DALLAS — Buoyed by the success of their counterparts in Kansas, Texas activists are determined to use November’s midterm elections to kick-start the restoration of abortion rights.
But they have a much heavier lift than progressives in Kansas, where women voters powered the approval of a referendum in favor of abortion rights. Texas ballots won’t include an up-or-down question on abortion, but there is a way to reverse the state’s ban: Fire Republican incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott and deliver the House and Senate to Democrats.
That’s unlikely to occur.
And unlike other states, Texas hasn’t seen a wave of new women voters angry about the U.S. Supreme Court decision to strike down Roe vs. Wade.
Just over 309,100 Texans registered to vote or updated their registrations from June 24, the date the Supreme Court decision to struck down Roe v. Wade was released, to Aug. 15. Of that total, half are women. Residents have until Oct. 11 to match or exceed 544,000 — the number of new or updated registrations in the 2018 midterms.
The unremarkable number of new registrations means abortion rights activists will have to persuade existing voters to toss out Republicans. That’s a tough task because the Texas electorate has more Republicans than Democrats, according to numerous analyses and election results. If Democrats want to restore abortion rights, they’ll have to do so over time, instead of in one electoral cycle.
The political dynamic on abortion in Texas and Kansas “is like night and day,” University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus said. “It’s hard to see the abortion issue directly mapping onto the Texas political landscape.”
But he said Democrats have opportunities to make a major statement about the direction of the Lone Star State, where Republicans control both chambers of the Legislature and every executive office.
“If there is a target on the abortion issue personified in a candidate, it’s Greg Abbott,” Rottinghaus said. “He was front and center for all of those battles and he definitely is going to get whatever rewards or benefits come from that.”
Abbott is running for a third term against former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke.
Abortion rights activists also see opportunity in the attorney general’s race, with a recent poll by The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler showing Democrat Rochelle Garza in a dead heat with incumbent Ken Paxton.
“They certainly can blame the fact that we lost abortion rights on the existing leadership,” said former Texas Sen. Wendy Davis, who in 2014 challenged Abbott for governor after a filibuster that temporary stalled a restrictive abortion bill.
Abortion opponents say Republicans will win on the strength of their anti-abortion policies.
“I don’t think you’re gonna see anything similar to what we saw in Kansas,” said John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life, an anti-abortion group. “But you are going to see in the governor’s race a real stark difference between pro-abortion voters and pro-life voters. And I think we’re going to show Texas is still strongly pro-life.”
Gauging enthusiasm
In anticipation of the Roe vs. Wade decision, Texas lawmakers passed a trigger mechanism that went into effect last month. The law bans all abortions, with exceptions for medical emergencies but not for rape or incest.
The outcry against the high court’s decision and state bans led to mobilization efforts across the country, with an Aug. 2 Kansas referendum the first major test.
According to a New York Times analysis, Kansas women made up 50% of new voter registrants after a draft of the Supreme Court decision was leaked in May, and nearly two-thirds in the weeks after the official ruling. The Times reported that of those who cast a ballot in the August primaries for governor, 38% were Democrats, up from 33% four years ago.
Kansas is one of 10 states that, according to the analysis, has seen broad increases in women registering to vote.
Texas is not on that list.
Still, activists and veteran Democrats say the Roe vs. Wade decision has generated enthusiasm that will be reflected in the existing electorate.
“We are seeing a lot of energy in Texas, in both our support base and the everyday persons,” said Drucilla Tigner, a deputy director at Planned Parenthood Votes. “We’re determined to elect pro-choice candidates up and down the ballot.”
Davis also said she’s seen “a real movement with moderates and independent women.”
The News and UT-Tyler poll revealed that relatively few voters, 13% of the 1,384 Texans surveyed Aug. 1-7, said abortion should be illegal in all instances, and 25% said the procedure should be legal in all cases. Respondents were split when asked about most cases, with 31% who said it should be illegal and 30% who said legal.
More respondents said they disapproved of the Supreme Court’s decision than approved, but those who said they approved of the ruling were slightly more likely to say they will vote in the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
The lack of new voters in an electorate that leans Republican gives GOP candidates confidence that the abortion issue won’t rally Texans to vote against them. And some Republicans say the notion that there’s high-octane energy in the state’s abortion rights movement is hype.
