The impact of abortion criminalization has been profound. The percentage of Americans who say abortion should always be legal rose from 27 percent in April 2022 to 35 percent. Moreover, a record number now consider this an important issue (41 percent) while voters believe President Biden (53 percent) would do a better job on abortion issues than his almost certain 2024 rival, Donald Trump (41 percent).
Republicans, scrambling to avoid the backlash against abortion bans, have seized upon the idea of a six- or 15-week limit. That does not solve their political problem. “When asked if they supported a six-week abortion ban, only 38 percent said yes, while 58 percent said they opposed the idea.” the poll showed. “On a 15-week ban, 43 percent said they supported the idea, with 54 percent saying no — a complete flip in numbers from a Fox News poll from last year.”
The November election will feature abortion measures in many states that could impact competitive races. While Maryland is already a deep-blue, pro-choice state, a measure on the ballot in November enshrining abortion rights in the state’s constitution spells trouble for Republican Senate candidate and former governor Larry Hogan, who has tried to duck the issue but faces a GOP backlash if he deviates from the MAGA party line. (As governor, he vetoed a bill expanding abortion access.)
A referendum is also likely to be on the ballot in Arizona. This measure would expand access to abortion beyond the current 15-week limit. That has implications for the swing state’s presidential race, as well as its U.S. Senate race, in which extreme MAGA Republican Kari Lake is facing Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego.
Meanwhile, in Florida, where Sen. Rick Scott (R) is up for reelection and hope springs eternal among Democrats to win at the presidential level, Democrats could get a boost from the proposed Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion, which provides: “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”
The proposal collected enough signatures to qualify for the ballot this fall, but Republicans challenged the measure in court. This echoed the GOP’s unsuccessful effort last year in Ohio to beat back a referendum to expand abortion rights by trying to change the rules to amend the state constitution. On Tuesday, Florida’s supreme court ruled that the state’s six-week ban could go into effect but also held that the pro-choice measure could appear on the ballot. That will set the stage for a high-stakes abortion battle.
And in Montana, where Democratic Sen. Jon Tester is in a tough reelection fight, “a proposed ballot initiative would affirm in the state’s constitution ‘the right to make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion’ and would prohibit the government from ‘denying or burdening the right to abortion before fetal viability,’” reported ABC News, citing the group Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights.
These measures might well drive Democratic turnout, helping the party’s candidates up and down the ballot. Moreover, they keep abortion uppermost in voters’ minds. The unbroken string of victories for pro-choice measures since Dobbs and the subsequent washout of the red wave in the 2022 midterms suggest abortion has changed the electoral landscape.
Political scientist D. Stephen Voss told Vox, “People talk about abortion as a mobilizer for upper-status professionals, and it is, it’s a part of what you’re seeing … a backlash against the culture war conservatism of the Republican Party.” Voss added: “If you only look at our very limited suburban counties, you’re missing that this trend among affluent professionals is having a wider impact than merely in places we call suburbs.”
Likewise, Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg (one of the few analysts to throw cold water on predictions of a 2022 red wave) has repeatedly warned that “Dobbs changed everything.” During an MSNBC interview in September, Rosenberg explained that there was a “huge heightened Democratic performance” after Dobbs in more than two dozen special election races.
A cottage industry — the same that predicted Dobbs would be a nonfactor — insisted that the abortion issue’s impact would diminish. However, if attention had drifted, certainly the recent Supreme Court case about banning the abortion drug mifepristone woke up many women. The Supreme Court justices sounded at oral argument ready to throw out the case on “standing” grounds. However, it reminded those concerned about abortion rights that Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas appear eager to embrace the latest right-wing antiabortion mechanism, the 1873 Comstock Act, to effectuate a nationwide ban on abortion.
“Conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation are already urging Trump to issue an executive order on Day 1 banning medication abortion,” Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern wrote last week. “Republican lawyers are preparing to use the Comstock Act to prohibit all abortions, not just pills.” In short, MAGA Republicans might try to apply this “zombie relic” law so widely that a Trump Justice Department could push to “make all abortion care a felony.” Democrats are bound to highlight that shocking prospect ahead of the November elections.
In sum, Republicans are likely to keep reminding voters that their party is not about to let public opinion stand in the way of extreme maneuvers to try to ban abortion in every state. Democrats would do well — as they did in 2022 — to lean into the abortion issue. Watch for more Democrats during this election cycle vowing to repeal the Comstock Act, to enshrine abortion rights in federal statute and to use the Justice Department aggressively to defend women’s right to choose. That’s how they can draw a sharp contrast with Republicans’ cruel, dangerous agenda.
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