UrbanUpdate

No candidate has ever made protecting reproductive rights as central to a presidential run as Kamala Harris. Though the Democrats as a party have almost fully moved away from the equivocal “safe, legal, and rare” posture favored by Bill Clinton into a more straightforward defense of abortion, the Harris campaign has gone further, making the issue central to the campaign’s closing message (and a major theme of a recent rally with Beyoncé).

It’s not hard to see why: abortion rights are one of Harris’s best issues. Polls have shown that the majority of voters prefer her stance, and an exchange in the only debate between Harris and Trump over abortion was a high point of a clash she is widely considered to have won.

While reproductive rights have been a major fault line in American politics for decades, the issue has taken on increased urgency since the 2022 Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturned decades of precedent and ended the constitutional right to an abortion, leading the procedure to be banned or severely restricted in 21 states. That urgency is often credited with powering Democratic over-performance in the 2022 midterms.

It’s also an issue where surveys find a substantial gender gap: A poll conducted by the New York Times and Siena College found that abortion was the top issue for 22 percent of women surveyed. Only 6 percent of men said the same. As gender has become a defining topic of an election that seems to be as pure a toss-up as toss-ups come, a Harris victory could hinge on getting the campaign’s message about abortion in front of a new audience.

With one week remaining in the 2024 presidential race, GQ got on the phone with the Harris Campaign’s communications director, Michael Tyler. He told us about Harris’s efforts to reach men with her message about abortion rights, and the campaign’s challenge in reaching less-engaged voters in the current media landscape.

GQ: Since the Dobbs decision, GQ had AOC on the cover and did a big package about men's experiences with abortion and reproductive health. We had a piece about how this is a huge problem for men in America. We did practical guides to updating dating etiquette and donating money to reproductive rights causes. We have been really proud of the work we're doing around this issue. But sometimes it can feel like it doesn't necessarily connect with men.Reproductive rights is also, I would say, Kamala Harris’s best issue. So I was just curious if you wanted to talk a little bit about how the campaign is dealing with getting that message to men.

Michael Tyler: So, I'll start off by saying: I think if you look at this campaign's message writ large, one of our top-line messages is that Kamala Harris is a candidate who's running on a platform based upon freedom. This is an issue that, of course, touches on the rights of women. But the decision about whether and how and when to start a family is certainly one that affects men as well as women. Bodily autonomy—how to make decisions about your own body—speaks to this fundamental issue of freedom. And we think that's one that resonates with men, with young men in particular, who see the creep of authoritarianism. They see the creep of Project 2025 from Donald Trump. And so this is a singular proof point of what he wants to do across the nation. As he is talking about half of the country being “enemies from within,” as he's talking about prosecuting his political opponents, as he's talking about consolidating power within the Oval Office and gutting checks and balances. It is a resonant proof point towards the larger threat that Donald Trump poses to the rights and freedoms of all Americans. We think that men can understand that and they can also understand the salience of this issue.

I do think you hear, for example, Michelle Obama lay out what that dark reality already looks like for many men in the states where you have one in three women now living under a Trump abortion ban. Where, if your wife has a complication, you have to wait for her to be on death's door before she can receive the medical care that she should be entitled to as an American citizen. Right? And painting that picture of what that reality could look like for men across the country, for the people who they love the most—their wives, their girlfriends, their mothers, their daughters, their nieces—is one that we think can and should be a motivating factor down the stretch in this campaign.

Michelle Obama’s words, specifically, were urging men to “take our lives seriously.” At least in my reading, that indicated that this is a message that can be delivered to men or should be delivered to men in a slightly different way. I understand what you're saying that there's this overall message about freedom. But I'm curious if the campaign has had any special consideration in getting this message to men who might not be as tapped in the issue.

Well, yeah. If you look at where we are in the campaign right now, we're running two basic tracks at this point. We are running a mobilization campaign that's targeted towards the voters who we know are supportive of the Vice President, and it's about making sure that they have a plan to vote and they vote. That's what the early vote operation is all about across the battleground states right now.

But we are simultaneously continuing to run a persuasion campaign that is geared to a small slice of the electorate that has still either not made up their minds over who they're going to vote for, or have not decided whether or not they're going to vote at all. And so for us down the stretch here, it is tapping into the issues that we know motivate these soft supporters or these people who may not be voting right now.

These are also the voters who have paid the least amount of attention to politics over the course of the past four years. So they may have heard about Dobbs, but may not necessarily understand the reality of that decision, and what it has actually caused so far and what a second Trump term might mean. And so talking about the reality as it exists across the country right now, for many women, is important to do. Talking about the fact that Donald Trump, if he were to regain power, would have the opportunity to nominate at least one, probably two more justices to the Supreme Court, locking in an anti-choice majority at the national level to extend the harm of his abortion bans across the country, for probably another generation. At least we think this is resonant for this small slice of the electorate.

