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      Walker and Warnock Spend Big on TV Ads as Georgia Football Wins

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      Nothing quite holds an audience captive like a clash of undefeated college football behemoths. Senator Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker didn’t need reminding of that on Saturday.Neither candidate in Georgia’s pivotal Senate race blinked at the $50,000 cost of a 30-second campaign ad during Saturday’s game between the top-ranked University of Tennessee and the third-ranked University of Georgia, according filings with the Federal Communications Commission.Each of them booked two ads on Atlanta’s CBS affiliate, with the National Republican Senatorial Committee listed as sharing some of the cost of one of the ads supporting Mr. Walker.On CBS in Atlanta, a 30-second ad during the pregame show or on Friday night prime time cost $5,000; it was a thrifty $75 during the station’s “Wake Up Atlanta” show in the 5 to 5:30 a.m. time slot on weekdays.Mr. Walker won the Heisman Trophy in the 1980s when he starred for the Georgia Bulldogs, which are the defending national champions in college football. Georgia beat Tennessee, 27-13.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.House Democrats: Several moderates elected in 2018 in conservative-leaning districts are at risk of being swept out. That could cost the Democrats their House majority.A Key Constituency: A caricature of the suburban female voter looms large in American politics. But in battleground regions, many voters don’t fit the stereotype.Crime: In the final stretch of the campaigns, politicians are vowing to crack down on crime. But the offices they are running for generally have little power to make a difference.Abortion: The fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer Democrats a way of energizing voters and holding ground. Now, many worry that focusing on abortion won’t be enough to carry them to victory.In one ad for Mr. Warnock that he highlighted on Twitter during the game, three Georgia graduates conveyed their reverence for Mr. Walker’s accomplishments as a college football star, but said that was where the praise ended. One was wearing a jersey with Mr. Walker’s No. 34 and another displayed a football autographed by him.“I’ve always thought Herschel Walker looked perfect up there,” said a man identified in the ad as Clay Bryant, a 1967 graduate, pointing to photos of Mr. Walker on a wall in his home.“I think he looks good here,” another graduate said, gesturing to her jersey.“I think he looks great there,” the third one said, sitting next to the football and a copy of Sports Illustrated with Mr. Walker on the cover.“But Herschel Walker in the U.S. Senate?” the three asked critically in unison.On social media, college football fans groused about being bombarded with attack ads run by the candidates and groups aligned with them, including dueling commercials that lobbed domestic abuse allegations at Mr. Walker and Mr. Warnock.Senator Lindsey Graham, left, campaigned with Herschel Walker in Cumming, Ga., in October.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesMr. Walker has been roiled by accusations that he urged two women to have abortions, despite campaigning as a conservative who opposes the procedure.On the CBS affiliate in Savannah, Ga., Mr. Walker booked a 30-second ad during the game for $35,000, while Mr. Warnock reserved a 30-second block for $15,000. Advertising rates are typically higher for coordinated efforts between parties and candidates than for candidates on their own.On the CBS affiliate in Augusta, Ga., Mr. Walker reserved a pair of 30-second ads during the game for $25,890, with the N.R.S.C. listed as helping to pay for one, according to federal filings. Mr. Warnock bought ads on the same station, but not during the game.Mr. Warnock and Mr. Walker, who is backed by former President Donald J. Trump, were not the only bitter rivals in a close Senate race who invested heavily this week advertising around sporting events.In Pennsylvania’s open-seat contest, the celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Republican, and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate, spent six figures to run campaign ads during the World Series featuring the Philadelphia Phillies and the Houston Astros.Both candidates booked multiple ads on Fox’s Philadelphia affiliate at a rate of $95,000 for 30 seconds, according to federal filings. Mr. Fetterman also reserved 30 seconds of airtime during Thursday night’s National Football League game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Houston Texans. More

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      I Write About Post-Roe America Every Day. It’s Worse Than You Think.

