Roe v Wade (Supreme Court Decision)

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      Sometimes, History Goes Backward

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I don’t know if you remember the Lloyd Bridges character from the movie “Airplane,” the guy who keeps saying, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking/drinking/amphetamines/sniffing glue.” We were away last week and … stuff happened. Your thoughts on what appears to be the imminent demise of Roe v. Wade?Gail Collins: Well, Bret, I have multitudinous thoughts, some of them philosophical and derived from my Catholic upbringing. Although I certainly don’t agree with it, I understand the philosophical conviction that life begins at conception.Bret: As a Jew, I believe that life begins when the kids move out of the house.Gail: But I find it totally shocking that people want to impose that conviction on the Americans who believe otherwise — while simultaneously refusing to help underprivileged young women obtain birth control.Bret: Agree.Gail: So we have a Supreme Court that’s imposing the religious beliefs of one segment of the country on everybody else. Which is deeply, deeply unconstitutional.You agree with that part, right?Bret: Not entirely.I’ve always thought it was possible to oppose Roe v. Wade on constitutional grounds, irrespective of religious beliefs, on the view that it was wiser to let voters rather than unelected judges decide the matter. But that was at the time the case was decided in 1973.Right now, I think it’s appalling to overturn Roe — after it’s been the law of the land for nearly 50 years; after it’s been repeatedly affirmed by the Supreme Court; after tens of millions of American women over multiple generations have come of age with the expectation that choice is a fundamental right; after we thought the back-alley abortion was a dark chapter of bygone years; after we had come to believe that we were long past the point where it should not make a fundamental difference in the way we exercise our rights as Americans whether we live in one state or another.Gail: If we’re going to have courts, can’t think of many things more basic for them to protect than control of your own body. But we’ve gotten to the same place, more or less. Continue.Bret: I’m also not buying the favorite argument-by-analogy of some conservatives that stare decisis doesn’t matter, because certain longstanding precedents — like the Plessy v. Ferguson decision that enshrined segregation for 58 years until it was finally overturned in Brown v. Board of Ed. in 1954 — clearly deserved to be overturned. Plessy withdrew a right that was later restored, while Roe granted a right that might now be rescinded.I guess the question now is how this will play politically. Will it energize Democrats to fight for choice at the state level or stop the Republicans in the midterms?Gail: Democrats sure needed to be energized somehow. This isn’t the way I’d have chosen, but it’s a powerful reminder of what life would be like under total Republican control.Bret: Ending the right to choose when it comes to abortion seems to be of a piece with ending the right to choose when it comes to the election.Gail: And sort of ironic that overturning Roe may be one of Donald Trump’s biggest long-term impacts on American life. I guarantee you that ending abortion rights ranks around No. 200 on his personal list of priorities.Bret: Ha!Gail: When you talk about your vision of America, it’s always struck me as a place with limited government but strong individual rights. Would you vote for a Democratic Congress that would pass a legislative version of Roe? Or a Republican Congress that blows kisses to Justice Alito?Bret: I’ll swallow my abundant objections to Democratic policy ideas if that would mean congressional legislation affirming the substance of Roe as the law of the land. Some things are just more important than others.Gail: Bret, I bow to your awesomeness.Bret: Minimum sanity isn’t awesomeness, but thanks! Then again, Democrats could really help themselves if they didn’t keep fumbling the political ball. Like on immigration. And inflation. And crime. And parental rights in kids’ schooling. And all the stupid agita about Elon Musk buying Twitter. If you were advising Democrats to shift a little toward the center on one issue, what would it be?Gail: I dispute your bottom line, which is that the Democrats’ problem is being too liberal. The Democrats’ problem is not getting things done.Bret: Not getting things done because they’re too liberal. Sorry, go on.Gail: In a perfect world I’d want them to impose a windfall profits tax on the energy companies, which are making out like bandits, and use the money to give tax rebates to lower-income families. While also helping ease inflation by suspending the gas tax. Temporarily.Bret: “Temporarily” in the sense of the next decade or so.Gail: In the real world, suspending the gas tax is probably the quickest fix to ease average family finance. Although let me say I hate, hate, hate the idea. Not gonna go into a rant about global warming right now, but reserving it for the future.What’s your recommendation?Bret: Extend Title 42 immediately to avoid a summer migration crisis at the southern border. Covid cases are rising again so there’s good epidemiological justification. Restart the Keystone XL pipeline: We should be getting more of our energy from Canada, not begging the Saudis to pump more oil. Cut taxes not just for gasoline but also urge the 13 states that have sales taxes on groceries to suspend them: It helps families struggling with exploding food bills. Push for additional infrastructure spending, including energy infrastructure, and call it the Joe Manchin Is the Man Act or whatever other flattery is required to get his vote. And try to reprise a version of President Biden’s 1994 crime bill to put more cops on the streets as a way of showing the administration supports the police and takes law-and-order issues seriously.I’m guessing you’re loving this?Gail: Wow, so much to fight about. Let me just quickly say that “more cops on the street” is a slogan rather than a plan. Our police do need more support, and there are two critical ways to help. One is to create family crisis teams to deal with domestic conflicts that could escalate into violence. The other is to get the damned guns off the street and off the internet, where they’re now being sold at a hair-raising clip.Bret: Well, cops have been stepping off the force in droves in recent years, so numbers are a problem, in large part because of morale issues. It makes a big difference if police know their mayors and D.A.s have their backs, and whether they can do their jobs effectively. That’s been absent in cities from Los Angeles to Philadelphia to Seattle. I’m all for getting guns off the streets, but progressive efforts such as easy bail, or trying to ban the use of Stop, Question and Frisk, or getting rid of the plainclothes police units, have a lot to do with the new gun-violence wave.Gail: About the Keystone pipeline — you would be referring to Oil Spill Waiting to Happen? And the answer to our energy problems can’t be pumping more oil, unless we want to deed the families of the future a toxic, mega-warming planet. Let’s spend our money on wind and solar energy.Bret: Right now Canadian energy is being shipped, often by train, and sometimes those trains derail and blow up.Gail: Totally against trains derailing. Once again, less oil in general, however it’s transported.But now, let’s talk politics. Next week is the Pennsylvania primary — very big deal. On the Republican side, Trump is fighting hard for his man, the dreaded Mehmet Oz. Any predictions?Bret: Full disclosure: Oz played a key role in a life-threatening medical emergency in my family. I know a lot of people love to hate him. But he’s always going to be good in my books, I’m not going to comment on him other than that, and our readers should know the personal reason why.However, if you want to talk about that yutz J.D. Vance winning in Ohio, I can be quite voluble.Gail: Feel free. And does that mean you’ll be rooting for the Democrat Tim Ryan to win the Ohio Senate seat in November? He’s a moderate, but still supports the general party agenda.Bret: I like Ryan, and not just because he’s not J.D. Vance. I generally like any politician capable of sometimes rebelling against his or her own party’s orthodoxies, whether that’s Kyrsten Sinema or Lisa Murkowski.As for Vance, he’s just another example of an increasingly common type: the opportunistic, self-abasing, intellectually dishonest, morally situational former NeverTrumper who saw Trump for exactly what he was until he won and then traded principles and clarity for a shot at gaining power. After Jan. 6, 2021, there was even less of an excuse to seek Trump’s favor, and still less after Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.Democracy: You’re either for it or against it. In Kyiv or Columbus, Vance is on the wrong side.Gail: Whoa, take that, J.D.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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      Midterms’ Biggest Abortion Battleground: Pennsylvania

