When Voters Vote, They Vote for Abortion

Instead of adjusting their politics accordingly, the GOP just makes it harder for voters to vote.

Photo by Aiden Frazier on Unsplash

Nearly a year after the Supreme Court stripped the right to abortion from American woman, a post-Roe political landscape has come into clearer form, and this much is obvious: where voters are allowed to have a say, they give a resounding “yes” to abortion rights. In Wisconsin, a tight and closely-watched Supreme Court election was widely understood to be a referendum on abortion rights, and the pro-choice judge won by a stunning 11 points. In Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer and a mass of Democrats running for state legislature enjoyed historic wins, largely because of abortion rights; this week, Whitmer made good on a campaign promise and repealed the state’s archaic 1931 abortion ban. And in the months since the Dobbs decision, when voters have had a direct up-or-down yes-or-no on abortion rights, abortion rights have won.

As Rebecca Traister writes in a must-read New York magazine piece: Abortion wins elections.

But here’s the problem: Republicans don’t care.

After decades of saying that the question of abortion’s legality should be left to voters and the democratic process, the GOP is grabbing the issue away from their constituents. In Republican-led states, abortion bans are only expanding, even in direct opposition to popular opinion. Idaho just became the first state in the nation to criminalize helping a minor obtain an abortion out of state. Florida governor Ron DeSantis is ready to sign a six-week abortion ban. The Tennessee legislature just narrowly passed a bill that allows a tiny exception to the state’s harsh abortion ban, and permits doctors to perform abortions to save a pregnant woman’s life — but the passage was narrow because so many Tennessee Republicans didn’t want to allow for a clearer life exception.

This is happening at the same time as the Republican Party is working overtime to make America a less democratic place, one where more liberal voters simply have less of a say that more conservative ones, and where representative democracy is giving way to one-party dominance.