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      Despite Republican‌ assurances that their draconian abortion bans wouldn’t hurt women, a flood of heart-wrenching accounts from across the country prove otherwise. Yet even with that outpouring of stories, plus polls showing broad opposition to the bans and an increase in women registering to vote, it’s still unclear if the issue will be the deciding factor for voters in the midterm elections on Tuesday.It should be.This past summer, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. W‌ade, I started publishing a daily newsletter tracking abortion news, ‌following everything from state bans to stories of women denied vital health care. After months of writing about abortion, it’s clear that stripping this right from half of Americans has had a swift, damaging and pervasive impact.What happens in the midterms won’t be about Republicans or Democrats, but whether people cast a vote for the continuation of suffering, or attempt to end the anguish that banning abortion has caused.This isn’t hyperbole. Laws that privilege fetuses over those who carry them haven’t just relegated women to second-class citizenship, they have also led to the denial of lifesaving care in case after case. In‌ affidavits, Ohio health care providers reported having to comfort a sobbing cancer patient who was refused an abortion, and seeing at least three patients who threatened to commit suicide after being denied abortions.In August, a woman in Texas who was denied an abortion for an unviable pregnancy ended up in the intensive care unit with sepsis. Another Texas woman, pregnant and in failing health, was recently told she shouldn’t come back unless she had a condition as severe as liver failure or stroke. A woman in Wisconsin was left bleeding for more than 10 days after an incomplete miscarriage just days after the Supreme Court’s decision; a doctor ‌in Texas was told not to treat an ectopic pregnancy until it ruptured.And then there are the stories of women forced to endure doomed pregnancies. Nancy Davis, a mother of three in Louisiana, ‌was denied an abortion even though her fetus was missing part of its head. Chelsea Stovall in Arkansas, who was 19 weeks pregnant when she found out that her daughter wouldn’t survive, was also refused treatment. After traveling 400 miles to get an abortion, she told a local reporter, “I should be able to say goodbye to her where I want to.”Those are just the adults. ‌This summer, Republicans insisted the story of a raped and pregnant 10-year-old in Ohio‌ was a hoax, and later tried to paint the girl’s experience as a tragic anomaly. In fact dozens of girls in Ohio 14 years old and under had abortions in 2021. In neighboring Kentucky, more than a dozen children aged 14 or younger had abortions last year; two 9-year-olds needed abortions in the past few years. These are victimized children who will now be forced to carry pregnancies, perilous for their small bodies, or leave their home state for care.In other words: real people, across the country, are enduring real suffering. All of which was predictable and preventable.In response to the onslaught of post-Roe horror stories, Republican legislators and abortion opponents have claimed that physicians are misreading the laws and failing their patients as a result. It’s a clever move, attacking those who make them look the worst: doctors who see the devastating impact of abortion bans up close, every day. But conservatives have been planning for the end of Roe for decades, and their laws were written with careful consideration.It isn’t just obstetricians and fertility doctors who fear prosecution, but many types of physicians. At an annual meeting of pulmonologists, a special session was held on how to avoid breaking the law while caring for lung disease patients they may have to advise on ending dangerous pregnancies. Instead of being able to singularly focus on helping sick people get well, these doctors have to worry that doing their job could get them arrested.The impact of abortion bans goes far beyond horrific individual stories; they’ve had a cascading effect into countless areas of Americans’ lives. I spoke to a young woman struggling with infertility in Tennessee, for example, whose state representative told her that I.V.F. doctors could be prosecuted under the abortion ban there for discarding unused embryos (a common part of the I.V.F. process). “We just want to be parents,” she told me.Abortion bans have also put birth control access in danger. For years, conservative legislators and organizations laid the groundwork to falsely characterize some forms of contraception as abortifacients. This distortion has already started to hurt women in states with abortion bans: Because of the law’s ambiguity in Missouri, a chain of hospitals there briefly stopped providing emergency contraception, with a spokesperson explaining, “We simply cannot put our clinicians in a position that might result in criminal prosecution.”At the University of Idaho, the legal counsel advised it against providing students with birth control in light of the state’s abortion ban. Staff members could give out condoms, the guidance said, but only to prevent sexually transmitted infections, not “for purposes of birth control.” Employees were told that even speaking in support of abortion could put them in danger of being arrested and banned from future state employment.Republicans’ abortion laws have even led to a crisis in care in states where abortion is legal. Doctors are so overwhelmed with patients from other states that some clinics have weekslong waiting lists, which, along with the logistical hurdles out-of-state patients face, has led to later abortions — which Republicans claim to oppose. ‌Writing about abortion every day feels like drowning, but what keeps me up at night is knowing that, by and large, we are hearing only from the women who felt comfortable enough going to the media. For every one story shared, there are hundreds or thousands more that we will never know about.Doctors who might otherwise speak up are also being silenced, warned by their employers’ PR and legal teams not to share stories of how abortion bans have affected their work and are hurting women.As Americans head into midterm elections, they need to consider not what Republicans say about abortion — but what they do, and what their laws have already done.Conservatives have claimed that they are not interested in targeting individual women. But in the past year, a teenager in Nebraska who authorities say had an illegal abortion is awaiting trial for concealing a death, and an Alabama county jail reportedly kept pregnant women in detention in an effort to “protect” their unborn fetuses from possible drug exposure.Republicans said women’s lives and health would be protected. They very clearly haven’t been. They said they’d make allowances for sexual assault victims, but states with rape and incest exceptions have language so narrow and vague that they’re near impossible to use.They said that women’s lives wouldn’t meaningfully change — but women are suffering, every single day.Republicans running for office have tried to sidestep the issue, dismissing it as unimportant or deleting any mention of abortion from their websites, knowing how unpopular bans have become.Voters should remember that none of this is accidental. All of this is misery, and hurt is by design. This alone should motivate voters to protect abortion rights.Jessica Valenti is the author of “Sex Object” and publishes a newsletter in which she writes about abortion every day.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Ohio’s partisan supreme court election could decide abortion’s future in state

