We’re nearly to the climax of Spooky Season: The midterms are just four days away.
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midterms → ’re → Season
Bulwark+ members can join us on Sunday at 8:30 p.m. ET for a livestream on all things midterms—we’ll give you the state of play, our best predictions, and take your questions!
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members → join → questions
Where’d Roe Go?
by Andrew Egger
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Roe → go → Egger
In 2022, the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, turned abortion access back into a state-level issue, and seemingly ushered in a new era of abortion-centric politics.
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Court → strike → politics
For years, the issue was hotly contested: Red states passed laws slapping new abortion restrictions in place, while voters in many blue and red states passed ballot referendums rolling those restrictions back.
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voters → contest → restrictions
In 2022 and especially 2024, Democrats spent heavily messaging the issue: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris campaigned in front of a “RESTORE ROE” banner while trying to stave off the comeback of a president who had embraced the label “the most pro-life president in American history.”
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who → spend → history
A few states1 have abortion-policy ballot measures on the ballot this year, and the issue has come up in a few races: In Maine, Troy Jackson has repeatedly attacked Sen. Susan Collins for her votes to confirm the Supreme Court justices who ultimately struck down Roe, while Collins has pointed out that Jackson opposed abortion early in his legislative career.
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Jackson → have → career
By and large, though, the issue has vanished from candidates’ stump speeches and from the airwaves.
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issue → vanish → airwaves
This summer, AdImpact estimated that Democrats were buying ads mentioning abortion four times less than in the same period in 2024.
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Democrats → estimate → 2024
Adsmom, a platform that tracks digital ad spending on Meta and Google, found that political spending on abortion ads in October came fifteenth among 26 different topics, below issues like data centers and the climate.
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spending → track → centers
It’s common for one party or the other to inch away from a given issue as it becomes clear the opposition has the more popular position.
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opposition → ’ → position
What’s strange today is that both parties have dropped abortion messaging—for totally different reasons.
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parties → ’ → reasons
For Democrats, it’s mostly a matter of other issues crowding abortion out.
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issues → ’ → abortion
In 2022 and 2024, when Democrats held the presidency, it was Republicans who were making the kick-the-bums-out cost-of-living message.
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who → hold → message
Today, amid growing anger about rising prices thanks to tariffs and the Iran war, Democrats seem to see every moment not spent uttering the word “affordability” as a moment wasted.
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Democrats → grow → moment
Cost of living, Democratic strategist David Axelrod told The Bulwark, is “an urgent issue that unifies the largest number of people, so it makes sense that other issues, such as abortion, are playing a lesser role.”
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issues → tell → role
Meanwhile, as Trump has become deeply unpopular and Democrats have pushed the political map deep into red states, they’re suddenly competing for the votes of plenty of Americans who may not fully agree with them on abortion politics.
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who → become → politics
Here, too, it makes more sense to stick to the grand unifying theme of affordability.
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it → make → affordability
“I think the reproductive freedom conversation—although very important—is a very specialized and nuanced conversation,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist in South Carolina.
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Seawright → think → Carolina
“You don’t think about that when you’re going to pay your light bill.”
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you → think → bill
All that makes sense.
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that → make → sense
But it also makes it somewhat stranger that Republicans, playing defense in so many red states, aren’t turning to abortion politics to try to rally the troops.
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Republicans → make → troops
The GOP’s midterm strategy has been to give up independents for lost and spend all their time and energy juicing base turnout—so where’s the rally-round messaging for pro-lifers?
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messaging → give → lifers
One major factor is that Trump and his allies, having seen abortion-access initiatives pass even in red states in 2022 and 2024, are no longer confident that their base actually finds abortion politics particularly motivating.
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politics → see → 2022
While abortion remains an animating issue for highly religious voters, most social conservatives seem to have executed a Trump-led pivot toward other culture-war issues—most notably rabble-rousing about trans people—without much complaining.
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conservatives → remain → complaining
“The pro-life movement died when Trump said it was a state issue.
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it → die → ?
It’s not part of the Republican coalition right now.
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It → ’ → coalition
It’s a side issue.
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It → ’ → ?
This is tragic, obviously, but it’s the truth.”
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it → ’ → ?
Even for the highly anti-abortion conservatives that remain, Republicans today would just as soon have them thinking about something else.
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them → remain → something
That’s because, among the major issue groups of the GOP coalition, they alone have not received the major executive action they’ve sought: The “most pro-life president in history” has not changed FDA regulations to forbid sending the abortion drug mifepristone through the mail.
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president → ’ → mail
The administration has been slow-walking a long-promised review on the subject, plainly trying to get to the far side of the midterms before making any decisions.
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administration → walk → decisions
Pro-life groups haven’t been impressed.
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groups → impress → ?
“The FDA’s court-ordered update on its abortion-drug study is alarming,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said this month.
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Dannenfelser → order → study
“Instead of the promised gold-standard study, the FDA is trying to peddle fool’s gold.”
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FDA → promise → gold
Even though nobody seems to want to talk about it right now, abortion politics isn’t going away for good.
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politics → seem → it
If Democrats retake a trifecta in 2028, they will likely face major base pressure to re-codify Roe in federal law.
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they → retake → law
And when the midterms are past, the FDA will be out of excuses: Sooner or later, it will have to rule on mifepristone, and some coalition of Americans isn’t going to like it when they do.
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they → have → it
Whatever abortion-politics hiatus we’re on now, it isn’t going to last.
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it → ’re → ?
Last spring, during the early stages of his party’s primary, Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy declared himself “strongly in favor” of Ohio’s data center boom.
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himself → declare → boom
…and 62 more, not listed.
The Aporia