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      The leading Republicans running for governor in the state want to outlaw abortion. The presumptive Democratic nominee promises to veto any ban.HANOVER TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Jan Downey, who calls herself “a Catholic Republican,” is so unhappy about the Supreme Court’s likely reversal of abortion rights that she is leaning toward voting for a Democrat for Pennsylvania governor this year.“Absolutely,” she said. “On that issue alone.”Linda Ward, also a Republican, said the state’s current law allowing abortion up to 24 weeks was “reasonable.”But Ms. Ward said she would vote for a Republican for governor, even though all the leading candidates vowed to sign legislation sharply restricting abortion. She is disgusted with inflation, mask mandates and “woke philosophy,” she said.“After what’s happened this past year, I will never vote for a Democrat,” said Ms. Ward, a retired church employee. “Never!”Linda Ward, 65, in Allentown, Pa., on Wednesday.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York TimesPennsylvania, one of a handful of states where abortion access hangs in the balance with midterm elections this year, is a test case of the political power of the issue in a post-Roe world, offering a look at whether it will motivate party bases or can be a wedge for suburban independents.After a draft of a Supreme Court opinion that would end the constitutional guarantee of abortion rights was leaked last week, Republicans downplayed the issue, shifting attention instead to the leak itself and away from its substance. They also argued that voters’ attentions were fleeting, that abortion was hardly a silver bullet for Democratic apathy and that more pressing issues — inflation and President Biden’s unpopularity — had already cast the midterm die.To Democrats, this time really is different.“These are terrifying times,” said Nancy Patton Mills, chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. “There were so many people that thought that this could never happen.” If Roe v. Wade is overturned, the power to regulate abortion would return to the states. As many as 28 states are likely to ban or tightly restrict abortion, according to a New York Times analysis.In four states with politically divided governments and elections for governor this year — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Kansas — the issue is expected to be a fulcrum of campaigns. In Michigan and Wisconsin, which have anti-abortion laws on the books predating Roe, Democratic governors and attorneys general have vowed to block their implementation. Kansas voters face a referendum in August on codifying that the state constitution does not protect abortion.A voter dropped off his ballot during early voting in Allentown, Pa., in 2020.Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPennsylvania, which has a conservative Republican-led legislature and a term-limited Democratic governor, is the only one of the four states with an open seat for governor. “The legislature is going to put a bill on the desk of the next governor to ban abortion,’’ said Josh Shapiro, a Democrat running unopposed for the party’s nomination for governor. “Every one of my opponents would sign it into law, and I would veto it.”From Opinion: A Challenge to Roe v. WadeCommentary by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.Alison Block: Offering compassionate care is a core aspect of reproductive health. It might mean overcoming one’s own hesitation to provide procedures like second-trimester abortions.Patrick T. Brown: If Roe is overturned, those who worked toward that outcome will rightly celebrate. But a broader pro-family agenda should be their next goal.Jamelle Bouie: The leak proves that the Supreme Court is a political body, where horse-trading and influence campaigns are as much a part of the process as legal reasoning.Bret Stephens: Roe v. Wade was an ill-judged decision when it was handed down. But overturning it would do more to replicate its damage than to reverse it.Jay Kaspian Kang: There is no clear path toward a legislative solution to protect abortion rights. That’s precisely why people need to take to the streets.Mr. Shapiro, the state’s attorney general, has been primarily known for defeating multiple cases brought by supporters of Donald J. Trump claiming fraud after he lost Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes in 2020. When Mr. Shaprio began his campaign last year, he focused on voting rights, but he said in an interview last week that he expected the general election to become a referendum on abortion.His campaign said it had its best day of fund-raising after the Supreme Court draft leaked last week. He rejected the notion that voters, whose attention spans can be short, will absorb a major Supreme Court reversal and move on by the fall. “I’m going to be talking about rights — from voting rights to reproductive rights — until the polls close at 8 p.m. on Election Day,’’ Mr. Shapiro said. “People are very concerned about this. I expect that level of concern, of fear, of worry, of anger is going to continue.”All four of the top Republicans heading into the primary on May 17 have said they favor strict abortion bans. Lou Barletta, a former congressman and one of two frontrunners in the race, has said he would sign “any bill that comes to my desk that would protect the life of the unborn.”Another top candidate, Doug Mastriano, said in a recent debate that he was opposed to any exceptions — for rape, incest or the health of the mother — in an abortion ban. Mr. Mastriano, a state senator, has introduced a bill in Harrisburg to ban abortions after a “fetal heartbeat” is detected, at about six weeks of pregnancy. Another Republican bill would require death certificates and a burial or cremation after miscarriages or abortions.Democrats are worried, in Pennsylvania and around the country, that their 2020 coalition lacks motivation this year after expelling Mr. Trump from the White House. The listlessness extends to Black, Latino and younger voters, as well as suburban swing voters. It was suburbanites, especially outside Philadelphia, who gave Mr. Biden his winning edge in the state.Democratic operatives hope abortion will keep those independent voters — who have since swung against the president in polls — from defecting to Republicans.“With Trump no longer aggravating suburban voters every week, Republicans were hoping to regain traction in the Philadelphia suburbs in 2022,” said J.J. Balaban, a Democratic strategist in the state. “The fall of Roe will make that less likely to happen.”Shavonnia Corbin-Johnson, political director of the State Democratic Party, said that the end of abortion access would “add to compounding racial disparities and maternal health” for minority communities, and that the party was planning to organize aggressively around the issue.Soleil Hartwell, 19, who works in a big-box store near Bethlehem, is typical of voters who drop off in midterm elections after voting in presidential years. But Ms. Hartwell said she would vote this year to protect abortion rights. “I don’t have any kids, and I don’t plan on having any yet, but if I was in a situation that required me to, I should be able to” choose the fate of a pregnancy, she said.Soleil Hartwell, 19, in Allentown, Pa., on Wednesday.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York TimesRepublicans are deeply skeptical that abortion can reanimate the Democratic base. “Their people are depressed,” said Rob Gleason, a former chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party. “Nothing’s going to be able to save them this year.”Speaking from Philadelphia after a road trip from his home in western Pennsylvania, Mr. Gleason said: “I stopped on the turnpike and paid $5.40 a gallon for gas. That reminds me every time I fill up, I want a change.”Pennsylvania’s large Roman Catholic population — about one in five adults — has afforded electoral space for a tradition of anti-abortion Democratic officials, including Senator Bob Casey Jr., and his father, Bob Casey Sr., who served as governor. A law that the senior Casey pushed through the legislature in the 1980s included some abortion restrictions, which was challenged in the 1992 Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The court upheld most of the state’s restrictions, while affirming Roe v. Wade’s grant of a right to abortion. The leaked draft of the court’s opinion last week, written by Justice Samuel Alito, would overturn the Casey ruling along with Roe.The State of Roe v. WadeCard 1 of 4What is Roe v. Wade? More

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      If Roe Is Struck Down, Where Does the Anti-Abortion Movement Go Next?