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      AnalysisOhio’s partisan supreme court election could decide abortion’s future in statePoppy NoorThe midterms include key elections to the state’s highest court as the judicial system becomes increasingly politicized In Ohio, a highly partisan fight over three state supreme court seats could determine the political direction of the court on a slew of important issues – particularly abortion.With the US supreme court increasingly handing issues such as voting rights, abortion, gun rights and gerrymandering back to the states, state supreme court races are becoming more important than ever.Abortion on the ballot: here are the US states voting on a woman’s right to chooseRead moreFew states illustrate how political these courts are becoming better than Ohio, where justices’ party affiliation will be listed on the ballot for the first time in the 8 November election, and where the justices on that court will soon determine the fate of the state’s six-week abortion ban that has been blocked and unblocked by lower courts since Roe v Wade was overturned early in the summer. Abortion is currently legal in the state up to 22 weeks, as the ban is being litigated.As a result of the stakes, more cash is also pouring into state supreme court races around the country from political action committees associated with the national parties. Fair Courts America, a Pac associated with the Republican party, has pledged $22.5m for state supreme court races this election cycle, to support conservative judicial candidates in Kentucky, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.In Kentucky, that same Pac has donated $1.6m to three conservative judges vying for election. One of those judges, Joe Fischer, is a former Republican congressman who was the key sponsor of the state’s trigger ban on abortion that went into effect when Roe was overturned, as well as an anti-abortion referendum that’s being put to Kentucky voters next week.“People used to spend all their time looking at the federal constitution for protections, particularly when it came to individual rights. But now the US supreme court is basically saying these matters are better left resolved in the state courts and their state constitutions,” explains Bill Weisenberg, a former assistant executive director of the Ohio State Bar Association.In Ohio, after Roe fell, ending the federal constitutional right to abortion, the state implemented a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. That ban is currently being blocked by a lower state court, but ultimately, it will land with the state supreme court. And the election of certain justices will be pivotal in determining the future of the ban.The seven-justice Ohio supreme court currently has four Republican justices and three Democratic justices. The current chief justice, Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, is not seeking re-election this year because of age limits, so two other sitting justices, Republican Sharon Kennedy and Democrat Jennifer Brunner, will battle it out to replace her in the top spot. Two incumbent Republican justices, Pat DeWine and Pat Fischer will face Democratic challengers Marilyn Zayas and Terri Jamison, for seats on the court.O’Connor, the chief justice who is standing down, was a Republican-affiliated judge who was happy to break with the party line on issues such as gerrymandering. She has never openly indicated where she stands on abortion.But all three Republican justices up for election on Tuesday have stated on candidate surveys that they believe there is no constitutional right to abortion, according to local news, meaning their elections could strike a fatal blow to abortion rights in Ohio.They also came under fire in September for attending a Trump rally where the former president repeated baseless claims about the 2020 election being stolen, and for subsequently refusing to confirm that the results of the 2020 election were valid. One of those justices – Pat DeWine – is also under scrutiny for having liked a tweet promoting a conspiracy theory about the violent attack on the husband of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, asking “what are they hiding?” He has since said he clicked “like” inadvertently.Meanwhile, Zayas, Jamison and Brunner have publicly stated that they believe the Ohio constitution protects the right to abortion.Weisenberg cautions that neither political affiliation, nor what a justice indicates of their views before their election, are watertight indicators for how they will rule once they are on the supreme court. “People are surprised sometimes when they read the opinion and it’s not in keeping with where they thought the justice would lean, or what they had said on a prior occasion,” he said.Indeed, the US supreme court justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito indicated they believed the constitutional right to abortion was settled precedent before being confirmed to the court.TopicsOhioAbortionReproductive rightsRoe v WadeUS justice systemUS midterm elections 2022US politicsanalysisReuse this content More

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      Abortion might help Democrats in the midterms in two major ways | Laurel Elder, Steve Greene and Mary-Kate Lizotte

