Cori Bush’s Democratic Primary Could Cost the Party Its Reproductive Justice Champion

"My district isn’t for sale, and it’s not going to be just a stepping stone in a politician's career,” Bush told Jezebel about the stakes for abortion rights in her race and the outsized role of lobbyist groups like AIPAC.

In DepthPolitics
Cori Bush’s Democratic Primary Could Cost the Party Its Reproductive Justice Champion

In 2021, Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) publicly shared her personal abortion story for the first time at a House Oversight Committee hearing, shortly after Texas’ S.B. 8 ban took effect: At 17 years old, Bush chose to have an abortion after she was raped by a “friend of a friend” while on a church trip. Nearly one year after her testimony, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and Missouri became the first state to ban abortion.

“Right now, my daughter has less rights to her own body than I did when I was her age,” Bush told Jezebel in a phone interview last week. The Congresswoman says it’s been difficult for her to process how she’s spent the last several years fighting for reproductive justice, while her 23-year-old daughter’s generation is now “fighting for reproductive freedom again.” This fight requires real champions, Bush says, not “fair-weather friends”—like her Democratic opponent, Wesley Bell, who’s accepted millions from the right-wing, pro-Israel AIPAC, making Bush and Bell’s race the fifth most expensive House primary in history.

Since first sharing her abortion story, Bush—who got her start in politics organizing and participating in demonstrations for racial justice in Ferguson—has emerged as one of the Democratic Party’s most compelling voices in the fight for reproductive rights. She’s both introduced and co-sponsored crucial legislation to protect abortion access, even if November 7 brings about the worst-case scenario, and has long legislated around her core belief that reproductive freedom has never guaranteed reproductive justice.

The Democratic Party is currently staking its political future on abortion, and Bush has positioned herself as an indispensable leader on the issue. So, why is she facing a highly competitive primary (set for August 6) from Bell, a county prosecutor whose campaign is being funded, in part, by anti-abortion Republican donors?

In October, Bush emerged as one of the first Congress members to demand a ceasefire: “To my colleagues in Congress, I urge you to choose humanity. Choose peace. Choose love. Choose courage,” she said in remarks introducing her resolution on October 19, at the onset of this iteration of Israel’s war on Gaza that’s since killed 40,000 Palestinians, including over 16,000 children.

Super PACs, foreign alliances, dark money—nothing should prevent us from condemning attacks on human rights, reproductive rights.

Soon after, despite assuring Bush last June that he wouldn’t run for her seat, Bell pivoted from running for Senate against Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) to primarying Bush. Bell claimed at the time that he made this choice after “[hearing] … from Democrats: Yes, we need you in Washington, but St. Louis needs you in the House of Representatives.” He’s since quietly taken money from Hawley’s donors and those of Sen. Eric Schmitt (R), who formerly served as state attorney general and ensured Missouri’s total abortion ban took effect, HuffPost reported in May. In a statement to the outlet, Bell maintained that he’s a “progressive prosecutor who will stand up for President Biden’s agenda and oppose MAGA extremists and Donald Trump.”

In June, Politico reported that half of donors who have given to Democratic candidates via AIPAC this cycle have given to anti-abortion Republicans since 2020. The lobbying group has endorsed over 200 anti-abortion Congressional Republicans this cycle alone. And as of July, AIPAC has poured over $7 million into Bell’s campaign. It’s an amount of money that Bush, who’s emphatically opposed the influence of PACs and dark money groups throughout her career, finds appalling: “My district isn’t for sale,” she said. “And it’s not going to be just a stepping stone in a politician’s career.”  

Despite running as a Democrat, Bell’s stated, liberal political views—particularly on abortion—have come under increasing scrutiny in recent months. In 2006, he managed an anti-abortion Republican candidate’s campaign. In 2009 and 2010, he donated to now-Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher’s (R) campaign to unseat a Democrat. He ran for his current position as a St. Louis County prosecutor on a pledge to make progressive change, but the incarceration rate among Black women in his county has surged 60% during his tenure. And in June, he tried to mislead voters by claiming Planned Parenthood endorsed him, but they actually endorsed Bush.

