An Austin couple shared how the erosion of abortion rights in Texas has affected both of their lives.
At the DNC, Josh and Amanda Josh Zurawski talk about abortion advocacy
“The fight for reproductive rights is not just a women’s fight. It is a fight for our families.”
At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Monday night, four Texas speakers used their time in the national spotlight to speak to audiences outside their home state and, in one case, demonstrate that men can have as much say as women on the central issue of abortion.
“I’m here tonight because the fight for reproductive rights is not just a women’s fight,” said local resident Josh Zurawski, sharing the stage with his wife, Amanda. “This is about fighting. This is about fighting for our families.”
The Zurawskis were among four Texans who spoke on the opening night of the Democratic convention, which concludes Thursday with Vice President Kamala Harris’s official acceptance of her party’s presidential nomination. The couple’s story has become central to the fight for abortion rights in Texas, but their appearance on the national stage served to highlight and personalize an issue that could be one of the defining issues of the 2024 election cycle.
And by opening the discussion about his wife’s life-threatening pregnancy with the couple’s second child and her lack of access to abortion services due to the near-total ban on the procedure in Texas following the Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe v. Wade ruling in 2022, Josh Zurawski framed the issue not as one that only affects women, but as one that should be important to men as well.
Amanda Zurawski, the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit brought by 20 patients and two gynecologists against the state of Texas, nearly died of sepsis after she was denied an abortion to treat premature rupture of her membranes. Because she was 17 weeks pregnant, her baby had no chance of survival, but a hospital told her she would have to wait until she developed an infection or the pregnancy ruptured on its own. One of her fallopian tubes is permanently blocked as a result of the damage.
Like the Zurawskis, both 37, the other Texas speakers at Chicago’s United Center used their time on stage not just to appeal to voters in their safe Republican state, but to a broader national audience as the Democratic slate of Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz faces what appears to be a tight contest that could come down to just a handful of states.
More: How Amanda Zurawski fought for women’s reproductive health care in Texas
New U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who represents a safe Democratic district that straddles the borders of Dallas and Tarrant counties, secured a coveted prime-time speaking slot, which she used to compare Harris’ experience as a prosecutor to the myriad legal troubles of Republican candidate Donald Trump.
“Kamala Harris has a resume. Donald Trump has a criminal record,” she said to applause from delegates in the audience. But she was most effective when she recalled meeting Harris at the vice president’s official residence for a photo shoot early in her term. At the time, Crocket, 43, recalled, she was plagued by self-doubt about her decision to run for Congress.
“When I approached Vice President Harris for our official photo, she turned to me and asked, ‘What’s wrong?'” recalled an emotional Crockett. “We had never met before. But she saw through me, she saw my distress. I immediately started crying.”
“The most powerful woman in the world dried my tears and listened to me. Then she said, among other things, ‘You are exactly where God wants you to be. Your district elected you because they believe in you, and so do I.'”
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, 33, is the top elected official in Texas’ largest county. In her six years in office, she has been at ground zero for several weather disasters, including this summer’s Hurricane Beryl, which caused widespread and prolonged power outages in the Houston area amid intense heat, and the 2021 winter storm that left her county and most of the state without power for days in the bitter cold as the state’s power grid teetered on the brink of collapse.
Hidalgo used her brief speech to praise the democratic government’s response to local emergencies.
“Over the years, I’ve learned that Kamala Harris always calls. And not only does she call, she keeps her promises,” Hidalgo said.
More: Pop stars, mass events and history: comparing the Obama and Harris campaigns
Jon Taylor, a political scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said Crockett could be a star of the convention despite her short time in public office. She won her congressional seat in 2022 after serving just one term in the Texas House of Representatives.
“It’s possible,” Taylor said. “At every convention, there seems to be someone who stands out. It’s possible that she is that person.”
That view was shared by state Rep. Donna Howard, a Democrat from Austin, who chose to follow the convention from home rather than travel to Chicago.
“Jasmine is clearly becoming a national figure and is very good at expressing things in a way that grabs people’s attention and highlights strong arguments, like the choice between Harris and Trump,” said Howard, who also praised the Zurawskis for telling their personal story to a national audience.
Matt Angle, a veteran Democratic official from Texas, said the Zurawskis have succeeded in reframing the abortion issue in a way that gives it greater political significance.
“When you talk about an attack on abortion rights, you’re really talking about an attack on the family,” Angle said. “And (Republicans) aren’t just telling women when, how and how many children they can have. They’re telling fathers and husbands too. And every woman has a husband, every man has a mother, and many fathers have daughters. And of course every daughter has a father.”
Statesman writer Bayliss Wagner contributed to this report.