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      Abortion might help Democrats in the midterms in two major waysLaurel Elder, Steve Greene and Mary-Kate LizotteIf young pro-choice voters turn out in higher numbers than forecast models are expecting, it could provide a bounce to Democrats in key races Political science-based forecasting models offer a clear prediction for the 2022 midterm elections – the results will be very bad for Democrats. Based solely on the fundamentals like the state of the economy, the type of election (ie midterm) and having an unpopular Democrat in the White House, a model by political scientists Charles Tien and Michael Lewis-Beck, generated months before 8 November, predicts a 44-seat loss for Democrats in the House and a five-seat loss for Democrats in the Senate.The forecasting models produced by FiveThirtyEight are not quite as grim about the prospects for Democrats, predicting that the party will most likely lose majority control of the House of Representatives, but have a small (and shrinking) edge in holding on to their minuscule advantage in the Senate. Unlike the political science models, FiveThirtyEight’s predictions also incorporate polling data and therefore pick up on the ground-level reality that Republicans have put forth weak candidates in key races.Abortion is a bread-and-butter economic issue. We need to treat it that way | Rebecca SolnitRead moreBut there is a plausible case to be made that even models incorporating polling data are underestimating Democratic strength in the 2022 midterms. The issue of abortion may help Democrats in two important ways that are not being picked up in either of the models discussed above.Predicting the outcome of elections is considerably more difficult than other types of polling (eg issue polling), as it requires making assumptions about who is actually going to turn out to vote. Among these well-founded assumptions is that young people have the lowest turnout of all age groups – especially so in midterm elections. Thus current likely voter models assume that young people will once again underperform as voters in 2022.For those who have interacted with young women recently – the anger about the Dobbs decision is undeniable. Outrage at the idea that “old white men” are making decisions about their bodies has made abortion a priority for young women. A recent poll of Gen Z Americans in swing states supports this, providing empirical evidence that young people are energized to vote and continue to rank abortion as their top issue, even while the issue has slipped in importance for older Americans. Young people’s passion on issues has failed to translate into actual action in the voting booth in the past; however, if young pro-choice women actually do turn out in higher numbers than forecasting models are expecting, this could provide a multi-point bounce to Democratic candidates in key House and Senate races.Additionally in our research we found there are a lot of cross-pressured Republicans on the question of abortion legality. While there are a small number of Democrats who hold positions on abortion in tension with their party – eg less than 10% approve the overturning of Roe v Wade – the percentage of Republicans uncomfortable with their party’s policies on abortion reaches anywhere from 30-50%. When abortion policy was more or less settled law, it was easy for cross-pressured Republicans to ignore the conflict between their party’s position and their own, but now that Republicans are enacting highly restrictive laws and outright abortion bans, such contradictions will be harder to ignore. How will cross-pressured Republicans respond?The Kansas referendum over the summer suggests that the threat of abortion bans has the power to mobilize low-propensity voters and entice cross-pressured Republicans to abandon their party’s position. Voting for a Democratic candidate, however, is not as likely as voting in disagreement with one’s party on a referendum, especially in today’s polarized climate. The more likely possibility is that at least some cross-pressured Republicans may simply opt out of the electoral process.Losing the House and especially the Senate would be a major political blow for the Democrats with important and lasting policy consequences, but should that happen, the impact of the Dobbs decision will likely have staved off much larger losses. And should the Democrats defy historical odds and hold on to the House, or, more likely, the Senate, they will almost surely have the Dobbs decision to thank and its ability to mobilize young voters and to demobilize cross-pressured Republicans.
      Laurel Elder is a professor of political science at Hartwick College
      Steven Greene is a professor of political science at North Carolina State University
      Mary-Kate Lizotte is a professor of political science at Augusta University
      TopicsUS midterm elections 2022OpinionAbortionRoe v WadeUS politicsRepublicansDemocratscommentReuse this content More

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      Can Campaigning on Abortion Rescue the Democrats?

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      Lisa Chow and Dan Powell and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherWith an unpopular president and soaring inflation, Democrats knew they had an uphill battle in the midterms.But the fall of Roe v. Wade seemed to offer the party a way of energizing voters and holding ground. And one place where that hope could live or die is Michigan.On today’s episodeLisa Lerer, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.A demonstrator in Detroit supporting a ballot measure that would bolster abortion protections in Michigan.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesBackground readingSome top Democrats say that their party has focused too much attention on abortion rights and not enough on worries about crime or the cost of living.The outcome of the midterms will affect abortion access for millions of Americans. Activists on both sides are focused on races up and down the ballot.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Lisa Lerer contributed reporting.Fact-checked by Susan Lee.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Sofia Milan, Ben Calhoun and Susan Lee.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Desiree Ibekwe, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello and Nell Gallogly. More

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      The Dobbs Decision Revealed How Weak the Pro-Life Movement Really Is

