If Roe were to be definitively cast aside next month, as had been widely predicted, women would be confronted with a maze of abortion rules depending on their home state. Republican-dominated legislatures in 13 states have pre-emptively passed complete bans on abortion, intended to come into effect after the Supreme Court strikes down Roe. Other states, like Georgia and Ohio, have prepared somewhat less draconian restrictions, limiting abortions to pregnancies shorter than six weeks (federal courts have until now blocked these from going into effect). Women in Democrat-run states, meanwhile, would experience little change.
Democrats plainly hope that the shock of such a decision would limit their expected mid-term losses. Sean Maloney, who leads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has called abortion “the central choice in the 2022 election”.
It is true that overturning Roe seems unpopular. Polling from Gallup shows that only 32% of Americans favoured striking down the precedent, compared with 58% who would have kept it. In other ways, though, public opinion is ambivalent. Majorities also attest support for restrictions on the procedure, such as waiting periods and requiring ultrasounds to be shown to a woman considering an abortion. Over the past 50 years, deep divisions in public sentiment have shown little sign of shrinking.
