Democrats see recent abortion rulings as an opening to galvanize Latino voters
Democrats see recent state court rulings on abortion as a galvanizing moment to mobilize Latino voters in key states and battleground House districts.
Democrats see recent state court rulings on abortion as a galvanizing moment to mobilize Latino voters in key states and battleground House districts, with a message about personal freedoms and access to reproductive health care.
Just this week, Arizona’s Supreme Court ruled that an 1864 abortion ban is enforceable, a decision that came a week after Florida’s Supreme Court allowed a six-week abortion ban to take effect. Coupled with Texas’ state law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, that puts many of the most heavily Latino House battlegrounds in the country in the middle of the nationwide fight over abortion policy.
Republicans have sought to sway more Latino voters to their side for years, and since 2020, support among Latinos for former President Donald Trump has spiked upward. And while Latino voters come from all different backgrounds, some of that shift has long been attributed to high levels of social conservatism and Catholicism in Hispanic communities.
But Democratic candidates and political strategists who spoke with NBC News argued that perceptions about the impact of Catholicism in Latino communities and how Latino voters view abortion is a misconception.
“Latino voters are not a monolith,” Victoria McGroary, the executive director of BOLD PAC, the Democratic-aligned campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, told NBC News. She added: “This is fundamentally about freedom. And it is something ... Latino voters really, really care about.”
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