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      For most of my adult life, I have hesitated when asked whether I identify as a member of the “pro-life” movement, despite my unconditional opposition to abortion. For one thing, I am not conscious of taking part in anything that resembles activism, though my wife volunteers as a birth assistant and doula for women who would otherwise receive very poor care.Another reason for my wariness is that I have little patience for “gotcha” follow-up questions about my views on the death penalty and health care policy. While I happen to oppose capital punishment as it is currently practiced in the United States and support single-payer health care, mandatory paid leave and generous child benefits, I do not think that opposition to abortion — what I consider to be the state-abetted killing of hundreds of thousands of infants each year — requires those views. If this means I am not “pro-life,” so be it.But the main reason for my ambivalence about the label “pro-life” is my longstanding concern about the cohesion and commitment of the anti-abortion movement. For too long, too many members were more focused on overturning Roe v. Wade than on persuading the American people about the nature of personhood. This equivocation about means and ends, which subsumed a clear moral question into the murk of judicial theory and political strategy, has always given me pause.In the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe, I am sad to report that my misgivings have been vindicated. The court’s decision may have been a great victory for proponents of states’ rights and a necessary prelude to ending abortion, but the pro-life movement appears less powerful now than it has in years. Certainly, the blithe assumption that the movement included an overwhelming majority of Republican politicians and voters was spectacularly mistaken.In August, for example, what looked like a solidly conservative electorate in Kansas rejected an amendment to the State Constitution that would not have criminalized abortion but merely allowed the Legislature to consider such a ban. During this year’s midterm election campaigns, conservative Senate candidates such as J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona have suddenly adopted equivocal positions on abortion that harken back to the compromises with which many socially conservative Democratic politicians were comfortable two decades ago.At the end of last month, Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, expressed his opposition to federal legislation that would ban abortions after 15 weeks. He argued that “the best way to save most babies is to allow states, each state, to protect babies in the way they deem most appropriate for their state.”How large a share of the right-of-center electorate does this waffling speak for? Whatever the exact proportions, it is certainly larger than the one represented by Tudor Dixon, the Republican candidate for governor in my home state of Michigan, whose forthright opposition to abortion does not include the usual litany of exceptions. Public polling suggests that Ms. Dixon will lose. (Anecdotally, I can say that Republican voters even in rural southwest Michigan tend to regard Ms. Dixon’s views on abortion as inconvenient at best, especially in a year when Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic incumbent, should be vulnerable on economic and other issues.)It wasn’t always this way. In the early 1970s, opponents of abortion were often zealous activists like L. Brent Bozell Jr., whose anti-abortion sit-ins, explicitly modeled after those of the civil rights movement, were frequently denounced by the conservative press. After 1973, when Roe was decided, these opponents called for overturning the decision not simply because it was poorly reasoned and insufficiently grounded in the text of the Constitution, but because they regarded abortion as an unthinkable moral atrocity to which no one had a right, constitutional or otherwise. Roe may have been a weak piece of jurisprudence (as even many proponents of legal abortion conceded), but the ultimate goal of those who denounced it was not to rectify the state of the judiciary.These priorities should not have changed when the judicial philosophy known as originalism emerged as the most likely means of overturning Roe. But at some point during the intervening years, the wires got crossed.For decades now, originalism and opposition to abortion have been treated as synonymous by proponents and detractors alike. Pro-life organizations have routinely issued statements that are indistinguishable from originalist rhetoric in their denunciations of “judicial activism” and their emphasis on “the role of a Supreme Court justice, which is to interpret the Constitution without prejudice and to apply the law in an unbiased manner.” Justice Antonin Scalia, perhaps the most prominent originalist, appears as a matter of course on lists of pro-life heroes, even though he maintained that democratic majorities could legitimately legalize abortion if they chose to do so.Whose cause was really being advanced by such an alliance between a moral crusade and a constitutional theory? Originalism has won the day, but the anti-abortion cause has not.I believe that this state of affairs is a direct consequence of conflating what should have been an argument about principles with a question of tactics. The longer we nodded along with one another about what looks now like an ill-considered strategy — vote for the Red Team so that it can get the White House and a Senate majority, which it will use to confirm judicial nominees who, if the right case emerges, may undo a half-century-old legal precedent — the less attention we paid to whether we were all really trying to accomplish the same thing.I do not mean this cynically, though it’s true that many Republican politicians have been happy to instrumentalize abortion without having any serious underlying convictions themselves. Rather, I mean to bemoan the consequences of allowing abortion to be talked about at a remove, which has prevented generations of abortion opponents from cultivating the intellectual habits and the moral vocabulary necessary to advance their position directly.It is one thing to ask a candidate for public office to say that he supports nominees for the judiciary who “interpret the Constitution as written.” It is quite another to ask him to say, with philosophical consistency, that he regards abortion as the unjustified taking of human life, and that even horrifying circumstances of impregnation — rape, for example — do not alter the metaphysical status of those killed.If Dobbs has shown us anything, it is the limited usefulness of constitutional theory to the pro-life movement. The future of the cause will require sustained engagement with the questions of biology and metaphysics upon which the anti-abortion position has always depended, questions that lie outside politics in the conventional sense of the word. Legal thinking is by nature unsuited for such efforts — and perhaps even corrosive to them.The anti-abortion movement’s legal gambit reminds us of the danger for any cause of eliding first-order moral questions into second-order questions about tactics. The ends may not always justify the means, but in making these calculations it is helpful if one begins with the recognition that they are not identical.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Nevada’s Costly, Photo-Finish Senate Race Pits Abortion vs. Economy

