Abortion is now political Kryptonite for Republicans

A substantial majority of Americans support a right to abortion in all or most cases. An even larger majority oppose legislation that does not grant exceptions to victims of rape and incest or criminalizes interstate travel by pregnant women seeking abortions.

Battleground states are pro-choice: Arizona 62 percent; Georgia 57 percent; Michigan 66 percent; Nevada 80 percent; North Carolina 62 percent; Pennsylvania 61 percent; Wisconsin 64 percent. In fact, only seven states in the United States have anti-abortion majorities. In those states, between 42 percent and 49 percent of citizens are pro-choice. For the first time since the 1990s, fewer than 40 percent of Americans self-identify as “pro-life.” Even more surprisingly, the percentage of Republicans in the U.S. who believe all abortions should be illegal has dropped from 21 percent to 14 percent.

Since June 2022, when the Supreme Court declared that abortion was not a constitutionally guaranteed right, many more pro-choice Americans have made the issue a political litmus test. In 2020, 15 percent of voters indicated they would only vote for candidates who supported reproductive rights; 26 percent now make that claim. The percentage who said they would only vote for an anti-abortion candidate has declined from 29 percent to 25 percent.

In the month following Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the number of women registering to vote surged. Along with the selection of extremist candidates in battleground states, abortion played a significant role in the underperformance of Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections.

In the second half of 2022, all five statewide ballot measures favoring abortion passed. Voters in ruby red Kansas voted overwhelmingly to reject a measure to add language to the state constitution declaring that abortion is not a fundamental right. Voters in ruby red Kentucky rejected a similar amendment to their state constitution. In a nominally non-partisan election for a seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court in April 2023, a liberal who promised to protect reproductive rights easily defeated a conservative supported by the state’s anti-abortion organizations.

Republican legislators and governors, however, have not gotten the message. Or have chosen to ignore it. They are giving Democrats political gifts that keep on giving.

Abortion is now banned in more than a dozen states. Other states no longer protect reproductive rights; some states no longer have facilities where women can receive abortions. Texas has criminalized abortion from the moment of fertilization, unless the patient has a life-threatening physical condition caused by the pregnancy. Abortion providers face penalties up to life in prison and fines of $100,000. Texas law permits private citizens to initiate civil suits against anyone who aids or abets an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, and to pocket a fine of up to $10,000. This month, Idaho, which had already banned all abortions except those resulting from rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother, enacted legislation subjecting anyone convicted of helping a minor get an abortion in another state (through medication or a surgical procedure) to a prison term of 2-5 years.

A couple of weeks ago, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk banned the use of the widely used abortion pill Mifepristone throughout the United States. In a decision filled with terms used by anti-abortion activists, including “unborn child,” Kacsmaryk, without evidence, accused the FDA, which approved Mifepristone 23 years ago, of foregoing safety precautions “to better advance the political objective of increased access to abortion.”

The issue of abortion puts Republican politicians between a rock and a hard place. Anti-abortion activists, who comprise a substantial proportion of the MAGA base, have vowed to punish candidates who do not double down on personhood immediately after conception and the enactment by state legislatures and the federal government of total bans with no exceptions. However, party professionals see “the Dobbs effect” as potentially devastating in the 2024 general election, believe “there isn’t a solution that anyone can rally around yet,” and recommend that candidates refrain from taking positions outside the political mainstream.

Donald Trump, it’s worth noting, is hedging his bets. Continuing to claim credit for appointing the three Supreme Court justices responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade, the former president maintains that Republicans “are getting killed on the abortion issue.” Asked during a trip to Iowa in March whether he supported a federal ban on abortions, Trump said only “We’re looking at a lot of different things.” He did not mention abortion during his stump speeches.

Trump’s “pivoting,” his reluctance to discuss abortion, and a willingness to throw “the pro-life community under the bus,” declared Bob Vander Plaats, president of Iowa’s Family Leader, raise questions about his commitment to “the sanctity of life,” and “give us cause for pause.”

Perhaps to lower the temperature, Roger Severino, vice president of the Heritage Foundation, which supports a total ban on abortions after six weeks, has predicted that 2022 would mark the high-water mark for pro-choice activists: “It doesn’t get any better for them. They can’t keep up the anger forever.”

Other issues, to be sure, are certain to compete for the attention of voters in the eighteen months before the 2024 elections. That said, extremist anti-abortion legislators, governors, and judges have no compunctions about stoking the anger of their pro-choice enemies. And, given substantial public support throughout the country for reproductive rights, Democrats would commit political malpractice if they did not continue to expose Republicans’ distractions, dissembling, double talking and doubling down.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of “Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.”