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      The Supreme Court draft opinion signals a new era for the 50-year effort to end the constitutional right to abortion. Next goals include a national ban and, in some cases, classifying abortion as homicide.For nearly half a century, the anti-abortion movement has propelled itself toward a goal that at times seemed impossible, even to true believers: overturning Roe v. Wade.That single-minded mission meant coming to Washington every January for the March for Life to mark Roe’s anniversary. It required electing anti-abortion lawmakers and keeping the pressure on to pass state restrictions. It involved funding anti-abortion lobbying groups, praying and protesting outside clinics, and opening facilities to persuade women to keep their pregnancies. Then this week, the leaked draft of the Supreme Court opinion that would overturn the constitutional right to abortion revealed that anti-abortion activists’ dream of a post-Roe America appeared poised to come to pass.The court’s opinion is not final, but the draft immediately shifted the horizon by raising a new question: If Roe is struck down, where does the anti-abortion movement go next?Many leaders are redoubling state efforts, where they’ve already had success, with an eye toward more restrictive measures. Several prominent groups now say they would support a national abortion ban after as many as 15 weeks or as few as six, all lower than Roe’s standard of around 23 or 24. A vocal faction is talking about “abortion abolition,” proposing legislation to outlaw abortion after conception, with few if any exceptions in cases of rape or incest.The sprawling anti-abortion grass-roots campaign is rapidly approaching an entirely new era, one in which abortion would no longer be a nationally protected right to overcome, but a decision to be legislated by individual states. For many activists, overturning Roe would mark what they see as not the end, but a new beginning to limit abortion access even further. It also would present a test, as those who have long backed incremental change could clash with those who increasingly push to end legal abortion altogether.This week, many anti-abortion leaders were wary of celebrating before the court’s final ruling, expected this summer. They remembered Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, when they hoped the court would overturn Roe and it ultimately did not. But they said they have been preparing for this moment and its possibilities for decades.“If a dog catches a car, it doesn’t know what to do,” said Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee. “We do.”The Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion political group, is planning a strategy involving state legislatures where it sees room to advance their cause or protect it. The National Right to Life is trying to support its affiliates in every state as it looks to lobby lawmakers. Both groups have been hoping to build support in Congress for a national abortion ban, even if it could take years, just as it did to gain momentum to undo Roe. Many Republicans have repeatedly tried to enact a ban at about 20 weeks, without success. Next week Democrats in the Senate are bringing a bill to codify abortion rights to a vote, but it is all but certain to be blocked by Republicans.Abortion rights advocates are using the moment to re-energize their own supporters, organize protests and mobilize for midterm elections in November. Planned Parenthood Action Fund, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Emily’s List announced Monday, hours before the leaked draft appeared, that they would spend a collective $150 million on the midterm election cycle. Other groups are planning a nationwide “day of action” May 14, with marches in cities including New York, Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles.The reality of the leaked draft shocked casual supporters of abortion rights who weren’t paying particularly close attention to the issue, or who had grown numb after decades of warnings about the end of Roe.An abortion opponent at the March for Life in Washington. Many leaders are doubling down on state fights, with an eye toward pushing for more restrictive measures in other parts of the country.Kenny Holston for The New York Times“People just couldn’t fathom losing a constitutional right that has been enshrined for nearly half a century,” said Kristin Ford, vice president of communications and research for NARAL Pro-Choice America. “To see it in such stark terms has really galvanized people.”Across the anti-abortion spectrum, everything is on the table, from instituting bans when fetal cardiac activity is detected, to pressing their case in Democratic strongholds. Some activists are prioritizing limiting medication abortion, which accounts for more than half of all abortions.From Opinion: A Challenge to Roe v. WadeCommentary by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Alison Block: Offering compassionate care is a core aspect of reproductive health. It might mean overcoming one’s own hesitation to provide procedures like second-trimester abortions. Patrick T. Brown: If Roe is overturned, those who worked toward that outcome will rightly celebrate. But a broader pro-family agenda should be their next goal. Jamelle Bouie: The leak proves that the Supreme Court is a political body, where horse-trading and influence campaigns are as much a part of the process as legal reasoning.Bret Stephens: Roe v. Wade was an ill-judged decision when it was handed down. But overturning it would do more to replicate its damage than to reverse it.Jay Kaspian Kang: There is no clear path toward a legislative solution to protect abortion rights. That’s precisely why people need to take to the streets.This week in Georgia, former Senator David Perdue, who is challenging Gov. Brian Kemp in the Republican primary for governor, called for a special session to “eliminate all of abortion” in the state, which already has an abortion ban at about six weeks on the books that would likely take effect if Roe is overturned.While many fighting for restrictions believe abortion to be murder, only a small fringe openly call for punishing a woman for procuring one.Lawmakers in Louisiana, however, advanced a bill on Wednesday that would classify abortion as homicide and make it possible for prosecutors to bring criminal cases against women who end a pregnancy.“If the fetus is a person, then we should protect them with the same homicide laws that protect born persons,” said Bradley Pierce, who helped draft the Louisiana legislation and leads the Foundation to Abolish Abortion. “That’s what equal protection means.”A more prominent anti-abortion group, Louisiana Right to Life, however, opposes the bill for going too far.For the more mainstream campaigners, a post-Roe landscape would mean the anti-abortion fight will become even broader, clearing the path to expand further into state politics. “It will be different work,” said Mallory Carroll, spokeswoman for the Susan B. Anthony List. If Roe is overturned, anti-abortion activists will be free to pass legislation without having to work around Roe’s limits. “Instead of just fighting for the right to pass pro-life laws, we will actually be able to pass and protect pro-life laws,” she said.On Monday, before the leak, a coalition led by Students for Life Action told Republican members of Congress in a letter that abortion restrictions even at 12 weeks of pregnancy were not sufficient but that what ultimately mattered was “whether the infant is a human being.”After the leaked draft of the Supreme Court opinion, activists on both sides of the abortion debate gathered in front of a federal courthouse in Indianapolis. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesUltimately, abortion opponents’ biggest goal extends beyond legislation. It is an effort to change broader American culture and get more people to see a fetus as a human person with an inherent right to life. Many activists talk about making abortion not merely illegal but “unthinkable.”Public opinion polls show that a majority of Americans say abortion should be legal in at least some cases. But anti-abortion activists say they see plenty of room for persuasion in the details. Polling also suggests most Americans are open to some restrictions. Thirty-four percent of Americans say abortion should be legal at 14 weeks of pregnancy — roughly the end of the first trimester — compared with 27 percent who say it should be illegal, according to a survey released Friday by the Pew Research Center. Another 22 percent say “it depends.”“We are prepared to not only create a legal landscape to protect life at the federal and state levels, but also to support a culture of life,” said Kristen Waggoner, general counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which supports Mississippi’s ban at 15 weeks that led to the Supreme Court case that could overturn Roe.Advocates on the left see the leaked draft laying out a playbook for a sweeping attempt to roll back other established rights. “There are some folks on the right saying they’re just turning back to the states, when in fact it’s very clear their agenda is much broader than that,” Ms. Ford of NARAL said. “It’s not just about abortion.”The State of Roe v. WadeCard 1 of 4What is Roe v. Wade? More

