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In the two years since the high court overturned Roe, abortion has become an issue that appears to carry electoral promise for Democrats. Before Tuesday, abortion rights advocates had scored victories in all seven states holding related ballot measures. Public support surged, including in red states.
But the anger and activism didn’t translate into enough votes for Harris, who made defending abortion rights a cornerstone of her campaign.
Tuesday’s abortion-related ballot measures also won’t necessarily boost Democratic turnout in key battleground states like Arizona and Nevada. By contrast, CNN exit polls showed that nearly half of those who believed abortion should be legal in most cases voted for Trump — who appointed three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roy, and his party spent decades working on his downfall. Harris’ support among women has also declined. Compared to Hillary Clinton, who won by 13 points among female voters in 2016, and Joe Biden, who won by 15 points in 2020, Harris won among female voters by just 10 points. .
Trump has recently walked back his anti-abortion stance – he recently claimed he would be “good for women and their reproductive rights” – as public support for the abortion procedure grows and some voters appear to agree. “A majority of Trump voters think he will no longer restrict abortion,” said pollster Tresa Undem, who has been surveying voters on abortion. Windham said part of the problem is that Republicans haven’t heard about the impact of the ban, which reportedly killed at least four people.
Whatever the reason, the abortion bans now dotting the U.S. map don’t seem to be costing Republicans in the polls — a fact that the right may see as an invitation to push for a wave of new restrictions at the national level.
“Outsource to someone who cares more”
Now, abortion access in the United States depends largely on who the Trump administration hires.
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“Historically, even in his first administration, reproductive issues were not what got him out of bed in the morning,” Ziegler said of Trump. “So a lot of policy was outsourced to people who cared more about it than he did.”
Plan 2025 was developed primarily by the influential think tank The Heritage Foundation, but has the support of more than 100 conservative groups and includes a range of anti-abortion policies. It recommends revoking FDA approval of abortion pills, increasing CDC “surveillance” of abortion and pregnancy loss to prevent police from violating the ban, and stripping federal funding of family planning providers who mention the word “abortion.” The last proposal also could severely limit low-income people’s access to family planning services, including contraception and testing for sexually transmitted infections.
Project 2025 also proposes using the Comstock Act, an 1873 anti-pornography law that lay dormant during the Roe administration, to ban the mail-in abortion pill, which accounts for about two-thirds of U.S. abortions . Other anti-abortion activists say the Comstock bill could go further and ban the mailing of all abortion-related materials, including equipment used in abortion clinics. This interpretation of the Comstock Act could easily be adopted by the Trump Justice Department, resulting in a de facto nationwide ban.
Deirdrech Fehling, chief policy and advocacy officer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the organization is committed to reviving the Comstock Act. “We’re going to fight with every tool we have,” she said, “including lawsuits, including organizing, including people on the streets.”