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      NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. — As Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada took the stage at a high school here this week, she was fighting for her political life.Her re-election bid is seen by many as the tightest Senate race in the country. Republicans are throwing money and energy behind her challenger, Adam Laxalt, a political scion who, like Ms. Cortez Masto, is a former Nevada attorney general.Neither candidate could be called an electric campaigner, and Ms. Cortez Masto had a difficult slot that evening: shortly after John Legend and right before Barack Obama.After the appearance by Mr. Legend — who recently wrapped up a Las Vegas residency and played a couple of songs on a piano for an adoring audience — Ms. Cortez Masto spoke about how her grandfather was “a baker from Chihuahua” and how, before her, “there had never been a Latina elected to the U.S. Senate.”Her biographical bullet points were politely received. Then Mr. Obama took the stage and offered a reminder that his party has still not found a successor to match his charisma.To raucous applause, he hammered home Ms. Cortez Masto’s personal history in his inimitable cadences: “Third-generation Nevadan. Grew up here in Vegas. Dad started out parking cars at the Dunes,” he said, referring to a defunct casino where Ms. Cortez Masto’s father once worked. “She knows what it’s like to struggle and work hard.”Democrats are sending star figures to Nevada as both parties pour money into a political fight that could decide the balance of power in the Senate. The race was the most expensive political contest in Nevada history even before an $80 million splurge over the last month brought total ad spending to $176 million, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed the candidates deadlocked at 47 percent each; Mr. Laxalt had a comfortable lead among men, while Ms. Cortez Masto was likewise leading among women.Mr. Laxalt, a son and grandson of Nevada senators, held a rally in Las Vegas late last month with former Representative Tulsi Gabbard. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMs. Cortez Masto and her allies have sought to focus on abortion rights, attacking Mr. Laxalt over the issue.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesAnd increasingly, the campaign seems to be one of economics versus abortion.Democrats are battering Mr. Laxalt over his anti-abortion stance, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Nevada allows abortion up to 24 weeks, and after that in cases where the mother’s health is at risk. Mr. Laxalt has said he would support banning abortions in the state after 13 weeks, or the first trimester.One commercial broadcast Tuesday morning, paid for by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, featured a Nevada woman assailing his abortion position, saying: “I take it incredibly personally that Adam Laxalt is working to take away the rights of my daughters.” Another spot, from the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC, includes audio of Mr. Laxalt saying during a breakfast with pastors that “Roe v. Wade was always a joke.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Governor’s Races: Democrats and Republicans are heading into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor. Some battleground races could also determine who controls the Senate.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.Debunking Misinformation: Falsehoods and rumors are flourishing ahead of Election Day, especially in Pennsylvania. We debunked five of the most widespread voting-related claims.Ms. Cortez Masto returned to the topic on Tuesday night: “We know we can’t trust Laxalt when it comes to a woman’s right to choose,” she told the crowd. “This is a man who called Roe vs. Wade a joke, and he celebrated when it was overturned.”So often has Mr. Laxalt been attacked on abortion that he felt compelled to write an opinion column in The Reno Gazette-Journal in August “setting the record straight” on his position. He explained that when he said Roe was “a joke,” it was “a shorthand way of saying that the decision had no basis in the text of the Constitution.”Republican groups and the Laxalt campaign are generally focusing on the economy. Nevada has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and some of the highest gas prices, and a tourism-driven economy that was hit hard by the pandemic.“Inflation isn’t going away,” a narrator says in a Laxalt commercial running this week. “Gas and groceries are too expensive.” Another pro-Laxalt ad features a picture of Ms. Cortez Masto superimposed next to Speaker Nancy Pelosi as both are showered in cash. The spot, from the Senate Leadership Fund — the political action committee of Senate Republicans — makes the case that “Costly Catherine” is a high-spending Democrat.Mr. Laxalt and Ms. Gabbard at the rally in Las Vegas. He and his Republican allies have tried to put the spotlight on economic issues. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesRory McShane, a Republican political consultant who is working on other races in the state, believes the current dynamic favors Republicans.“You see in the polling that the economy is trumping abortion,” he said in an interview. “I don’t think anything’s stronger than the economy,” he added. “You don’t have to run TV ads to tell people how bad the economy is.”Kenneth Miller, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said the Democratic strategy “poses a risk.”“Abortion is very important to a big segment of the electorate, but that also means there are large segments of the electorate that don’t particularly care about abortion either way,” he said. “They may have a pro-choice or pro-life position, but it’s not what drives them to make their vote choice or drives them to turn out.”Mr. Laxalt’s saber-rattling on the economy, however, has plenty of skeptics. Nevada’s largest union, the 60,000-strong Culinary Workers, has sent members — cooks, cleaners, food servers — door to door to make the case for Ms. Cortez Masto and other Democratic candidates. More than half of the union’s members are Latinos, a group Mr. Laxalt has courted in Spanish-language commercials.Ted Pappageorge, the union’s secretary-treasurer, said in an interview that Ms. Cortez Masto had been an important ally on pocketbook concerns for union members, including expanding health benefits for workers who lost their jobs during the pandemic.“In 2020, we knocked on 650,000 doors statewide, and that was in the middle of Covid,” he said. “This year, in a midterm, we’re going to hit a million doors, and if we hit those doors, we’re going to win.”Few dispute the importance of the contest.