As the 2024 election season ramps up, Republicans continue to struggle to find a winning national strategy on the flashpoint issue of abortion – where restricting the procedure has animated the conservative movement for half a century but tormented the party since the fall of Roe.
The supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade delivered Republicans one of their most significant policy victories in a generation. But in the year and a half since the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the ruling has also become one of their biggest political vulnerabilities.
Over the last 18 months, voters have favored abortion rights in seven consecutive ballot measures, including in conservative states. Republicans underperformed in the 2022 midterm elections while Democrats scored off-year election wins in Wisconsin, Kentucky and Virginia – results that again emphasized the enduring power of abortion rights.
Now the presidential election year brings a further huge test.
“With abortion, there’s really a kind of catch-22 for Republicans,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis and a leading expert on the history of abortion in the US. “On the one hand, you have a lot of base Republican voters who really care about opposing abortion and on the other you have a huge group of something like 70% of Americans who don’t like abortion bans.”
The US supreme court meanwhile set the stage for another major showdown over abortion rights, this time just months before the 2024 presidential election. The court has agreed to decide a case that could determine the accessibility of a widely used abortion pill, including in states where the procedure remains legal.
But whether abortion will continue to fuel Democratic victories in a presidential election year is also unclear.
Despite delivering a long list of anti-abortion victories, voters tend to view the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, a thrice-married former Democrat from New York, as less socially conservative than his rivals, says Gunner Ramer, political director for the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Pac.
“Donald Trump likes to stoke culture wars and own the libs but on social issues he’s seen as more moderate,” Ramer said, adding: “If Trump is the nominee, Democrats are in a much trickier position on abortion.”
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For decades, the Republican party championed the mission of the anti-abortion movement – to overturn Roe – without clearly articulating what would follow. Now they are contending with the real-world consequences: pregnancy resulting from rape and incest, life-threatening complications, fatal fetal conditions and miscarriages that require the procedure.
Sixteen states now ban abortion at conception or after six weeks, before many women know they’re pregnant. Among them is Texas, where Kate Cox, a pregnant woman whose fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition, was forced to leave the state this month to receive an abortion after Ken Paxton, the state’s Republican attorney general, threatened legal action – “including first-degree felony prosecutions” – against doctors or anyone else who assisted in performing the procedure. The Texas supreme court ultimately ruled against Cox’s request to have an emergency abortion in the state.
Seizing on the turn of events, top officials on Joe Biden’s re-election campaign assailed the “unspeakable reality” now facing women in states with limited or no access to abortion.
They drew a direct line to Donald Trump, the former president and likely Republican presidential nominee, blaming his appointment of three supreme court justices who cast decisive votes to overturn Roe.
“Kate had to leave her home state to seek the healthcare she urgently needs,” said Julie Chávez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager. “This is happening right here in the United States of America and it’s happening because of Donald Trump.”
In the increasingly noncompetitive race for the Republican presidential nomination, disagreements among the White House hopefuls over how to approach or even talk about abortion reflect a wide lack of unity within the GOP on the issue.
Trump, in conspicuous fashion, is trying to have it both ways. He has blamed conservative activists’ uncompromising positions on “the abortion issue” for costing Republicans at the ballot box while touting his anti-abortion legacy to the party’s socially conservative base.
In Iowa, which launches the Republican presidential primary contest next month, Trump is running ads declaring himself “the most pro-life president ever”. But on the major litmus test for anti-abortion activists – support for a national ban – he has been noncommittal.
At a CNN town hall this month, Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is challenging Trump for the nomination, accused the former president of “flip-flopping on the pro-life issue”. Trump has said DeSantis made a “terrible mistake” when the governor signed into law earlier this year a six-week abortion ban. Pressed to commit to a national standard, DeSantis has said he would support a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Nikky Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and the only woman in the race, has sought a different tack, calling for “consensus” and “compassion”. Haley, who as governor of South Carolina in 2016 signed a 20-week ban, has suggested that as president she would enact any abortion restrictions that reached her desk, but said such measures were unlikely in the narrowly divided and deeply polarized Congress.
Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who is running for president, is incredulous that Republicans are calling for federal action on abortion after waging a 50-year legal battle to return the issue to the states.
“I trust the people of this country, state by state, to make the call for themselves,” he said during a recent debate.
It’s a view shared by the entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy, who opposes a federal ban but says he supports state laws outlawing abortion after six weeks.
Among the Republican presidential candidates, the two most avowed abortion opponents Mike Pence, the former vice-president, and Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator, have already exited the race.
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Furthering the divide, leading anti-abortion groups are pressuring Republican candidates to back a national ban starting at least at 15 weeks of pregnancy if not earlier, while some party strategists are advising them to clearly state their opposition to any such federal limit.