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      Republicans Recast Abortion Stance, Wary of Voter Backlash

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      While Democrats decry a draft opinion that would eliminate the constitutional right to an abortion, Republicans who worked decades for this moment have been largely silent.WASHINGTON — Republicans have spent decades attacking the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide, but with the toppling of Roe v. Wade seemingly imminent, their leaders in Congress and around the country have grown suddenly quiet on the issue, part of a bid to avoid a backlash against their party ahead of the midterm elections.In the days after the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn the 50-year-old precedent, Republicans in Congress have notably refrained from taking a victory lap for having helped to install the conservative majority that has paved the way for such an outcome.Even as some of their counterparts at the state level race forward with far-reaching abortion bans that could even affect some methods of contraception, Republicans appear determined to recast their position on the issue as one of moderation and avert the gaze of voters away from their anti-abortion-rights agenda.“You need — it seems to me, excuse the lecture — to concentrate on what the news is today,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said on Tuesday. “Not a leaked draft but the fact that the draft was leaked.”The Republicans’ caution reflects the potential for the eventual ruling to change the midterm political landscape. Their leaders and candidates have built a campaign to reclaim control of the House and Senate around inflation, economic uncertainty, crime, border control and American doubts that President Biden, who is deeply unpopular, can right the ship.Now the prospect of eliminating abortion rights has added a tectonic change to American life into the mix, threatening to upend that focus.Democrats have signaled that they plan to use the coming decision as a rallying cry for voters to reject Republicans, portraying its implications as vast and unacceptable.“This is an issue that is defining for this country today, and if the American people don’t stand up for equality for every American at this moment in time, we will be undermining a right to privacy in more than this context,” said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York. She raised the specter of a conservative Supreme Court going after gay marriage, consensual same-sex relations and even contraception if the decision stands.Republicans, by contrast, believe their candidates’ job right now is to remain focused on the economy and not allow any other issue — particularly one that could alienate suburban independent voters whose backing they need to win congressional majorities — to distract them.The overturning of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision codifying abortion rights, would be a tectonic change to the American landscape.Leigh Vogel for The New York Times“Big picture, tell me what the 30-year fixed mortgage rate will be and if anything has improved with gas and groceries, and I’ll tell you the results,” said Corry Bliss, a veteran strategist who advises Republican candidates. “That is what the midterms are going to be about — period, end of discussion.”From Opinion: A Challenge to Roe v. WadeCommentary by Times Opinion writers and columnists on the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Alison Block: Offering compassionate care is a core aspect of reproductive health. It might mean overcoming one’s own hesitation to provide procedures ike second-trimester abortions. Jamelle Bouie: The leak proves that the Supreme Court is a political body, where horse-trading and influence campaigns are as much a part of the process as legal reasoning.Emily Bazelon: By suggesting in the draft that the progress women have made is a reason to throw out Roe, Justice Samuel Alito has turned feminism against itself.Bret Stephens: Roe v. Wade was an ill-judged decision when it was handed down. But overturning it would do more to replicate its damage than to reverse it.Sway: In the latest episode of her podcast, Kara Swisher talks to an abortion rights advocate about the draft opinion and the future of abortion rights in America.Republicans are talking about abortion, just not openly. A document circulated by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and obtained by Axios urged candidates to be low-key about the issue, with a post-Roe America looming as early as next month.“Abortion should be avoided as much as possible,” the document advised candidates to say. “States should have the flexibility to implement reasonable restrictions.”Republicans do not want to throw doctors and women in jail, the document continued. They certainly do not want to take away contraception. And if any party is being extreme, it instructed Republicans to argue, it is the Democrats, who will not accept even modest restrictions on abortion that most Americans support.The approach is calculated to exploit the fact that Democrats, outraged about the ruling yet powerless to do anything about it, are planning a symbolic vote that puts their party on the record opposing almost any abortion limits. On Wednesday, Senate Democrats will try — and likely fail — to take up legislation that would not only codify the right to an abortion, but also nullify restrictions that have passed muster with the courts.“The Democrats are going to make this easy for us,” said Mallory Carroll, vice president of communications at Susan B. Anthony List, which works to elect officials who oppose abortion rights. She called the Democrats’ Women’s Health Protection Act “far outside the American mainstream.”And “mainstream” is how the Republican campaign arms want their candidates to present themselves — as soft-spoken, compassionate, “consensus builders,” as the talking points put it.“I am pro-life, but this isn’t about political labels,” the documents suggest Republican candidates say. “I believe all Americans want us to welcome every child into the world with open arms. But if you disagree with me, my door’s always open.”Governors like Brian Kemp of Georgia and Ron DeSantis of Florida have said relatively little on the issue since the draft opinion came out.Even former President Donald J. Trump, who campaigned in 2016 on appointing Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe, has refrained from gloating.“Nobody knows exactly what it represents,” he told Politico, calling the leak of the opinion “a terrible thing for the court and for the country.“We’ll talk about it after we find out what the definitive version is,” he said.Even former President Donald J. Trump, who campaigned in 2016 on appointing Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe, has refrained from gloating.Terry Ratzlaff for The New York TimesIt is still possible that the court will not go as far as the draft. Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed that the leak was authentic but cautioned that the decision was not final.Still, the problem for Republican leaders in Washington who want to downplay the implications of the potential ruling is the very clear message coming from their party’s state legislators about the severe restrictions many would enact if there were no longer a right to an abortion in the Constitution.On Wednesday, lawmakers in Louisiana pushed forward legislation that would do precisely what the Washington talking points deny: grant constitutional rights to “all unborn children from the moment of fertilization,” and classify abortion as homicide. Such a law could, in fact, put women and doctors in prison and ban certain types of contraception, such as IUDs or morning-after pills, that block implantation of a fertilized egg.Understand the State of Roe v. WadeCard 1 of 4What is Roe v. Wade? More

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      Why Republicans Are So Angry About the Supreme Court Leak