“This race is the 51st seat,” Mr. Laxalt said this summer. “The entire U.S. Senate will hinge on this race.” He was speaking at the Basque Fry, a Republican event started by his grandfather, former Senator Paul Laxalt, whose family hailed from the Basque region straddling France and Spain. Mr. Laxalt is also the son of another former senator, Pete Domenici.Mr. Laxalt has been a divisive politician. He parroted Donald J. Trump’s false claims of widespread election fraud when he served as the chairman of the former president’s 2020 campaign in Nevada. When he was attorney general, he was caught on a secret recording in which he pressured state gambling regulators on behalf of a major donor, Sheldon Adelson.And Mr. Laxalt’s bid to follow his forebears into the Senate has been fractious. Fourteen of his relatives have come out against him and thrown their support to Ms. Cortez Masto, calling her in a joint statement “a model of the ‘Nevada grit’ that we so often use to describe our Nevada forefathers.”Former President Barack Obama campaigned on Tuesday in Las Vegas for Nevada Democrats. “She knows what it’s like to struggle and work hard,” he said of Ms. Cortez Masto.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times“The entire U.S. Senate will hinge on this race,” Mr. Laxalt said this summer. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMr. Obama seized on the episode in his remarks on Tuesday night. “We all might have a crazy uncle, the kind who goes off the rails, but if you’ve got a full Thanksgiving dinner table, and they’re all saying you don’t belong in the U.S. Senate?” he said. “When the people who know you the best think your opponent would do a better job, that says something about you.”In his own closing argument, Mr. Laxalt, who served in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps in the Navy, has tried to link Ms. Cortez Masto to President Biden, who polls show is unpopular in the state.“Her record is, she supported Joe Biden every step of the way,” he said at a recent campaign stop, according to Roll Call. “That’s why she doesn’t want Joe Biden to come here, because then she’s going to have to actually stand next to him and stand next to her voting record.”Ms. Cortez Masto is a protégé of Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader who built a formidable political machine in the state and died last year. “She’s a workhorse, not a show horse,” Mr. Miller said, adding that in a typical year, a moderate like her “should be able to win a race like this by five points, but national conditions are a serious headwind.”Abortion has certainly not been her only issue. She has depicted Mr. Laxalt as a child of privilege in a “Succession”-style video and has put out commercials accusing him of being captive to big oil companies, in part because as state attorney general, he worked to thwart an investigation into Exxon Mobil over its climate policies.But abortion has been the most constant weapon for her and her surrogates.“Catherine’s opponent calls Roe vs. Wade a joke, and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe a historic victory,” Mr. Obama said on Tuesday. “That may not be how most women in Nevada saw it.” More

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      How Republicans Watered Down Their Abortion Message

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      Democrats have gone all-in on abortion rights in these elections. But as the issue started having an impact, Republicans adapted.When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, Republicans suddenly faced a conundrum.They could embrace the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which reversed a nearly 50-year precedent and eliminated the federal right to an abortion. Or they could tack toward the political center and alight on more of a consensus, as Chief Justice John Roberts unsuccessfully sought to do within the court.Instead, many Republican candidates tried to pull off a magic trick by doing both. And, with just six days before Election Day, there are signs some of them have managed to pull a rabbit out of the proverbial hat.The emotionally fraught issue of abortion put Republicans in a bind. The party’s base was ecstatic at achieving a long-cherished goal. But the middle-of-the-road voters who often decide elections were decidedly less enthused, and Democrats had found a topic that could mobilize their otherwise dyspeptic partisans.The court’s timing was not propitious for Republicans. A leaked draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion, which hewed closely to the final text, hit the internet in May — in the heart of a primary season when candidates were competing to win the right’s favor. And yet polling showed that it was strikingly unpopular, with nearly 60 percent of the public disagreeing with the high court’s ruling.Even anti-abortion groups, such as Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, advised Republican candidates in a leaked memo to focus on “Democratic extremism” and “avoid traps laid by the other side and their allies in the media.”Shaking up the Etch A SketchSo, what was an aspiring Republican officeholder to do?As an adviser to Mitt Romney once said during the 2012 presidential race, running in a general election is “almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again.”They shook it up and tried to start over.In August, Blake Masters, the G.O.P. nominee for Senate in Arizona, scrubbed his website of comments calling for a 100 percent abortion ban and a federal “personhood” law. Instead, in a video he posted to Twitter, he said, “I support a ban on very late-term and partial-birth abortion.” (Very few abortions take place after the first 21 weeks of a pregnancy, and when they do, it’s often when the pregnant woman encounters health complications.)During his Senate primary in Georgia, Herschel Walker initially opposed any exceptions to banning abortion, even for rape, incest or the woman’s health. On at least one occasion, he told reporters, “There’s no exception in my mind.” But he later said he supported a Georgia bill that would ban abortions after fetal cardiac activity.Adam Laxalt, who is hoping to unseat Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, has called Roe v. Wade “a joke” and a “total, complete invention.” Now, he points to the legality of abortion in Nevada to inoculate himself from Cortez Masto’s attacks.Some of these pivots have been clumsy. Bo Hines, a former college quarterback who is running for a House seat in North Carolina, backs creating a panel that would decide whether to allow abortions in case of rape or incest. But he’s been vague about how it might work.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.Governor’s Races: Democrats and Republicans are heading into the final stretch of more than a dozen competitive contests for governor. Some battleground races could also determine who controls the Senate.Democrats’ Mounting Anxiety: Top Democratic officials are openly second-guessing their party’s pitch and tactics, saying Democrats have failed to unite around one central message.Social Security and Medicare: Republicans, eyeing a midterms victory, are floating changes to the safety net programs. Democrats have seized on the proposals to galvanize voters.Debunking Misinformation: Falsehoods and rumors are flourishing ahead of Election Day, especially in Pennsylvania. We debunked five of the most widespread voting-related claims.