SCRANTON, PA — On Tuesday morning, students rushed to class at Lackawanna College in Pennsylvania after casting their votes in a tight race for president. A lonely Trump flag, a Harris billboard and several small white, blue and red stickers on shirt pockets signal a divided electorate in Scranton on election day.
A win in Pennsylvania could clinch the presidency, and campaigns have trained their attention on purple counties like Lackawanna – and particularly its young women.
While abortion isn’t on the ballot, both campaigns are keenly aware that it is on the mind of this demographic. Since Roe v. Wade was overturned two years ago, states surrounding Pennsylvania have passed laws restricting the right to abortion while Pennsylvania has held on.
On a sleepy block in central Scranton, the debate over reproductive issues materialized on every corner.
Outside the local college, Katie Michaels said a woman’s right to abortion was top of mind when she went to the polls that morning.
“I want to make sure women have a right to their bodies and the right to choose,” said Michaels, the director of enrollment at the college, after giving a prospective student a tour.
In the courtyard, several young women like Michaels proudly identified as pro-choice said the deciding matter in their vote was the issue of abortion. Nationally, 65% of women support abortion in all or most cases, with similar numbers in Pennsylvania.
In an effort to sway the young women, the local Republican party has downplayed the election’s impact on abortion rights. When talking with voters, Daniel Naylor, chairman of the Lackawanna Republican Party, emphasized that Trump left abortion to the states and won’t pursue a national ban.
“There have been some young women that have questioned us on the abortion issue,” said Daniel Naylor, chairman of the Lackawanna Republican Party. “But once we explain what the reality is, instead of the delusion that the Democrats are saying… they realize.”
For Katie Michaels that might not matter. The women at the local college were generally less concerned with their own right to choose than with the erosion of rights in neighboring states. Pennsylvania is not where this issue is playing out for them.
“We’re such a middle-of-the-ground state, so it’s not high on my list of concerns here,” she said, referring to friends in Ohio and Alabama who have lost reproductive rights after the overturning of Roe.
But they believe their vote could shape the federal women’s right to choose. Isaac Kaufner, a volunteer for the Democrats in Lackawanna County who has knocked on hundreds of doors, said women are most concerned about keeping their rights.
“Women know that abortion is their right and they don’t like their right to be stripped away,” Kaufner said.
But their priorities extend to other women’s rights as well.
“It starts with abortion,” she added. “It doesn’t end with abortion.”
Others however, have the opposite concern – that a new president could loosen restrictions on the local level.
On another corner of the block, at the Heaven and Earth Gift Shop, Mary Jane Peters’ eyes well with tears when she begins to talk about the threat to unborn children that the election poses. Her fear of abortion law under Harris drove her to the polls that morning.
“I don’t see a good outcome if she’s elected,” said Peters (pictured above), who stood behind the counter selling religious figurines, holy water bottles, and books about the nearing apocalypse. “And I’m fearful that she’s going to be.”
Peters doesn’t think Trump will pass a national abortion ban — she is not sure that he can. With several scandals of infidelity and sexual misconduct, Trump is no man of honor in her book.
But he is the lesser of two evils when Peters feels certain that electing Harris would lead embolden state legislators to make abortions easier to access, when she wants just the opposite.
“It is a slippery slope,” she said. “It’s definitely going to loosen the restrictions.”
On a third corner, in the Pennsylvanians for Human Life office, longtime member Peter Gaffney (pictured above) and his wife, Marie, have pushed for the right to life for nearly twenty years.
“The most pure vision, which I share, is that abortion should be made illegal by a Human Life Amendment,” Gaffney said, surrounded by framed pictures of newborn children, baby bottles filled with spare coins and a poster with the words, “Don’t sacrifice unborn babies to win an election.”
However, he doesn’t seem to really believe that vision is feasible.
“Politically, we just want to make sure that our tax money is not paying for this stuff and pushing it,” he said. “I’d like to make some sort of limit and all that kind of stuff, but not in Pennsylvania.”
The couple is not expecting anything to really change in Scranton. But to them, abortion is always at stake.
“Abortion in New York, in Pennsylvania, and in America has been the issue since 1973,” he said. “And it affects every election.”
The “my body, my choice” sentiment has only emerged stronger with each cycle, according to Gaffney.
In Scranton, neither pro-life nor pro-choice voters believe that the election will shape abortion policies in Pennsylvania, yet abortion still drives their vote. So while the local Republicans have tried to convince women that abortion isn’t actually on the ballot, the local women are making the election about abortion.
Tonight, the Gaffneys will go home wishing for a Trump victory, while less than a block away, Lackawanna College students will refresh their phones wishing for a Harris win — all with an eye on shaping national abortion policy.
(Photo credit: Samuel Braslow)