When Democratic candidates accept money from “right-wing groups” like AIPAC, Bush argues this impedes the party’s ability to credibly run on “saving Roe.” As the U.S. stares down the prospect of a national abortion ban this election cycle, Bush, who calls Bell a “fair-weather friend” to abortion rights, says there’s no room for ambiguity or questions about where candidates stand. “Abortion rights are on the ballot. The last thing we should have to do right now is wonder what a candidate actually believes, what they would actually do if elected.” She emphasized that her district “deserves—and has—a champion fighting for them on the ground,” whereas Bell is funded by “the same donors donating to [former President Trump] and J.D. Vance.”

A core part of that fight to save abortion rights is ensuring that a Republican president can’t wield the Comstock Act to enact a national abortion ban. In March, Bush became the first Congress member since Dobbs to call for the repeal of Comstock, and in June, Bush was one of 18 co-sponsors, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), to introduce the Stop Comstock Act which would repeal certain sections of the dormant, 19th-century law. Specifically, Comstock bans the dissemination of “obscene” materials, like, say, abortion pills or medical products used by abortion providers. (The legislation only aims to repeal the abortion sections of the law, since certain parts are sometimes used to prosecute cases concerning child sexual abuse material.) Bush told me she’s been listening closely as conservative activists and Republican politicians have openly discussed how they’d use the zombie law to pass a national ban without Congress for years.

“This is about being proactive vs. reactive,” Bush said of her legislation. We shouldn’t wait for Republicans to seize on the law, then try to reverse their actions—we should take Comstock out of their toolbox, right here, right now. Her bill would further establish protections for the provision of telehealth provision of abortion pills. In June 2023, Bush also introduced the Abortion Justice Act to increase public investment in reproductive care, though this hasn’t advanced out of the Republican-controlled House.

From her roots as a community organizer, Bush says she learned the power of proactive vs. reactive activism early on—that’s why, in 2018, she occupied then-Sen. Roy Blunt’s (R-MO) office to try to stop the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Four years later, she would be arrested on its steps for protesting the Dobbs ruling.

But repealing Comstock is only one piece of her vision for reproductive justice: “We deserve more than just not losing our rights—we deserve true abortion access, freedom, and justice, in all our communities,” Bush said. That’s the impetus for her Abortion Justice Act and her ongoing opposition to the Hyde Amendment, which has prohibited federal funding for abortion care since 1976. 

It’s also the impetus for her principled stand for a ceasefire in Gaza, and safety and freedom for Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

“It’s a full-blown reproductive health crisis—and our fight for reproductive justice has to be beyond borders, financial status, ethnic background, nationality,” Bush said, pointing to how Israel’s war on Gaza has yielded horrific reproductive violence, including the “complete decimation” of Gaza’s health system, a reported 300% increase in miscarriages, and surging infant and maternal mortality. “Super PACs, foreign alliances, dark money—nothing should prevent us from condemning attacks on human rights, reproductive rights.”

Asked if Democrats lose credibility running on “saving Roe” while supporting policies that fund and promote reproductive injustice in Gaza, Bush stressed that this is why people distrust politicians in the first place: “This is exactly what we hear from everyday people, when they talk about the hypocrisy of politicians who say one thing and vote or act another way. We should never be a party of, ‘These values only apply to certain people in certain places,’” she said. “Our values must be unshakable—that’s how we build trust with real people. Reproductive justice means reproductive justice everywhere.”

Bush knows this position could cost her her seat, which is what happened to Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who Bush calls her “brother in service” and “a true representation of transformational leadership.” AIPAC “poured $20 million into unseating a Black former principal, because that’s how desperate right-wing billionaires were” to “buy the seat of a real changemaker.” Despite all of this, the Congresswoman remains hopeful: “You don’t spend $20 million from a position of strength, but from a position of weakness—if your position were popular, you wouldn’t need to lie, to break spending records, just to have a chance at beating us.”

As Bush closes the final stretch of her race by pointing to her own unflinching record and the unsettling ambiguities in her opponent’s, she’s determined to win without compromising ideological consistency: “All people deserve to live safely, freely in our own homes, with our rights protected, with access to health care—from St. Louis to Gaza.”

 
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