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      The country is divided. There are those Americans furious that the Supreme Court is soon to take away the right to have an abortion. And there are those Americans furious that someone leaked that the Supreme Court was soon to take away the right to have an abortion.Among those Americans angry with the anonymous leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade is the entire Republican Party. “Last night’s stunning breach was an attack on the independence of the Supreme Court,” said Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, in a statement issued after the leak. “This lawless action should be investigated and punished as fully as possible. The Chief Justice must get to the bottom of it and the Department of Justice must pursue criminal charges if applicable.”Senator Ted Cruz of Texas told Fox News, “The leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion will do lasting damage to the integrity of the court and the independence of the judiciary.” And Senator Mike Lee of Utah wrote that because the Supreme Court relies on “decorum and confidentiality” to do its work, it is therefore “dangerous, despicable, and damaging” to leak its deliberations to the public. The Supreme Court, he declared, “is not a political body.”He might also have added that it has a right to privacy.In any case, McConnell, Cruz, Lee and the rest of their Republican colleagues must be joking.The Supreme Court is, and has always been, a political body. That’s true of the justices, certainly. Over the course of the court’s history, most of them were chosen with political considerations in mind, to the point that many were politicians themselves. It’s true of the institution as well. The Supreme Court deals with political issues — not simply abstract questions of law — and operates within the context of political conflict and political struggle.And the Supreme Court, right now, is an avowedly partisan institution, an unaccountable super-legislature controlled by men and women drawn from a cadre of conservative ideologues and apparatchiks, acting on behalf of the Republican Party and its allies. Whatever legitimacy it had retained was sacrificed in the drive to build the majority that seems poised to overturn Roe v. Wade and open the floodgates to harsh restrictions on the reproductive autonomy of millions of Americans.When McConnell led the Senate Republican caucus in a blockade of President Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court in 2016 and then killed what remained of the judicial filibuster the next year to place Neil Gorsuch in the seat instead, they diminished the legitimacy of the court. When those same Republicans looked past a credible accusation of sexual assault to confirm Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, they again diminished the legitimacy of the court. And when, with weeks left before the 2020 presidential election, Republicans ignored their own rule from four years earlier — that an election-year vacancy “should not be filled until we have a new president” — to place Amy Coney Barrett on the bench in a rushed, slapdash process, they once more diminished the legitimacy of the court.What’s more, their occasional protests notwithstanding (in a speech last year at the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville, Barrett insisted the court was “not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks”), the court’s conservatives have done almost nothing to dispel the view that their majority is little more than the judicial arm of the Republican Party. They use “emergency” orders to issue sweeping rulings in favor of ideologically aligned groups; they invent new doctrines designed to undermine voting rights protections; and as we’ve just witnessed, they’ll let nothing, not even 50 years of precedent, stand in the way of a sweeping ideological victory.No discussion of the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, or lack thereof, is complete without mention of the fact that its current composition is the direct result of our counter-majoritarian institutions. Only once in the past 30 years — in the 2004 election — has anything like a majority of the American electorate voted for a president who promised a conservative Supreme Court. The three members who cemented this particular conservative majority — Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett — were nominated by a president who lost the popular vote and were confirmed by senators representing far fewer than half of all Americans.The typical response to this point is to say we do not elect presidents by popular vote. And we don’t, that’s true. But Americans have always acted as if the popular vote conveys democratic legitimacy. That’s why supporters of Andrew Jackson condemned the “corrupt bargain” that placed John Quincy Adams in the White House in 1825, why many supporters of Samuel Tilden were furious with the compromise that gave Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency after the 1876 presidential election and why allies of George W. Bush were prepared to argue that he was the rightful winner of the 2000 election in the event he lost the Electoral College but won a majority of voters.It matters whether a president has democratic legitimacy. Donald Trump did not. But rather than act with that in mind, he used his power to pursue the interests of a narrow ideological faction, giving its representatives free rein to shape the Supreme Court as they saw fit. The court, then, is stained by the same democratic illegitimacy that marked Trump and his administration.Republicans seem to know this, and it helps explain why they’re so angry about the leak. They hope to write conservative ideology into the Constitution. For that to work, however, Americans need to believe that the court is an impartial arbiter of law, where each justice uses reason to come to the correct answer on any given issue of constitutional interpretation.The leak throws that out the window. The leak makes it clear that the Supreme Court is a political body, where horse-trading and influence campaigns are as much a part of the process as pure legal reasoning.If the court is a political body — if it is a partisan body — then a roused and unhappy public may decide to reject its judgments and authority. That public may ask itself why it should listen to a court that doesn’t heed its opinion. And it may decide that the time has come to reform the court and dismantle the ill-gotten majority that conservatives worked so hard to create.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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      Four Opinion Writers on Roe, J.D. Vance and Trump

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      During a seismic week in American politics, one clear winner has emerged: former President Donald Trump. The three Supreme Court justices he nominated appear poised to deliver a long-sought victory to the right by overturning Roe v. Wade, after a draft of the anticipated Dobbs decision was leaked Monday evening. The next day, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance won his race in the Republican Senate primary in Ohio after Mr. Trump’s endorsement resuscitated his sluggish campaign. What do the events of this week mean for both parties as they look ahead to the midterm elections? The Times Opinion writers Jane Coaston, Michelle Cottle and Ross Douthat discuss what this moment means for the U.S. political landscape with the Times Opinion podcast host Lulu Garcia-Navarro.Four Opinion Writers Ask After Vance Win and Roe Leak: ‘Is This Trump’s World Now?’The following conversation has been edited for clarity.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Before we get to the Ohio race, I think we really need to understand this leaked opinion and how it sets the stage for red states and red races.I think what’s been stunning to me is how surprised everyone is that this Supreme Court — with five conservative members who seem to have been expressly picked to deliver the end of Roe — seems ready to effectively end abortion access for millions of women.Obviously the leaked opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, published by Politico, is not a final draft. No official court ruling has come out. But it seems to me that far from ending the debate over abortion, this might supercharge it. What do you think? Do you think it’s going to be the galvanizing issue liberals hope it will be?Ross Douthat: First, I just want to stress that this is a leak of a draft opinion. Including on abortion, Supreme Court decisions have changed between the initial draft and the final ruling.However, I agree that it was always quite likely that you would get this kind of ruling from a conservative Supreme Court, and its effects are going to be the return of real abortion politics for the first time in decades. That will have some kind of supercharging effect just inevitably. Because if Roe falls, you immediately have laws on the books in various states that restrict abortion or make it illegal that will create debates within those states.But I think the reality is because we haven’t had these kinds of debates in so long, they are — even by the standards of our unpredictable politics — really hard to predict. I personally have been surprised, in a way, at how stable Texas politics has been since the Supreme Court allowed Texas effectively to restrict abortion after six weeks.My general assumption has been that there would be a substantial backlash and a big political opportunity for Democrats. But the evidence from state politics so far doesn’t prove that that’s real. To some extent, we’re just going to have to see what happens without having any recent analogies to tell us what’s likely to take place.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: I want to play this tape of Senator Elizabeth Warren, speaking about the possible end of Roe at a rally here in Washington:I am angry because we have reached the combination of what Republicans have been fighting for, angling for, for decades now. And we are going to fight back.Speaking of opportunities for Democrats, as Ross has pointed out and as Senator Elizabeth Warren there says, this has been decades in the making. But fight back how? Options seem limited right now.Michelle Cottle: It looks like this is going to wind up being an issue that gets fought in the states for a while. There is legislation floating around Capitol Hill, but what the Democrats have passed in the House of Representatives is not going anywhere. Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski have a pared-down codification of Roe, but that’s unlikely to go anywhere right now. It’s one of these things that I think at the federal level is just going to flummox people.Democrats are hoping that this will give them a boost in the midterms come November, but I don’t expect it to have a huge impact this time around. I think it could, though, going forward.The place where you might see it in November would be in the primaries, where Representative Henry Cuellar, who is a pro-life Democrat on the Texas border, is in a fight with a pro-choice challenger. Could this tilt that race just enough for Cuellar to lose and have a different Democrat going into the generals? I don’t know, but I don’t expect it to have a huge impact on the midterms in November.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: We know from our history in this country and what we see in other places where there isn’t abortion access, that women who don’t have abortion access will resort to illegal abortions, putting their lives at risk.It strikes me that all of this is happening while we have a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House. Is there going to be a feeling that Democrats haven’t only fumbled, they’ve also roundly been beaten, and it could lead to a decline in support from their base? It could have the opposite effect of galvanizing them.Jane Coaston: It’s a complicated issue. A Gallup poll from 2021 found that the poorest Americans, who are most likely to suffer from a lack of access to abortion, are also more likely to believe that abortion is morally wrong.It’s worth remembering that this has been the carrot waved in front of social conservatives for 50 years. And now you’re hearing from a lot of conservatives that actually nothing will change. A conservative writer, Erick Erickson, said yesterday that this isn’t a big deal because nothing will change. They didn’t call them “Students for a 12-week abortion ban.” They didn’t call it “March for a 15-Week Abortion Ban.”This is going to be complicated for a lot of people, especially because they will see that there’ll be a clear difference between states like Connecticut and Colorado that have already provided abortion protections and Republican states that attempt to have an abortion ban, whether it will be a Texas-like system in which you are asking people to essentially inform on others, or just a straight-up ban.Voters have very conflicted views on abortion, but generally, they support people having some access to abortion.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: I’m going to pick up on something you said. It is true that something like 80 percent of Americans think there should be some access to abortion. What that access should look like is unclear. But if Roe is overturned, that means that states will have the right to legislate on abortion access.Red states already have “trigger” laws in place that will immediately curtail abortion access for their residents if that happens. Some states are going to be doing one thing and other states are going to be doing a different thing. What does that mean for the unity of this country, where some citizens will have some rights and others won’t?Ross Douthat: I’m sorry to keep pleading agnosticism, but I don’t think we know. If you go back to the period before Roe was decided, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, this was basically the system that we were heading toward.There had been some liberalization of abortion laws in a number of states. There was a nascent pro-life movement that had pushed back against that and had halted and reversed that trend in other states. At that point, if you were looking at the landscape, you would have said, Well, this is sort of the federalist solution, right? This is the way the American system is set up to negotiate some deeply polarizing social issues.Now, that was also a landscape in which abortion had not been nationalized by the Supreme Court and had not then become a key driver of polarization between the parties. Back in the 1970s, you had lots of pro-choice Republicans and you had lots of pro-life Democrats, including Joseph Robinette Biden, now the pro-choice president of the United States.You had a landscape where you could imagine abortion policy being federalized, in the sense of being different from state to state, and also the two political parties not dividing over it.The fact that now the parties have divided over it so completely makes me suspect that the federalist strategy will be somewhat unstable and you will have constant pressure to have a national abortion policy from both sides, which will then implicate debates over the filibuster and everything else.The flip side of that is that lots of national Republican politicians have never been enthusiastic about talking about abortion, let alone legislating on it. A lot will depend on what happens in some of the bigger red states like Florida and Texas. Does the pro-life movement consider that an at least temporary victory?Or is that politically unstable? Is there a big backlash? Democrats have assumed that Texas is supposed to trend blue for a long time. So in theory an overreaching abortion ban in Texas could provoke the kind of backlash that Democrats have been looking for.Jane Coaston: It’s worth noting here that we don’t know what this will look like. We’ve seen that Senate Republicans passed around a memo on potential talking points and some of them include things like saying, We don’t want to put doctors in jail. We would never take away anyone’s contraception or health care. But you are hearing from other Republicans who are saying, for example, We do want to go after Griswold.Ross Douthat: Wait a minute. Which Republicans — outside of some traditionalist Catholic blog or something — are saying that they want to pass a law banning contraception?Jane Coaston: Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. She brought up Griswold as being constitutionally unsound.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Griswold v. Connecticut, of course, is the case where the Supreme Court ruled that marital privacy protects couples against state restrictions on contraception.Jane Coaston: My point is that when you have something that you’ve been fighting over for 50 years, there are lots of tangential pieces that people have been arguing about. For instance, telemedicine and access to abortion-causing medications. And there are Catholics who argue that some forms of birth control are themselves abortion-causing medications.Michelle Cottle: We have no idea how this is going to play out, even with just the abortion restrictions. You were asking about rights and different rights for people in different states. I mean, the reality is there are some states where it’s virtually impossible already to get an abortion — where there’s one abortion clinic for the entire state. If you’re talking about surgical abortions, that has already become a matter of where you live.An interesting thing that we’re going to watch play out here — and it’s going to get really sticky, really fast — are medication abortions. Are you going to have a black market? How are states going to determine who’s getting what? When there are certain rules in place that allow for medication abortions, which now are upward of 50 percent of abortions. That’s one thing. But if you have states that have just outlawed them, it starts to get really complicated. Who are you going after? How are you going to enforce this? What happens if somebody crosses state lines to get these meds?We have no idea what the future landscape will look like, much less one step down the road with abortifacients or anything like that.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: What we have seen in other countries that restrict abortion is that women have illegal abortions and get their health put at risk. It’s not that the numbers of abortions necessarily go down. It’s that they may not be as safe.When you’ve had 50 years of abortion access, as you’ve had in the United States, if you take away those rights, as will happen to women in many red states, that is going to have serious repercussions. I don’t think that this will be the end of it. And I think it’s naïve to think that it will.Ross Douthat: I have to argue with you very briefly. There is a frequent pro-choice argument along the lines of: “Abortion restrictions don’t reduce abortion rates. They just lead to more illegal abortions.”We have a lot of evidence from the developed world — from the United States and Western Europe — that that is not true: that rich nations or states that have restrictions on abortions have fewer abortions. The abortion rate is higher in Scandinavia, which has more liberal abortion laws, than it is in Germany, which has more restrictive abortion laws in general.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Rich people will be able to get abortions, sure. But the disadvantaged will not.Ross Douthat: That’s not what I’m saying. I’m including the poor people within those rich countries.Jane Coaston: That’s a point worth making, as is the point that abortion rates in the United States have actually been going down. They reached a high, I believe, in the early 1980s.Ross Douthat: Yes.Jane Coaston: Each year we keep hitting record lows in the number of abortions.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Because we have sex education and contraception.Ross Douthat: That’s not what’s driving it.Jane Coaston: Also, fewer people are having sex in general — yay! [LAUGHS]Ross Douthat: That’s more of what’s driving it. The reason that the pro-life side supports restrictions on abortion is that there is a lot of evidence that restrictions reduce abortion rates. This is where I completely agree that the question of who is getting prosecuted, what is done with state power, makes a really big difference.But right now, you have states in the U.S. and countries around the world, including places like Chile, that have had restrictive abortion laws that have very low maternal mortality rates and very good records on women’s health. It is possible to restrict abortion without having the massive maternal mortality nightmare that gets brought up. It just requires public spending and sensible policymaking.Michelle Cottle: Which has no bearing on this society.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Indeed. If the pandemic showed us anything.Ross Douthat: Well, this is the United States of America.Jane Coaston: There have been conversations among social conservatives about a post-Roe environment. All of them seem to recognize that it would require spending choices that Republicans have historically not wanted to make. Expanding access to WIC, for example.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: WIC, the federal nutrition program that supports women, infants and children.Jane Coaston: Yeah. Expanding access to maternal care, because again, maternal mortality risks, especially around African American women, are very bad in the United States.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: As much as I’ve enjoyed this debate, we have something else to argue about, which is Trump and the Ohio race on Tuesday. Here is the victorious J.D. Vance after he won the Republican primary:Thanks to the president for everything, for endorsing me. And I got to say, a lot of the fake news media out there, and there are some good ones in the back there, there’s some bad ones, too, let’s be honest, but they wanted to write a story that this campaign would be the death of Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda. Ladies and gentlemen, it ain’t the death of the “America First” agenda.I think this story connects to our first conversation because we were talking about abortion, one of the original culture war issues. And here we have, with Vance victorious, someone who’s embodying Trump and his “America First” agenda.Michelle, you were just outside Cincinnati with J.D. Vance on the campaign trail, and with Donald Trump Jr. What stood out to you the most about the campaigning you saw?Michelle Cottle: The Vance clip you played basically captures the whole thing. The minute he got the nod from Trump, this race didn’t have anything to do with J.D. Vance or any of the other candidates. It became a referendum on Trump and Trump’s king-making ability.I watched Don Jr. appear at these events, and it was all about how Vance was the only Trump-endorsed candidate in this race. It was all about Trump, which is a testament to how far J.D. Vance has bent over to smooch Donald Trump’s backside, which is what a lot of the party has done — in fact, what most of the party has done. But it is still galling to watch.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Jane, you are from Ohio.Jane Coaston: Cincinnati, stand up!Lulu Garcia-Navarro: What does what Michelle is saying tell you about not only your home state but the direction of the G.O.P.?Jane Coaston: I talked to J.D. Vance back in 2016 when he published “Hillbilly Elegy,” and he told me that white working-class voters were frustrated and hungry for political leadership and that a lot of “political elites” hadn’t picked that up. He has since taken on the mantle of being a jerk. He has taken on talking about cat ladies and arguing about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, because you have to sound like Trump in order for Trump to see you as being part of him.There is an idea that this is a part of Ohio, north of Cincinnati, where, in Vance’s view, things used to be better and now they are bad. And that it is the responsibility of someone — Vance or somebody else — to fix it, to make things better. And there is an idea that this was the fault of globalization or NAFTA or big business or something like that. And that the people who were like Vance used to be better. And now they aren’t better, but it’s not their fault.There are people who wax rhapsodic about working-class jobs, many of whom have never actually worked. You hear this when people talk about manufacturing jobs. My grandpa worked in a copper mill. It sucked and he died at 48. There’s this idea, this halcyon concept of an Ohio that once was. A Cincinnati that used to be.Michelle Cottle: This is what the Trump appeal was in general, the idea that these people had been left behind. This is why he played well in Pennsylvania. That is not an unusual concept. The problem with Trumpism is they’ve taken this kind of populist impulse and turned it into: “It’s the immigrants’ fault. It’s the Black people’s fault.” They’re blaming it on somebody else.Jane Coaston: It’s “the other.”Michelle Cottle: Yeah, they’re blaming it on China, too. It’s “the other.”Jane Coaston: It’s me, essentially. I did it. [LAUGHS]Michelle Cottle: At these rallies you don’t hear about abortion. You hear about how immigrants have turned central Ohio into the child trafficking capital of the world. It’s completely shamelessly, xenophobic.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Ross, you have made no mystery of your distaste for Trump’s style and its impact on the tenor of the G.O.P. What do you make of Vance’s win and what it signals about the post-Trump presidency era of the Republican Party?Ross Douthat: I should say, just as a preface, that I know J.D. Vance and so I’m trying to offer detached analysis. But the listeners should know that I do in fact know him.Jane’s narrative is broadly right: There’s a basic continuity in populous worldview between the Vance who was extremely critical of Trump, in ways that I still agree with, and the Vance who won his endorsement.But there is a difference, too. “Hillbilly Elegy” is more about an internal pathology in white working-class America than it is about the elite policy mistakes that hollowed out American industry. So there’s been some shift in emphasis, but the basic narrative of elite betrayal of the American heartland — I don’t think that’s something that Vance has flip-flopped on.Even when he was damning Trump in the past, the argument was always, Trump is tapping into real and legitimate grievances, but he is essentially the political opioid of these communities that have been hit so hard by fentanyl.That’s the background. Then Vance ran a campaign in which — unlike Josh Mandel, his big rival — he spent less time personally appealing for Trump’s support and more time in the MAGA-extended universe of Steve Bannon’s show, Tucker Carlson’s show, various podcasts and so on that are all extremely right-wing and extremely Trumpy.Politico had a really good piece about how the Trump endorsement came about. Not surprisingly, Trump didn’t respond well to Mandel and others begging for his endorsement, and he seems to have decided to endorse Vance because he watched the debates and thought that Vance looked the best on TV, which, as we know, is the most important thing for anything connected to Trump. That, and he saw Vance play golf and liked his swing. The entire future history of American politics may turn on whether Trump likes a Senate candidate’s golf swing.Jane Coaston: Ohio’s political winds have shifted significantly. I do think it will be interesting to see how Vance attempts to get at a broader audience, if he even attempts to. That is going to be a bigger audience, and one accustomed to Ohio Republicans like Rob Portman or Steve Chabot, who are definitely more Ohioan. We’re Midwesterners! We tamp down our feelings with lasagna. But that’s not what Vance does. His kind of online anger and online ire — I am curious to see how that plays out when he’s having to make an appeal to, well, not my parents, but people like my parents.Michelle Cottle: That’s one of the problems we’re looking at with America in a foul mood, though, right? Whether you think it’s because of the pandemic or inflation or whatever, Americans are sour, and when you are sour, you are spoiling for a fight and you are looking for someone to come and tell you: “You are right to be angry. This is not your fault. You have been taken advantage of, and I’m going to fix it for you.” Those are the headwinds that the Democrats are looking at.