“There are certainly legal mechanisms you could place legislatively that would create an individual basis,” Hines told Spectrum News. Democrats blasted out a news release calling the idea “post-Dobbs rape panels.”Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is running against Lt. Gov. John Fetterman for Senate in Pennsylvania, says he opposes a federal abortion ban. But he implied during their lone debate that “local officials” should be involved in the decision of whether to terminate a pregnancy. Whom he meant was a mystery — the alderman? county assessor? — and Democrats pounced.Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin took a novel approach. Although he has backed a federal abortion ban in the past, he now calls for “a one-time, single-issue referendum to decide the question.” His campaign even released a sample ballot with a multiple-choice quiz, asking: “At what point does society have the responsibility to protect the life of an unborn child?”The Burger King strategy: Have it your wayTudor Dixon’s journey might be the most instructive. She’s running for governor of Michigan against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has aggressively positioned herself as a defender of abortion rights. Whitmer has asked for an injunction to stop a 1931 “trigger law” criminalizing abortion that took effect after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs.A grass-roots coalition on the left, meanwhile, is pushing a ballot measure that would make abortion legal again in Michigan. In response, anti-abortion groups have claimed it would invalidate laws requiring parental consent and even permit children to have gender-reassignment surgery without their parents’ permission. Legal experts say all that would be for courts to decide, but Democrats have griped that the right “has done a good job of muddying the waters.”During the primary, Dixon said she opposed abortion in the case of rape or incest, remarking in one interview that in conversations with rape victims, she had found “there was healing through that baby.”Now, Dixon warns that the ballot measure would invalidate parental consent laws. And if Michiganders want to protect abortion rights but oust Whitmer, they can vote for her and the ballot measure.I know you are, but what am I?As they walked back positions they took during the primary, Republicans accused Democrats of trying to distract from topics that played more to their advantage: inflation and crime. Judging from the recent comments of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, some Democrats even agree.Many Republicans also followed the Susan B. Anthony group’s playbook and portrayed Democrats as the true extremists. Saying that Democrats support “abortion on demand” has been a frequent Republican talking point. That has occasionally tripped up Democratic candidates, but it has rarely done real damage.For instance: Clips of a Fox News interview pinged around social media in May in which Representative Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Ohio, was asked whether he supported “any limits to abortion at any point” and said it was entirely the woman’s decision. But Ryan has clawed his way within striking distance of his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance.In libertarian-ish Arizona, as Dave Weigel recounts on Semafor, Republicans seized on Planned Parenthood’s support for defunding the police and its use of gender-neutral language to try to delegitimize the abortion rights position writ large.It’s hard to say whether these tactics have worked. But they do seem to have helped take abortion from a lopsided issue to a more neutral one. They also have prevented Republicans who took hard lines in their primaries from suffering the fate of Todd Akin, whose “legitimate rape” remark immediately placed him on the fringe during the 2012 Senate race in Missouri.But abortion hasn’t been the disqualifying issue some Democrats hoped it would be. A Wall Street Journal poll published on Wednesday found that white suburban women, a key target of the Democrats’ abortion message, were swinging back toward Republicans.Republicans who haven’t shaken up the Etch A Sketch have had a tougher time.A rally for Doug Mastriano in Harrisburg, Pa., in September.Mark Makela for The New York TimesConsider the plight of Doug Mastriano, who has stuck to his no-exceptions guns and is down by nearly 10 percentage points against Attorney General Josh Shapiro in the Pennsylvania governor’s race.Or look at Representative Ted Budd, the Republican nominee for Senate in North Carolina, who supported a federal abortion ban that Senator Lindsey Graham proposed even as other Republicans distanced themselves from the idea. Before inflation came roaring back to the forefront of voters’ concerns in late September, Budd’s race against Cheri Beasley, a moderate former judge, had tightened considerably.Democrats have spent nearly $320 million on commercials focused on abortion rights, my colleagues noted yesterday. That’s 10 times as much as they have spent on inflation ads.Much of that has been aimed at holding Republicans accountable to their previous stances. But while there’s been some second-guessing about the wisdom of that approach, many in the party insist it was worth it.“It competes with a lot of other motivations,” said Christina Reynolds, the communications director of Emily’s List, an abortion rights group that backs female candidates. “But this is an issue that has put us in the fight in many ways.”What to read President Biden will give a speech tonight about protecting democracy and the threats that election deniers pose to the voting process, Katie Rogers writes. Follow live coverage on NYTimes.com.A federal judge in Arizona sharply curtailed the activities of an election-monitoring group in the vicinity of ballot boxes, including taking photos or videos of voters and openly carrying firearms, Ken Bensinger reports.Cecilia Kang outlined five of the biggest unfounded rumors that have been circulating about voting.Congressional Republicans, looking toward election victories, have embraced plans to reduce Social Security and Medicare spending. Jim Tankersley writes that Democrats have seized on that to galvanize voters.The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered election officials to refrain from counting mail-in ballots that lack a written date on their outer envelope, siding with Republicans, Neil Vigdor writes.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More