Senate Democrats try to highlight GOP opposition to abortion rights
But the backlash has also helped Democrats in national elections. A record number of Americans say they support at least some access to abortion, according to recent polls. Reaction to the Dobbs decision helped mitigate an expected “red wave” in last year’s midterm elections.
Yet House Republicans continue to appeal to their conservative base, which has made opposition to abortion rights a litmus test, by trying to make access to abortion even more difficult. In the second policy bill they brought to the floor after taking control of the House in January, Republicans pushed through legislation that would criminalize doctors who perform abortions.
New York Republican Representative Elise Stefanik said in a speech this week that protecting life is not an extreme position. Speaking for an anti-abortion group, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Ms. Stefanik tried to frame Democrats and progressives as extremists.
“Pro-life advocates were beaten in the street by radicals, illegally attacked by President Biden’s FBI, and arrested at home with their children for protesting peacefully and standing for their lives,” she said.
However, it is not clear that the message will resonate with voters. Kansas Democrat Representative Sharice Davids won re-election last year in a district at the center of fallout from the Dobbs decision, a red state where residents voted overwhelmingly to reject an initiative that would have ended made to abortion rights in the state.
“It had a big impact on my re-election efforts,” Ms Davids said in an interview this week, referring to the Supreme Court decision a year ago. “It’s an interesting tactic for people with more extreme views on things like this to keep pushing — even when voters have shown up at the polls to say this isn’t what we want you, Congress, to do.”
On Tuesday, the Senate confirmed Julie Rikelman, an abortion lawyer, as a federal appeals judge. Ms. Rikelman represented the Mississippi abortion clinic in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.