michelle and Jerry Shelfer have first-hand experience with trauma from abortion.

The husband and wife met 40 years ago and obtained an abortion the first time Ms. Shelfer became pregnant.

Raised in a secular Jewish home, Ms. Shelfer told The Epoch Times having an abortion was a valid option. Her husband didn’t object to abortion, even though he was raised as a pastor’s child.

“Because I was raised with the feminist mantra that a woman has the right to choose, it must be good that I could choose whether to keep the baby or not,” Ms. Shelfer told The Epoch Times. “We didn’t know any better and were thoughtless, so we had the abortion.”

Ms. Shelfer, now a Messianic Jew who believes in Jesus, says that decision shattered her world. From how she votes to her mission in life, she now seeks to inform others about the pain of abortion.

“I became angry with the feminist ideology,” Ms. Shelfer said. “I clearly had been sold a bill of goods, as the reality that I had taken a human life came with a lot of collateral damage, including shame and guilt.”

Ms. Shelfer was born and raised in San Francisco and returned to the Bay Area after schooling and traveling to raise her family. She is a wife, a mother of two children, and a grandmother of eight. She and her husband are pro-life advocates.

Abortion is set to be a critical issue for voters in the 2024 elections.

The perspectives on abortion vary widely among candidates and voters, often reflecting deeply held beliefs, moral values, and religious convictions.

A March poll conducted by KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that 12 percent of respondents said abortion is the most critical issue for their vote in the 2024 elections. The poll gives some indication of how the abortion issue could motivate those respondents who believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Ministry and Advocacy

The Shelfers’ abortion experience ultimately led them to found the nonprofit organization Prepare a Room Ministries, which addresses the wide range of emotions people feel following an abortion.

“We don’t use the organization to lobby public policy, but to influence the culture,” said Mr. Shelfer.

The Shelfers co-wrote a book for Christian teens called “The Victorious Warrior: Challenging Young People to Aim Toward the Good.”

Ms. Shelfer is also a visual artist.

Every day for four years, Ms. Shelfer has created a painting depicting the face of a baby or a child to represent those who have died by abortion. She portrays them as she believes they would have appeared if an abortion had not occurred. She shares the portraits, known as “Foundlings,” on her social media platforms and makes them into quilts.

“There isn’t a political candidate that has the courage to say no to abortion on a federal level, so we pray and crave to see a change in the heart of the culture so that people’s eyes will be opened to the horrific killing of children,” she said.

Ms. Shelfer said her paintings give a face to the faceless in a way politics can’t.

“The child I aborted plays a key role in helping me receive forgiveness as well as helping others,” she said. “Our child served as an intermediary as I felt so much guilt about how I could commit such an act.”

Where Candidates Stand on Abortion

President Joe Biden has made abortion a central issue in his 2024 reelection campaign.

Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Reproductive Freedom for All Foundation (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America), and Emily’s List have endorsed President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Reproductive Freedom for All Foundation did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

“President Joe Biden is leading the most pro-reproductive freedom administration in American history—that’s a fact,” said Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, in a statement after President Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential race. “Together with Vice President Harris, he has been defending our rights since day one. The road ahead is long, and the fight to restore our rights will be hard, but we know President Biden will be on our side.”

Steven Aden, chief legal officer and general counsel of the pro-life group Americans United for Life, maintains that President Biden is working to “smurf” a new abortion right that doesn’t exist.

In the financial world, “smurfing” is a term for a money-laundering tactic in which someone breaks up a large transaction into several smaller transactions that are below the federal reporting threshold, so they can avoid detection from authorities.

Similar to financial smurfing, agency smurfing happens when the executive branch divides a single policy goal into several purportedly “unreviewable” and “unchallengeable” components, Mr. Aden said.

“There is no federal right to abortion anywhere,” he told The Epoch Times. “The Biden administration is trying to create a new entitlement to make it appear that the right to abortion exists.”

States’ Rights

In April, former President Donald Trump asserted that abortion laws should be decided at the state level.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, director of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, expressed disappointment in President Trump’s stance, saying in a statement that it would permit Democrat lawmakers to adopt measures to increase access to the procedure in certain states.

Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has changed his stance on abortion laws after pushback from some voters. He stated on a podcast in May that although he personally did not like abortion, he believed there should be no state involvement in abortion decisions and that it should be a woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy, “even if it’s full term.”

After widespread backlash, he amended his official stance to say he supports restrictions on the procedure after the point of viability, when the baby can survive outside the womb.

Randall Terry is a pro-life presidential candidate for the Constitution Party alongside his running mate, Stephen Broden. Their ticket received 54 percent of the Constitution Party delegates amid a field of eight candidates.

The Constitution Party is considered one of the most conservative third-party organizations in the United States.

Mr. Terry is the founder of the pro-life group Operation Rescue, which led civil disobedience campaigns from 1987 to 1994. Pro-life activists would picket abortion clinics and the residences of doctors who performed abortions. In an effort to close clinics, these activists organized blockades and “rescues” in which demonstrators would sit on the premises or chain themselves to doors and fixtures.

Mr. Broden is the founder of the National Black Pro-life Coalition and senior pastor of Fair Park Bible Fellowship, a nondenominational inner-city church in Dallas, Texas.

“The purpose of our presidential campaign is to make child-killing by abortion the number one voter issue in America,” Mr. Broden told The Epoch Times. “The failure of the pro-life movement is that it took victory laps after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the other side changed the battlefield and went to the states.”

The Terry-Broden ticket is currently on the ballot in 12 states.

“Many politicians simply want to win and don’t run on principles,” Mr. Broden said. “Some of the advisers around Donald Trump are advising him wrong on the abortion issue. This is another sign that the Republican Party has failed us on important social issues.”

Constitutional Ballot Measures

The push for state constitutional amendments regarding abortion reflects the ongoing efforts by activists and lawmakers to shape the abortion issue at the state level.

These amendments could have far-reaching consequences, potentially enshrining specific restrictions or protections related to abortion into state constitutions. Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota may have constitutional amendments related to abortion on the ballot for 2024.

Voters in six states have already weighed in on constitutional amendments about abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, and the side supporting access to abortion has won in every state. Voters approved amendments to their state constitutions to guarantee a right to abortion in California, Michigan, Ohio, and Vermont. In Kentucky and Kansas, voters rejected attempts to amend the state constitutions in the opposite direction, which would have stated explicitly that their state constitutions did not guarantee a right to abortion.

Mr. Aden said Republicans seem to be distancing themselves from the abortion issue and advocating for leaving it to the states.

“I think we were ready for the overturn of Roe v. Wade, but we weren’t prepared for the pro-abortion pushback,” he said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion research organization, both track annual abortion statistics in the United States, but they use different methods and have different totals, according to the Pew Research Center.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, there were 930,160 abortions in the United States in 2020. In the same year, the CDC reported that 592,939 abortions took place in 46 states and the District of Columbia, based on data voluntarily reported to the federal agency. The states of California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New Jersey did not report abortion totals to the CDC for 2020.

The Guttmacher Institute also reports that 41 states have some form of abortion restrictions, including 14 states with near total bans. All states with restrictions have an exception to save the life of the mother, and some have other exceptions such as cases when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

There are no restrictions on abortion based on gestational age in nine states and the District of Columbia.

Public Opinion

In a July 2022 poll published shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs decision, the Pew Research Center found that 62 percent of American adults believed that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances, while 37 percent believed that the practice should be illegal in all or most circumstances.

However, a January survey from the Knights of Columbus and Marist Poll seems to contradict the KFF and Pew Research polls, with 66 percent of respondents saying they support abortion restrictions, and nearly 60 percent of respondents favoring restricting abortions to the first three months of pregnancy.

The Knights of Columbus-Marist Poll also found that 83 percent of Americans are in favor of pregnancy resource centers, which assist expectant mothers before, during, and after the birth of their child but do not provide or refer for abortions.

Eighty-six percent of respondents said laws can protect both the mother and the unborn child, and 66 percent said health care professionals who have religious objections to abortion should not be legally required to perform the procedure.

“Once again, most Americans are steadfast in their belief that abortion should be significantly limited yet laws should include exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother,” said Barbara Carvalho, director of the Marist Poll, in a statement announcing the poll results. “This clear trend found in the annual Knights of Columbus-Marist Poll has continued, nearly two years after the Supreme Court’s landmark Dobbs decision.”