What is clicking on the U.S. presidential campaign trail Premium

Kamala Harris’s campaign in the US presidential election is leveraged on a diminishing statistic and the issue of abortion rights

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are so far apart that only a continental drift can bring them closer. It is not just that one is African-American and the other White. Or that one is a woman and the other is a man. Or that Kamala Harris is a Californian and Donald Trump a New Yorker. More significantly, Kamala Harris’s campaign is leveraged on a diminishing statistic while Mr. Trump’s is set on an ascending one.

Abortion rights are topmost on Ms. Harris’s to-do list, but how pressing is that? The rate of abortion has fallen steadily in the United States since the 1970s when the verdict in Roe vs Wade was passed. Legalising abortion did not result in more abortions, as some of the opponents to the judgment feared. Nor was there a dramatic increase in abortion clinics.

While abortion rates are falling, immigration, which is Mr. Trump’s cause, is rising. The immigration acts of 1965 and 1990 allowed Latin Americans and Asians in and, since then, the bulk of U.S. migrants have been Mexicans. There is a sharp rise too in unauthorised migrants who, today, comprise about 25% of foreign-born people in the U.S.

Between 1981 and 2021, abortion rates fell in the U.S. from 29.3 per 1,000 women in the 15-44 year age range to 11.6 abortions per 1,000 women. The fall is not because some States have put restrictions on abortion but rather on account of highly effective contraceptive methods, such as the intrauterine device. Also, more women seek careers now rather than raising children.

To then peg an election campaign primarily on abortion does not resonate with women the way it used to in the 1970s. No doubt, abortions still happen, often forcing women to travel, under duress, from their home State, which restricts abortion, to another where it is allowed. This can result in fatalities, but not at an overwhelming rate. Paradoxically, women beyond the child-bearing age are very committed to bringing abortion rights back simply because they fought for it in the 1970s. It was a great advance then not only because unwanted pregnancies were high but also because single parents could now pay greater attention to child rearing than child bearing.

In contrast to the pre-1965 profile where most migrants were White, today about 50% of immigrants to the US are from Latin America, and as much as a quarter from Mexico alone. This probably explains why Mr. Trump’s tirade against migrants from south of the border is so appealing. There are so many of them and they all look so different.

In 2022, about 10.6 million immigrants (or 23% of all immigrants in the U.S.) were Mexicans. Next were those from India (6%) and China (5%). Though 77% of immigrants are in the U.S. legally, about 25%, mostly Mexicans, are unauthorised. This was not so till 1968 when primarily Europeans and the British could enter the U.S.