And while Republicans and anti-abortion forces were increasingly working in concert to turn the states to their advantage, abortion rights supporters accused Democrats of all but giving up on local elections.
“On the far right, they realized that the most lasting impact of 2010 would be in the states,” said Daniel Squadron, a former New York state senator and the executive director of the States Project, which was founded by Democrats in 2017 to try to win back control of legislatures. “On our side, state power was a footnote. The lesson we took was ‘Focus more on midterms’; the lesson they took was ‘Wield power in states.’ And today, both sides are reaping what we sowed.”
Abortion rights groups lacked the infrastructure their opponents had in the states. NARAL had cut its number of state affiliates nearly in half between 1991 and 2011. And with Democrats in the glow of winning Congress in 2006 and electing the nation’s first Black president two years later, abortion rights groups were having trouble convincing big donors and grass-roots supporters alike that Roe was in trouble.
Donors liked to support congressional and presidential elections, and tended to go away when they perceived that the threat had disappeared. “When you were trying to convince them they had to put money into Kansas or Nebraska, they were like, ‘That’s futile,’” said Nancy Keenan, the president of NARAL at the time.
Opponents of abortion rights had always proved easier to mobilize than supporters. In polls and focus groups, NARAL asked women who were sympathetic to its cause what it would take to get them to be more active in protecting Roe v. Wade. “Consistently,” Ms. Keenan said, “We received answers saying, ‘If they overturn it.’”
Some younger activists were pushing abortion rights groups to stop apologizing for or seeking compromise on abortion. To the new generation, abortion was health care, and bodily autonomy was not something to be compromised. The Democratic Party platform in 2012 left in “safe” and “legal” but took out “rare.”
“When you were trying to convince them they had to put money into Kansas or Nebraska, they were like, ‘That’s futile.’”
Anti-abortion groups exploited this, portraying the Democrats’ position on abortion as anytime, anywhere, under any circumstance, and paid for with government funds. By contrast, said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a 20-week ban looked reasonable, in keeping with what polls showed Americans wanted.
“Two thousand ten was the year that the light came on about the reality of abortion law in the nation,” she said. “It was the year that the polarization between the extreme abortion absolutism and the Republican Party position was a winning contrast. It’s the first year that sitting officeholders could see that this issue really helps us. And it just got stronger every election cycle because we would not relent with that contrast.”
Republicans running in right-leaning districts backed increasingly strict laws to appeal to reliable anti-abortion voters and avoid primary challenges. By 2016, one analysis found not a single Republican state legislator willing to identify as “pro-choice.”
In the nearly 50 years between the Roe decision and its reversal on Friday, states enacted 1,380 restrictions on abortion. Almost half — 46 percent — were enacted since 2011.
Professor Devins, of William and Mary, revisited the question of abortion politics in 2016, this time in a paper for The Vanderbilt Law Review. He stuck by his 2009 assessment, but the middle ground he had written of approvingly then had disappeared. “Today, red state political actors are not interested in compromise,” Professor Devins wrote in 2016. With the rightward shift in the Republican Party, abortion rights had become about…
Read More: How Did Roe End? In a Long Red Wave, Then All of a Sudden.