Republicans Don’t Want To Talk About Abortion. In These States, They May Have To.

Democrats are prioritizing other issues over abortion in the runup to the fall midterm elections, while Republicans are taking pains to avoid the topic altogether. But another wave of state ballot initiatives to protect a right to abortion could force candidates on both sides to articulate their positions.

Progressive advocacy groups and Democratic strategists are confident that this year’s four abortion rights ballot measures — especially those in Virginia and Nevada — will put vulnerable GOP candidates in the hot seat with voters, 60 percent of whom believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases. They also expect the initiatives to boost turnout on the left, especially among younger voters, who are more likely to support abortion access, and help candidates prevail in important state and federal races.

Eli Cousin, a spokesperson for the Democrats’ electoral arm focusing on House races in the mid-Atlantic, is confident that having the measure on the Virginia ballot this fall will fuel the party’s efforts to flip a handful of districts, including those currently held by Republican Reps. Jen Kiggans, Rob Wittman, and John McGuire.

“Every vote matters, and having the referendum could tip the scales,” he said, adding that the DCCC will remind voters that those GOP incumbents have pushed “a dangerous anti-choice agenda” while serving in Congress, citing their votes to restrict abortion access for military service members and veterans and to ban abortion nationwide beginning at conception.

Idahoans may also have the opportunity this November to vote on a ballot initiative that would override the state’s near-total ban on the procedure. And Missouri’s referendum is this year’s sole anti-abortion measure, asking voters to overturn the abortion-rights ballot measure they approved in 2024.

It remains to be seen, however, whether and how much either party will benefit from the measures. The record of state referendums on abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 has been decidedly mixed.

Across several states in 2022 and 2023, Republican candidates won while sharing the ballot with abortion-rights ballot measures that passed overwhelmingly. The trend continued into 2024, prompting advocates to warn that such ballot measures can backfire by making swing voters feel more comfortable supporting GOP candidates.

“They think: ‘Okay, I’ve protected abortion access, and now I can vote for these candidates based on other issues,’” said Mini Timmaraju, the president of Reproductive Freedom For All, pointing to the high number of Arizona voters who supported both the abortion rights ballot measure and Trump in the last election.

Yet Timmaraju, whose group plans to be active in the upcoming ballot initiative fights in Virginia, Nevada, and Missouri, still sees the measures as a net positive — particularly because they all but guarantee Republicans face questions about where they stand on the issue.

In recent election cycles, that has proven fatal for some Republicans, many of whom faltered after trying to backpedal on their record of opposing abortion.

Three GOP Senate hopefuls lost, for example, after airing ads in which they attempted to distance themselves from their party’s anti-abortion reputation: Larry Hogan in Maryland, Sam Brown in Nevada and Mike Rogers in Michigan in 2024. Hogan and Brown shared the ballot with a pro-abortion rights referendum, while Rogers ran shortly after Michigan approved one.

“Pundits say abortion isn’t a top issue, but we’ve found it can be a number-one disqualifier,” she said, in states with and without referendums.

She cited plans to highlight the anti-abortion records of Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, California Republican gubernatorial hopeful Steve Hilton, and Michigan’s Rogers — who is making another attempt for a Senate seat — among others.

Reproductive Freedom for All shared first with POLITICO that it plans to spend $23.5 million this year — the most it’s ever invested in a midterm election — with a heavy focus on “independents, soft Republicans, and split-ticket voters” in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Georgia, and California “whose support for abortion access puts them at odds with Trump and

his endorsed candidates.” RFFA is one of the nation’s biggest abortion rights advocacy groups active in elections.

GOP strategists agree that refocusing voters’ attention on abortion — whether via a ballot initiative or an advocacy campaign — could cause problems for the party in November.

Jason Roe, a Michigan GOP strategist who worked on Tom Barrett’s successful 2024 House campaign, said when his state held a referendum in 2022, Republicans “were definitely put on defense.”

Democrats “rode it to great success,” he noted, and won a trifecta in Michigan for the first time in 40 years. The issue helped Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson win reelection and aided Democrats in flipping control of both chambers in Lansing and clinching a majority of the state’s seats in the House of Representatives.

This time around, Roe is advising Republican candidates to talk about almost anything else.

“You don't have to change your position. I wouldn't recommend that anyone do that,” he said. “But don't highlight an issue on which you are at odds with the district that you're trying to win.”

Stan Barnes, a GOP strategist and former state senator in Arizona, which approved its own pro-abortion rights ballot initiative in 2024, agreed.

“One thing that most every politician, rightly or wrongly, supports is the fantasy concept that the voters are always right,” he said. “And in this case, the majority in Arizona supported what amounts to a pro-choice position, so it's difficult as a Republican pro-life person to say the voters were wrong. That's not generally how you win elections.”

GOP leaders say the party’s leading messages heading into November will include the administration’s crackdown on alleged fraud, its efforts to curb immigration and deport migrants, and the threat of a Democratic Congress to Trump’s agenda. As for abortion, “I really don't see it that much,” a senior RNC official told POLITICO, other than rare occasions when “something random pops up.”

This reticence has infuriated anti-abortion groups who also plan to spend big this fall and feel that Republicans are letting them down by sidestepping an issue they believe would motivate many voters. The GOP’s silence, compounded by the party’s failure to keep Planned Parenthood defunded and inaction on abortion pills, may have electoral consequences, the conservative activists contend.

“My message to the legislators would be: burying your head in the sand on this issue does not make it go away,” said Christina Francis, the CEO of the American Academy of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which is working to defeat Virginia’s ballot measure and pass another in Missouri to restrict access to the procedure. “It's there, so you need to be speaking clearly about this.”

“Many lawmakers erroneously see being pro-life as a losing issue,” she added. “What they need is courage.”

Leaders at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which plans to spend at least $80 million this year to elect abortion opponents to state and federal office, are citing their own poll that found “a third of GOP voters say they're going to be less enthusiastic about even showing up to vote in November if Republican leaders are abandoning pro-life policies.”

“We're doing what we can to help elect Republicans, but the GOP must also do their part to energize the voters that we are speaking with every day,” said Kesley Pritchard, a spokesperson for SBA.

The group has argued since the fall of Roe that Republicans can best counteract Democrats’ efforts in ballot initiative states by standing firm on their opposition to the procedure rather than attempting to duck the issue.

“If they fail to do the right thing on the issue of abortion and the politically smart thing in a midterm election year, it's really going to hurt them,” Pritchard predicted.

Some on the left are similarly frustrated that their party isn’t leaning harder on the issue.

Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, whose state has a neck-and-neck gubernatorial race along with an abortion-rights ballot initiative, is among a handful of Democrats introducing pro-abortion rights bills in the leadup to the midterms to give voters an idea of what to expect if they flip the House or Senate. Legislation she introduced last week would protect the right of patients in states with bans to travel for the procedure.

“It’s critical for us to continue to prioritize this,” she said. “This is such a critical issue for so many women, and it is unfortunate that Donald Trump would like to talk about other things because he knows this is not a winning issue for him.”

Both sides agree, meanwhile, that activists in states that have already passed constitutional amendments are finding it hard to keep voters fired up about abortion rights.

Reproductive Freedom for All, for its part, is conducting polling now on what it calls the “believability challenge” — essentially, whether voters still see the right to abortion as under threat.

Timmaraju noted that unlike the state abortion bans that voters overturned by ballot measure in Arizona, Ohio, and Michigan, the current threats to abortion pill access from several federal agencies and courts are more difficult to explain.

“Many voters in 2024 didn’t believe Trump would ban abortion, and many still don’t,” she said. “That’s what we need to tackle.”