Melat Kiros thanked Diana DeGette for her work on reproductive rights in her victory speech Tuesday night, and that got me thinking: it really seems like there’s been a general lack of attention on “codifying Roe” or whatever the Democratic Party’s strategy is on abortion rights.

Kiros’ issue page specifically says that she’s for codifying the right to abortion. My old Congressman, bog-standard centrist Joe Morelle, mentions the “Women’s Health Protection Act” on his Women’s rights page. Each uses different language to express the same basic idea, but both bury it deep amongst a bunch of other policy proposals. Of course, Colorado and New York both still allow abortions. In Texas, Talarico uses the term “codify Roe” on his website.

In all of these cases, abortion is part of the usual laundry lists. I don’t see Democrats pushing it hard. Back when the Dobbs ruling came out, in June 2022, I think we all believed that it would lead to some kind of backlash that would help Democrats. Many credited Dobbs for the better-than-expected 2022 midterm performance of Democrats. But here we are, four years later, and it seems like it’s been tacitly decided that pushing abortion rights hard isn’t a great strategy.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I still think women bleeding out in parking lots because they’re being denied a life-saving D&C is an issue that has salience and should be mentioned, a lot.

(Also, did you know that Talarico is a type-1 diabetic? He was diagnosed at age 28 after a near-death experience. I found that out when researching his issues pages for this post.)