In a post-election memo Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the powerful anti-abortion group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America, said the losses were “major disappointments for the pro-life movement” and “warning signs for the GOP”.
“It is long past due for the GOP to define where it stands on the issue nationally,” she wrote. “Having a clear position and contrasting it isn’t enough – campaigns and the party must put real advertising dollars behind it, going toe-to-toe with the Democrats.”
Her group has urged candidates to support a federal ban on abortions after 15 weeks of gestation at a minimum or risk losing its endorsement.
Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, has criticized Republicans for not confronting the issue more aggressively. “You can’t hide in a corner and think abortion’s not going to be an issue,” she said on NBC News in November, adding: “We can’t just say it’s a state’s issue and be done.”
Others have urged candidates to emphasize its support for exceptions, while expressing more compassion and empathy when discussing what can be a deeply personal – and in some cases medically advisable – decision. Still, some say its a matter of semantics, suggesting Republicans avoid terms like “pro-life” and “ban”.
According to Politico, a group of prominent Republican pollsters suggested candidates change the subject, presenting polling to members of Congress that showed they could sharpen their appeal with women and independent voters by focusing on protecting contraception rather than banning abortion.
“Abortion is, as the courts decided, an issue for states to decide, not the federal government,” states the campaign website for Kari Lake, who is expected to be the Republican Senate nominee in the race for Kyrsten Sinema’s seat. It’s a retreat from her position as a candidate for governor in 2022, when the far-right Republican cast herself as an outspoken ally of the anti-abortion movement and embraced Arizona’s territorial-era law that would ban nearly all abortions in the state.
Lake is one of several Republican candidates running in battleground Senate races who have adjusted their stance – and their rhetoric – on the issue.
Meanwhile in the House, now led by Mike Johnson, the Louisiana congressman, one of the chamber’s staunchest anti-abortion crusaders, vulnerable Republicans have sought to distance themselves from absolutists in the party.
“The supreme court needs to stand down,” said Mike Lawler, a New York Republican who represents a district Biden won in 2020, in response to the high court’s decision to take up the abortion pill case. In a statement, he emphasized his opposition to a national ban.
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As Republicans struggle, Democrats say the problem is taking positions that are deeply unpopular with the American public.
When Democrats won full control of the Virginia state legislature in November, the Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, declared support for what he called a “reasonable” 15-week abortion ban.
That same night Andy Beshear, the Democratic Kentucky governor, won re-election after his campaign ran a powerful ad featuring a woman who was raped by her stepfather as a child. In the video, she criticized Daniel Cameron, Beshear’s Republican opponent, for supporting Kentucky’s near-total abortion ban, which does not include exceptions in cases involving rape or incest.
And in beet-red Ohio, 56.6% of voters chose to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.
“In every election since the overturning of Roe, voters have sent a resounding message: they want more freedom, not less – and come 2024, Republicans will once again face the repercussions of their unrelenting crusade to strip away our rights,” Sarafina Chitika, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement.
At the state-level, abortion-related ballot initiatives could help Democrats mobilize Republican women and independent voters who have helped make up their winning coalition in the years since Trump was elected.
Building on the success of abortion-related ballot initiatives, abortion rights advocates are working to put the issue before voters in battleground states, including Arizona and Florida. An effort is also underway in Montana, where Democrats hope a constitutional amendment enshrining abortion protections could boost turnout and help one of the party’s most vulnerable incumbent senators, Jon Tester, win re-election.
As long as abortion is severely restricted in large swaths of the country where Republicans hold power, candidates at the national level will likely struggle to convince voters that they have moderated on the issue, even if they now champion later-stage “consensus” limits and exceptions, Ziegler said.
“If the pro-life movement has a different agenda that they continue to pursue in a large swath of the country, national Republicans either have to say, ‘that’s not what we’re doing. We’re not for that’; or they’re going to be associated with that,” she said.
Even so, the road ahead for Democrats is not straightforward.
A string of recent surveys found a mixed picture: Biden is trailing Trump nationally and in several swing states. In a Wall Street Journal poll, voters said Trump was better equipped to handle most major policy issues with the exception of abortion, which Biden led by a double-digit margin.
The Biden campaign has vowed to put abortion front and center this election cycle. They have argued that Trump – or any of his Republican rivals – would seek to ban abortion as president, possibly through policy changes that would not require congressional approval as some conservatives have proposed.
There are risks to the strategy, especially if Trump is the nominee, says Ramer, from the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Pac.
Ramer says there was a key dynamic in play in 2022. While Democrats harnessed voter fury over the loss of constitutional abortion rights, he said they were helped by Republicans, who nominated candidates with “extreme” absolutist positions on the issue, such as Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Tudor Dixon in Michigan.
That may not continue in 2024.
“Abortion is a very nuanced issue for voters,” he said. “And the economy, at the end of the day, is more top of mind for Republicans and swing-state voters.”