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It's not just the issue itself, but it also is increasingly the messengers who we put out to communicate this message. Michelle Obama? Obviously a very powerful and effective communicator. But also part of this conversation is men talking to men about the stakes on this issue. That's why you've had Governor Walz do this, right? He did it at the convention. He's done it on the stump—there’s his famous line on this, which we think is resonant: “I come from the State of Minnesota, we love our neighbors and we know that some of the best advice is to mind your own damn business when it comes to people's personal decisions.”

But he also talks about the fact that this extends—as [the GOP] has made clear—beyond abortion rights. You now see things like access to fertility treatments under threat. You saw what played out in Alabama, right? [The State Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos were legally children, putting the legality of common fertility treatments into question.] For men who want to start families, maybe having fertility issues, this is something that would certainly be on their minds and should be on their minds when they go to cast a ballot.

Then we have people like Josh Zurawski—the husband of Amanda Zurawski—being able to talk about having to watch as his wife lay on death's door before she was able to receive the treatment that she deserved. I think that men can see themselves in that nightmare scenario and be motivated to take action. And I think the more that we can have men talking about the importance of this issue, the more resonant it will be with this slice of undecided voters that are still making up their minds down the stretch.

One piece of media I noticed from the campaign which I read to be narrowly targeted towards people who might not necessarily vote was this Don't Get Popped social media ad. It was set up like a dating show and the message was, like, you won't be an eligible bachelor if you're not going to vote. It seemed accurate to me! But I was wondering about the thinking that went into that one.

[Laughs] Yeah, I mean, you just tap into a fun social media trend that people are familiar with, right? I think it speaks to our broader strategy of meeting voters where they are: how they consume their media and what they're familiar with. I think that is certainly one example of it. I think another example of it is some of the ads that we've done around, like, football games, for example, where we've had a debate challenge ad that we ran during the Alabama game, sort of trolling him and leaning into the thing that people are already tuning in for. You’ve got to—particularly, again with this slice of undecided voters who in a fragmented media environment are not necessarily consuming political media or oftentimes are overtly rejecting it—you have to find creative ways to break through the ecosystem and actually hit them with some targeted messaging.

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StyleEvery Piece of Menswear You Should Own in 2025By Gerald OrtizIt seems like it might be difficult to even get across what Donald Trump himself believes about this issue. He flip-flopped on his personal vote for Florida Amendment Four that would have protected abortion rights in that state. And he said all kinds of things about it.

I mean, he says a lot, but like frankly he has one track record on this issue, right? And that is banning abortion every chance that he gets. It is our responsibility to make sure the electorate knows that. That's why you've seen us do things like what the Vice President has done on the stump, which is just run the tape of what Donald Trump has actually said about this issue. Saying that women deserve some sort of punishment for receiving abortion care, bragging about overturning Roe when he's out at the MAGA rallies. This is stuff that he says every single day. And it's part of the reason why down the stretch of this campaign, he's increasingly hiding from the limelight. It's why he ducked the 60 Minutes interview. He ducked the second debate. It's why you don't see him sit down for major network interviews like the Vice President does, because when he's held to account on his record, these undecided voters do not like what they see, particularly on this issue—because his record is very clear.

That's why down the stretch here we are putting this issue front-and-center. That's why the Vice President went to Houston: not because it's a swing state, but because it is ground zero for the harm that Trump's abortion bans are causing across the country. It is also why we are writing these ads. We have the latest one that features the husband of Andrea Cummings, another Texas woman, who got sepsis because she could not receive the care that she deserved. This is a family that wanted to have kids—that wants to have kids—but that is now likely out of reach for them because of what Donald Trump did. These are the types of stories that we think down the stretch will resonate, not just with women, but with men who are still deciding whether to vote, or who to vote for, down the stretch.

You have so much internal knowledge about these different slices of voters. Have you seen this issue becoming more salient to men or have you seen any specific success or momentum in terms of getting that message out?

Yeah, particularly with younger men. Particularly among men who are thinking about whether or when or how to start a family. This is an issue that resonates. It is also just an issue that resonates when people think about the women in their lives. And so we do think this shit matters! And some people talk about it because the stakes are high. But we also do see it as a motivating issue for many men in this electorate who again either have not made up their minds or as a motivating factor for those who, when they are going to vote, are going to vote for Kamala Harris. So it’s making clear the stakes for them.

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Chris Cohen is GQ's Deputy Site Editor. He joined the magazine in 2020, after working as an editor at Saveur, Lucky Peach, and Outside magazine. Chris edits features and runs the Wellness section—and runs marathons, enjoys cooking, and generally tries to practice what he preaches health-wise even when away from... Read moreDeputy Site EditorXInstagramRelated Stories for GQPoliticsSex and Relationships