Leubsdorf: The political impact of the abortion issue is clear

The politics didn’t always break this way.

Until last year’s high court ruling, the prevailing consensus was that Republican efforts to restrict or revoke the right granted by the high court in 1973 helped their party politically by motivating the turnout of anti-abortion religious conservatives.

But that was then. This is now.

Soon after the court’s June 2022 ruling threw the volatile issue back to the states, the revised partisan balance came into focus.

Democrats, facing an uphill fight in last November’s midterm elections, made the issue their top national priority.

The wisdom of their political calculation was confirmed. Nearly as many voters cited abortion as the top issue as did inflation, and they voted 3-to-1 for Democratic candidates.

In the unfolding GOP race for the 2024 presidential nomination, only slight differences have emerged in the anti-abortion positions of most candidates and prospective candidates.

The only potential GOP candidate who supports abortion rights is New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who signed legislation in 2021 allowing the procedure up to 24 weeks of pregnancy. “Any conversation about banning abortion or limiting it nationwide is an electoral disaster for the Republicans,” he said last year.

But those words seem to have fallen on deaf ears, because of continuing strong opposition to legalized abortion in the Republican base.

Meanwhile, a new political battlefield arose after a federal judge in Texas overturned the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year approval of the abortion drug mifepristone. Top Democrats immediately denounced the ruling, while most Republicans avoided comment.

With another federal judge in Washington state simultaneously upholding the FDA’s authority and a federal appeals court in New Orleans issuing a mixed ruling, the Supreme Court is poised to straighten out the legalities.

Any decision that upholds the judge’s ruling, either wholly or partially, will spur the Democrats’ drive to make abortion a central 2024 issue. But it won’t change the basic politics of the issue.

The political danger for the GOP is underscored by the fact that recent polls show a minority of all voters support the Texas judge’s ruling on the abortion drug, just as only a minority backed the Supreme Court ruling denying a woman’s right to an abortion.

And in the latest sign of public attitudes on the issue, voters in the crucial presidential swing state of Wisconsin decisively elected a woman to the state Supreme Court who made protection of abortion rights the centerpiece of her campaign.

“This is an issue that Republicans have been largely on the wrong side of,” Mace told CNN after the Texas ruling. “Most Americans aren’t with us.”