By Taylor Seely, Sasha Hupka | Arizona Republic
Marsha Beebe was sitting with a couple of 20-somethings at a foldout table with a script and a cellphone. She couldn’t believe she was here again.
Not the physical space — she was new to phone banking — but back to being told what she, as someone with a uterus, could and couldn’t do to her body if she became pregnant.
“I thought America was more enlightened,” Beebe said.
Of course, it’s all theoretical for her. She’s beyond child-bearing age. And anyway, she said a back-door abortion when she was 17 left her unable to conceive.
The procedure wasn’t illegal, but her gynecologist wasn’t set up to offer the service, she said. Roe v. Wade had only recently been decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“I paid for my decision, but it is a decision that I support to this day. I don’t want other women to have to go through that,” she said, between dialing numbers.
Then she got someone.
“Have you heard the recent news that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe V. Wade and the state of Arizona is trying to enforce an abortion ban that’s over 100 years old?” she asked.
Beebe spoke about abortion-rights candidates for the U.S. Senate, then Arizona governor, then Maricopa County attorney.
When the voter wanted to hear more, Beebe panicked. No one expected to make it to the third and fourth pages of the script.
Beebe’s phone banking was part of Planned Parenthood Votes’ $1.5 million get out the vote effort to elect abortion-rights Democrats in Arizona this November. The organization is the political advocacy wing of Planned Parenthood, and its effort is a response to the Supreme Court’s abortion decision that reversed 50 years of precedent.
Recent changes to established abortion law are expected to influence midterm elections this November.
“It’s a driving force in this electorate, and people are very much paying attention to it,” said political pollster Paul Bentz of local consulting firm HighGround Inc.
The question is, how much.