“There’s more sound than action in what we’re seeing from the pro-abortion people,” said Denton County Commissioner and former Denton County GOP chairwoman Dianne Edmondson. “I really don’t think that they’re going to have the numbers put together or the motivation to have any effect on the election.”
All eyes on race for governor
Most Texas Democrats concede that Republicans have firm control of the Legislature and the state’s congressional districts, with last year’s redistricting process resulting in few swing districts.
So the beginning of any restoration process starts with statewide contests, most notably the race for governor.
O’Rourke has made reproductive rights a focal point of his campaign against Abbott. His first two television commercials featured Texans decrying the loss of abortion rights.
The Democrat has held several rallies in support of abortion rights, including one the day the state’s trigger ban went into effect that attracted several thousand people in Houston.
“Texas today is the epicenter for a maternal mortality crisis that plagues this country, and it has been made worse by Greg Abbott’s attack on women,” O’Rourke told a group of Black supporters during a virtual event this week. “Not only do I want to overturn this total abortion ban and ensure that every Texas woman makes her own decisions about her own body, her own future and her own health care, but I want to invest in connecting Black women with the kind of care that will ensure that they can survive their pregnancies, that they do not have to fear interactions with the medical community or with doctors.”
Abbott is also talking about the issue, blasting O’Rourke as being in favor of abortions in any circumstance.
“He not only believes in abortion to the very last minute before a fully developed child is given birth, but he was even against a law that would require a doctor to provide a medical care to a baby who soon survives abortion,” Abbott said during a recording of "Lone Star Politics," the Sunday political show produced by The Dallas Morning News and KXAS-TV (NBC 5).
In response to Abbott’s charge, O’Rourke’s campaign said: “Beto has long supported the standard set by Roe v. Wade, which for half a century prohibited states from outlawing abortion in cases where the pregnancy threatened the life of the pregnant woman.
“That standard allowed for women and their doctors to make this personal and often painful decision later in the pregnancy if the abortion was necessary to save the woman’s life.”
O’Rourke has criticized Abbott for not supporting exceptions to the ban for rape and incest. Abbott says Texas is leading the way with alternatives for abortion, including emergency contraception.
Long fight ahead
While Texas Democrats would need an electoral sea change, Davis, the former state senator, said she hopes Garza would ignore or not enforce the state’s anti-abortion policies if elected. District attorneys in Dallas and other counties have said they don’t plan to pursue charges against anyone under the abortion ban.
“We need Rochelle Garza to sanction that” statewide, Davis said.
Emily’s List, a national group that backs women candidates who support abortion rights, is also backing Garza. The former civil rights lawyer has fought for the reproductive rights of migrant teens in detention. Paxton, who is also closely associated with the debate over abortion rights, is suing the Biden administration over federal rules requiring hospitals to provide abortions if the procedure is necessary to save a mother’s life.
“The Texas AG’s race is such a clear example of the contrast,” said Christina Reynolds, a spokesperson for Emily’s List. “You have a candidate in Rochelle Garza who has said that keeping Texans safe means ensuring that everyone has access to essential medical and health care procedures, which includes abortion. And then you have a candidate who literally is suing to block lifesaving abortion care when necessary for the health of the mother.”
The reason for the close race could be a result of Paxton’s legal problems, including a 2015 indictment on securities fraud charges and an FBI bribery investigation. Paxton has denied wrongdoing.
Abortion rights advocates remain hopeful Garza will gain momentum. But her latest campaign finance reports show $450,000 in her bank account, compared to Paxton’s $3.5 million. Analysts say Garza, unknown to most Texans, needs at least $10 million to compete.
Seago, the Texas Right to Life president, said Paxton and other statewide Republicans won’t suffer a backlash because of the Supreme Court decision.
“Republicans have been talking about this issue nonstop for the last decade. It was the Democrats that avoided this topic,” he said. “Protecting life is always one of the top three (issues) and so this has always been a motivation for Texas voters.”
All sides agree that November is just a continuation of what could be a decadeslong struggle.
“There’s no way that you can reform Texas government in one quick election cycle,” Rottinghaus said. “It’s going to be a very long battle.”
Davis agreed.
“Right now we have to get in the position where things don’t get worse,” she said.
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