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Hi, y’all. Welcome back to The Opposition. Four years ago today, the Supreme Court announced it was revoking the constitutional right to an abortion, voting to overturn Roe v. Wade. The decision wasn’t necessarily a surprise, as a few weeks earlier Politico had obtained and reported on a draft of the majority opinion. But it still rocked our nation’s politics.
In today’s edition, I wanted to take a look at how things have changed around the abortion debate in the years since Roe was overturned.
Getting a real, on-the-ground understanding of the Democratic party’s approach to the midterms is the core mission of this newsletter. I can do that only with the support of our subscribers. So if you like no-BS journalism about the opposition against Trumpism, please consider a Bulwark+ membership.
Now, let’s get into it.
—Lauren
Abortion Is Back as an Issue for Dems—Even in Red States
Having had doubts about the salience of the issue after the 2024 elections, Democrats are no longer shying away from it.
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AFTER THE 2024 ELECTION, Democratic leadership quickly concluded that a major factor for their losses had been the party’s significant drift left on social and cultural issues. And among the main policies where a recalibration seemed in order, abortion appeared top of mind.
In my conversations with party strategists during those months, many said that while support for abortion rights was foundational, Democrats needed to recreate the 2006 midterm model when pro-life (and pro-gun) candidates were recruited to run in red districts. They noted that it was on the backs of anti-abortion lawmakers like Heath Shuler of North Carolina, Brad Ellsworth of Indiana, and Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania that Democrats regained majorities in both chambers of Congress.
But over the past few months, this Bush-era thinking has begun to seriously soften.
There is a growing sentiment among that same consulting class that abortion access can actually serve as a winning issue for Democrats running in red parts of the country. They increasingly view the traditional pro-life versus pro-choice faultline as a relic. In its place, they see a series of state-specific battles in which candidates focus on the state- and local-level restrictions directly affecting their constituents rather than a larger narrative about the legacy of Roe v. Wade.
“There is real value and imperative to be a different kind of Democrat. But the idea that being a pro-life Democrat is sort of a cookie-cutter cheat code—we’re not in that era anymore,” said Zac McCrary, an Alabama-based Democratic pollster.
McCrary, like other party operatives I spoke with, told me that the end of Roe, which came four years ago today, has fundamentally changed how people perceive the debate around abortion. No longer a right to be protected, abortion access has become, for many voters, a pain that is endured. In states with restrictive policies in place, people have now lived for years being denied medical care, sometimes in life-threatening situations. Such restrictions have allowed Democratic candidates to run against specific policies and outcomes, rather than having to mount a broad defense of an abstract right or the now-overturned Supreme Court decision.
“Pro-life was a comfortable theoretical stance for a lot of voters and politicians [before Roe v. Wade was overturned]. But that abstraction has been replaced by the messy reality of government-enforced mandates,” said McCrary. “The Republican party has pivoted from defending a moral principle to enforcing a restriction that compromises individual freedom. That’s an overreach that voters, even in red states, have found deeply uncomfortable.”
Anecdotal voter data bear this out. As The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell wrote this week, participants in focus groups she’s recently conducted often bring up abortion as an issue—especially in states with restrictive bans. In these focus groups, it has been the Republican voters who have talked about what they see as the cruelty of forcing women to continue carrying a nonviable pregnancy, as well as the sheer terror of the possibility of being denied care that could save their life.
“I think we’re returning to it being an important issue. It may not be the number one issue, but it’s still part of the conversation,” said Josh Marcus-Blank, a Democratic consultant. “[Democrats] are a little bit more balanced in their perspective on it than they may have been right after 2024 when people were pointing fingers at everyone on every issue as the reason why we lost.”
Recent election results also support the idea that downplaying or running away from the issue of abortion isn’t necessary for Democrats to thrive. Abigail Spanberger went after her GOP opponent’s “extreme” stance on abortion in her successful bid for Virginia governor last year, and Virginia Democrats expanded their majority in the state House by thirteen seats by running pro-choice candidates who put money into ads focused on abortion rights. Earlier this year, Chris Taylor won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court by 20 points after running multiple campaign ads focused on abortion rights that portrayed the conservative candidate as too extreme on the issue. Some of the party’s top-flight Senate candidates in traditionally Republican states are also not shying away from talking about abortion rights. Former