And because congressional gridlock makes passage of a national policy all but impossible, abortion-rights is almost certain to animate Democrats in 2028, no matter the outcome this November.

“Abortion is a gift. It’s the easiest thing to go into another state to talk about,” said Celinda Lake, a 2020 Biden campaign pollster and the president of Lake Research Partners. “If you came into another state and talked about your miracle economic policies or energy development, these voters might not be interested.”

Abortion also offers a glimpse into what these potential candidates see as their strengths and how they might try to separate from the pack — even as they insist their only focus is 2024.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt Hotel empire, established Think Big America in 2023, a nonprofit that supports abortion-rights ballot measures in Arizona and Nevada this year and is led by Mike Ollen, the governor’s former campaign manager.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, through his own PAC, is needling conservatives with billboards in red states that tout abortion and IVF access in California. On Thursday, he signed legislation to allow some doctors from Arizona to become temporarily licensed in California to perform abortions for their patients, just weeks after trumpeting the proposal on MSNBC.

Harris has leaned into her origin story, explaining in her stump speech that she was moved to become a prosecutor to protect people like her best friend who was molested by her stepfather.

And Gov. Gretchen Whitmer regularly reminds audiences that she helped overturn an anti-abortion law in Michigan, while offering advice on how other states can follow her lead. Whitmer, a national co-chair of the Biden-Harris campaign, has also talked about her rape in college and frequently invokes her two daughters.

“I am always going to be a fighter for them, for their generation, for their rights — rights I always could count on when I was growing up in this country that are now very much in jeopardy,” she told POLITICO.

Whitmer, whose book chronicling her ascent in state politics is due out this summer, said it’s a “sad truth” abortion rights won’t be settled in the 2024 election, and that she has “accepted with grim determination that this is a fight that we’re going to have to continue to lead on, not just today but in the years to come.”

Her status as a swing-state governor who led the fight to overturn a 1931 anti-abortion law less than five months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade gives her the cachet to stump for Biden and down-ballot Democrats in Arizona, Florida, Texas and other battleground states.

Where Harris, Pritzker and Newsom are from reliably blue states with strong abortion-rights protections, Whitmer reminds audiences that she governs a purple state and must work with Republicans.

Still, Pritzker and Newsom say they, too, are on the front lines because their states are seeing an influx of women from red states seeking abortion and follow-up care.

That messaging matters to future primary voters, said Jennifer Driver, the senior director of reproductive rights at the State Innovation Exchange, a progressive policy group.

“It’s bolder than what you see from the Biden campaign,” Driver said. “You’re seeing governors who are going much further and going into where the overall public wants to see them.”

Pritzker’s political skill and wealth and Newsom’s own acumen and fundraising prowess offer them myriad ways to garner national attention and help down-ballot Democrats. Newsom, through his Campaign for Democracy PAC, has paid for TV ads to run in Alabama and Tennessee, critical of those states’ proposals to criminalize helping minors travel out-of-state for reproductive care.

Newsom has also spent time in Alabama, where the recently redistricted second Congressional District is expected to turn blue, according to the Cook Political Report. If that seat flips after Newsom’s abortion ads, he can claim a little credit, said Alabama Republican Strategist Angi Horn.

“He’s the future head of the party, you’re not going to send Biden down here, Biden has his own race to run,” said Horn, who noted that Newsom is term-limited and will leave office in early 2027. “If you’re trying to convince donors that you have what it takes to deliver a national message, you’ll do a lot when you have no risk.”

On the road campaigning for Biden, and in TV interviews, Newsom has wrapped his abortion fight into a broader critique about the conservative majority Supreme Court commiting a “cultural purge” by reversing decades of civil rights expansions in America.

“We’re seeing this great divergence and red and blue states are increasingly on the frontlines of this rights battle,” Newsom said earlier this year while stumping for the president in South Carolina, the first state in the Democratic primary. “That’s been defined in pretty profound terms here with the six-week abortion ban, in places like Florida with Ron DeSantis and what he’s doing, Greg Abbott in Texas and what he’s trying to do. It’s not just the rolling back of voting rights, civil rights, LGBTQ rights and women’s rights, but it’s also this cultural purge.”

Pritzker, too, has been on the road, at abortion-rights events and Democratic rallies in Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Virginia and Nevada, where he spoke at a February kick-off rally for Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, the coalition pushing to get an abortion-rights measure on the November ballot.

Think Big America, the advocacy organization Pritzker founded, gave $1 million to the group and is providing staff advising the effort.

“Together, you, we are protecting access to health care and preventing MAGA extremists from passing an abortion ban,” Pritzker told the Nevada crowd, after rattling off what he’s done to expand access in Illinois.

Think Big America donated $500,000 in April to the Floridians Protecting Freedom ballot initiative campaign, following a $250,000 donation to Arizona’s ballot campaign.

Pritzker also spent big on Ohio’s constitutional amendment referendum, Virginia’s legislative elections and a Wisconsin Supreme Court race — all successful efforts to directly or indirectly help protect and restore reproductive freedoms.

“The governor’s ‘Think Big America’ slogan is tailor made for a presidential run in 2028,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and a top aide to former Majority Leader Harry Reid. “The branding alone suggests he’s trying to tap into the optimism that’s usually found in the country but is lacking right now. It allows him to test messages in the respective states and see how things play out.”

It would be “political malpractice” for anyone considering a run in 2028 not to elevate abortion, Manley said.

Whitmer’s Fight Like Hell PAC has endorsed and funneled resources to vulnerable swing-district Democrats who support abortion rights — such as Reps. Emilia Sykes (D-Ohio) and Susan Wild (D-Pa.).

But arguably no Democrat has harnessed the fight for abortion rights more than Harris who has made it the lynchpin of her 2024 reelection campaign outings. She’s more forceful on the trail than Biden, a practicing Catholic who has never seemed at ease discussing abortion throughout his five-decade career.

At a campaign stop in Jacksonville, Florida, this month, Harris laid out what another four years of Trump would mean for women: “More bans, more suffering, less freedom.”

“But we are not going to let that happen,” she told the crowd. “Because we trust women. We trust women to know what is in their own best interest. And women trust all of us to fight to protect their most fundamental freedom.”

Harris last month was in Nevada alongside Eva Burch, the Arizona legislator who said she planned to abort a non-viable pregnancy, weeks before an 1864 near-total abortion ban took effect. Lawmakers have since repealed that law and left in place a 15-week ban, but Burch is still making abortion rights a center of her campaign. She also appeared with Harris in Tucson and with Whitmer in Phoenix.

“[Whitmer] made it a priority to come here and to be supportive of us … it matters to voters and it’s something people can see that’s tangible,” Burch said. “Public outreach and influence from leaders that people respect and listen to is going to be instrumental in this election cycle.”