Pelosi: Abortion a ‘Democracy Issue,’ ‘Kitchen Table Issue’

Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said she saw so-called reproductive rights as an issue that will play big in the 2024 presidential election.

According to the former House Speaker, abortion was a “democracy” issue.

“The red wave, and I was like, what do — they don’t know what they’re talking about,” she said. “And they were saying I would owe an apology for promoting the issue of women’s right to choose. Climate, women’s right to choose, guns and democracy were our — where we took our message into the states that we had to — now, we are not a national campaign. We’re discrete into different elections. And we knew the power of that. And those saying, oh, she’s so wrong, Roe v. Wade is in the rearview mirror. People don’t care about it that much. No, they do. It’s a democracy issue. It’s a kitchen table issue for families to make their decisions about this. It’s about respect for women. Oh, my gosh, respect for women.”

“So it’s a big deal,” Pelosi continued. “You’ve seen every election has been won — now, I don’t know what will happen in Florida because I didn’t question the integrity of Florida’s elections, much less whether it can work there. But people in Florida are revved up about it. It will be a big issue in the campaign. And let me say, when we won in ’18, people said, oh, aren’t you lucky that health care was such an important issue in the campaign? I said we weren’t lucky. We made our own luck. We had 10,000 events pointing out what the Affordable Care Act did, and similarly for this.”

“People are organized,” she added. And you would be — I’m very encouraged to hear what women are doing around the country, even in red states, about this issue. So there’s a drumbeat. And we may not win an election, you know, in certain red states, when abortion is not on the ballot. But we — but it causes a drumbeat across the country. It helps in the other election.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor