WASHINGTON — Advocates mounted a massive push to protect abortion rights at the state level in Tuesday’s election, but several notable defeats, and a new Trump presidency, leave abortion rights advocates staring down their biggest setbacks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
After the broadest push for abortion rights since that 2022 Supreme Court decision, the mixed results mean the country remains a patchwork of bans, restrictions, and safe havens for the procedure. Florida rejected a ballot initiative that would have reversed a six-week abortion ban and extended access up to a fetus’ viability, or roughly 24 weeks. South Dakota also turned down a ballot that would have protected abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy.
Nebraska had two competing measures on the ballot: One to protect abortion access up to fetal viability, and another to enshrine the state’s current 12-week ban in the state constitution. The 12-week ban won out.
Overall, 10 states voted this year to codify abortion access in their constitutions, restoring Roe-era protections, and in some cases, reversing current bans. Abortion rights advocates counted wins in other states: Missouri, significantly, rejected its current abortion ban. Arizonans and Montanans voted to enshrine abortion rights up to fetal viability. Voters in the Democratic strongholds of Colorado, Maryland and New York approved broader protections.
However, this year’s ballot results are a departure from broad prior victories for abortion rights advocates in the 2022 and 2023 elections, and, with GOP control in Washington, could be the start of a new era in the post-Roe fight for abortion access. In the first election after Roe fell, five states voted for abortion rights or rejected certain restrictions. Last year, Ohio also passed protections.
“Opposition [to abortion rights] is getting more aggressive, and extremely well-funded,” said Noreen Farrell, executive director of Equal Rights Advocates. Florida’s difficult 60% threshold for passage is also a tactic advocates anticipate other state legislatures deploying to ward off future ballot measures.
But, Farrell added, “The momentum of seven more states is significant, and we hope it has some deterrent effect on newly federal electeds thinking about a national abortion ban.” At least one newly elected senator, Ohio Republican Bernie Moreno, has called for a national ban.
While Trump and other Republicans have backed away from national abortion restrictions this election cycle, the new abortion restrictions could embolden those coming into office — particularly new lawmakers who defeated Democrats who had made abortion rights central to their campaigns.
Results on the Florida measure is a “HUGE victory” for anti-abortion advocates, Trump’s former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany wrote on the social platform X.
Most Americans say abortion should be legal, particularly in the first trimester, and the majority do not approve of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe. Those figures have led Republican candidates in particular to back away from earlier promises to further restrict abortion access and even impose national restrictions.
Yet support for abortion rights erodes as Americans are asked about second- and third-trimester access to the procedure. Six of the states’ ballots asked voters to protect abortion access up to fetal viability, typically around 24 weeks of pregnancy.
In at least three states, Arizona, Florida, and Montana, the ballot drives paralleled pivotal races for control of the U.S. Senate.
Sen. Rick Scott of Florida fended off long-shot Democratic challenger Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, giving Republicans an important win in their bid to take back the Senate. Scott is among the Republican senators vying to replace Mitch McConnell as the Republican leader. Reproduction rights were a key part of Mucarsel-Powell’s campaign, and Florida was one of a few states that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) hoped would flip to keep the Senate in Democrats’ hands.
Democratic incumbent Jon Tester lost his Senate seat to Republican Tim Sheehy after also running heavily on abortion rights. Sheehy has said he is staunchly anti-abortion and likened the procedure to murder.
The failed efforts in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota leave abortion rights advocates facing fights with state legislators and governors. While voters can mount new ballot initiatives in future election cycles, legislators in several of these states are trying to make it more difficult to successfully place a measure before voters, or for it to win.
Trump’s reelection “raises new and serious concerns” about the safety of reproductive health care, Daniel Grossman, an OB-GYN and director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, said in a statement. The election results are a “stark setback for science-based medical care in a nation where many already live in reproductive health deserts.”
The broader opportunity to put reproductive rights policies directly to voters in other states is also narrowing: There are just three remaining states with mechanisms in their constitution to let voters mount ballot drives that can override the legislature and governor. Two of those states, Arkansas and Oklahoma, have broad abortion bans. A judge recently threw out the ban in the third state, North Dakota. Many of the states with total abortion bans do not have a pathway for voter-proposed amendments.