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: I’m going to wrap this up by asking for predictions, which I know everyone loves to do. This is mine: If politicians like J.D. Vance are elected into office in the fall, on the G.O.P. side, we’re going to have more of the strong culture-war G.O.P. presidential nominees in 2024, probably Trump or Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who are drawn to these divisive issues. The Democrats have had trouble countering those narratives.What do you see coming down the line, in terms of our political landscape and what it might portend?Michelle Cottle: Historical trends made it hard for the Democrats not to lose ground in this midterm. They have not had a break with the pandemic or inflation or anything like that. I think they’re going to have a rough midterm, and then going into 2024, if for some reason Trump does not run, I think DeSantis immediately moves to the head of line and we’re looking at somebody like that from the Republican side. There’s no real indication that the Republicans want to move away from Trumpism in the near future.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Ross? Trump is king?Ross Douthat: There’s no indication at all. For Republican voters in Ohio, the fundamental choice was between Josh Mandel, who was basically the Trump attitude but with the pre-Trump mix of economic policies — that’s why Mandel was endorsed by the Club for Growth and they poured all this money into defeating Vance — or Vance, who was channeling the Trump attitude, but with policies on trade and immigration and foreign policy that were much more like the shift that Trump brought.Michelle Cottle: They could have gone with Matt Dolan, who was running and who came in a tight third behind Mandel.Ross Douthat: Right. But that suggests that it’s not just the Trump attitude. There is a constituency for Trump’s issues in the G.O.P. that remains very powerful.Fundamentally, the Democrats’ problems are about inflation and the post-Covid recovery turning into an inflationary spiral that has real wages going down, even as people are making more money on paper. That’s the biggest problem.With the culture war stuff, those battles are a cycle of overreach and backlash. What we’re living through right now, especially with the critical race theory debates and gender in schools debates, is a backlash against the sweeping leftward movement that we saw late in the Trump era, where there was a transformation of elite institutions, particularly in the summer of 2020, along more dramatically progressive lines. The backlash to that was always going to have a certain amount of political running room.The question is — whether it’s abortion or transgender issues or anything else — where does that backlash end up overreaching in its turn? Or do Republicans have room to have a backlash and still win because Democrats haven’t found a good way to get back to the center themselves?Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Jane, I’m going to leave the last word to you.Jane Coaston: I’m so interested in how Republicans are using this moment to respond to cultural trends with politics. At a certain point you just can’t make everything you don’t like illegal. If you do, people will respond poorly because legally, that’s questionable. That’s morally questionable, too.A politics that’s “I just don’t want anyone to do something I don’t like” is going to make people mad.I’m not sure what’s going to happen in the midterms, but these trends of overreach speak to an idea. If Republicans have control of the Supreme Court or the House and Senate, will they still be thinking: “Why are people not more like us? Why are people not doing what we want?” And liberals can see that Democrats right now have perceived control and are saying: “Why can’t we do anything? We have nothing!” Both sides screaming at each other, “You have everything and we have nothing.”That’s a really bad state for our politics to be in, because it means that no one takes any responsibility for anything. That’s what makes me worried.Lulu Garcia-Navarro is a Times Opinion podcast host. Jane Coaston is the host of “The Argument” podcast. Michelle Cottle is a member of the editorial board. Ross Douthat is a Times columnist.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.Times Opinion audio produced by Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Alison Bruzek and Phoebe Lett. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Adrian Rivera and Alex Ellerbeck. Original music by Carole Sabouraud. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to James Ryerson, Jenny Casas, Vishakha Darbha and Patrick Healy. More

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      in Elections

      Overnight, Midterms Get a White-Hot New Focus: Abortion

      by

      Exultant Republicans planned new bans. Democrats, who have struggled to rally around abortion rights, hoped a bruising Supreme Court loss could jolt their voters into action.A leaked draft of a Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade instantly propelled the debate over abortion into the white-hot center of American politics, emboldening Republicans across the country and leaving Democrats scrambling to jolt their voters into action six months before the midterm elections.Although the Supreme Court on Tuesday stressed that the draft opinion was not final, the prospect that the nation’s highest court was on the cusp of invalidating the constitutional right to abortion was a crowning moment for Republicans who are already enjoying momentum in the fight for control of Congress, statehouses and governor’s offices. Republican state leaders on Tuesday announced plans to further tighten restrictions on the procedure — or outlaw it outright — once the final ruling lands in the coming months.Democrats, reeling from the blow and divided over whom to blame, hoped the news would serve as a painful reality check for voters who have often taken abortion rights for granted and struggled to mobilize on the issue with the passion of abortion rights opponents. They said they planned to drive home the stakes in the fall, particularly in state races, putting abortion rights on the November ballot in key contests in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and other battlegrounds.“People were concerned about the lack of energy for voters in the midterms and not coming out to vote — well, the Supreme Court has just handed us a reason for people to vote,” said Representative Susan Wild, a Pennsylvania Democrat who faces a competitive re-election.“At one time I would have said they’re never going to take away right to contraception. But I don’t believe that anymore,” she said.Independent voters have overwhelmingly soured on President Biden, and many core Democratic constituencies have shown signs of trouble. Some party strategists privately cautioned against the idea that even something as seismic as overturning Roe would surpass the importance of the economy and inflation with many voters, something Republicans argued publicly.“Conventional wisdom right now is this helps Democrats because it will spur turnout, but it also could certainly spur turnout for base Republicans,” said Glen Bolger, a Republican strategist. “Generally most voters focus on the economy, for instance, and right now of course, inflation is dominant.”A woman writing a message supporting abortion rights before a protest on Tuesday in Manhattan.Caitlin Ochs for The New York TimesAn anti-abortion protester on Tuesday outside the Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Jackson, Miss.Rory Doyle for The New York TimesBut polling also shows that Americans strongly oppose completely overturning Roe v. Wade — 54 percent of Americans think the Roe decision should be upheld while 28 percent believe it should be overturned, a new Washington Post-ABC poll found. Democrats argue that many voters have long believed it was not truly in danger of being gutted. The draft opinion may change their calculus in meaningful ways, especially with suburban women and disillusioned base voters, those strategists say.“It hasn’t ever been that voters don’t care about it,” said Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster and strategist, and the president of Impact Research. “It’s been concluded that it’s less effective because voters don’t believe that it could actually go away. And so with what the Supreme Court is signaling they’re about to do, is completely change and eliminate that sort of theory of the mobilizing power of abortion.”Understand the Challenge to Roe v. WadeThe Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization could be the most consequential to women’s access to abortion since 1973.The Arguments: After hearing arguments in December, the court appeared poised to uphold the Mississippi law at the center of the case that could overturn Roe v. Wade.Under Scrutiny: In overturning Roe v. Wade, would the justices be following their oath to uphold the Constitution or be engaging in political activism? Here is what legal scholars think.An America Without Roe: The changes created by the end of abortion rights at the federal level would mostly be felt by poor women in Republican states.An Extraordinary Breach: The leak of the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade suggests an internal disarray at odds with the decorum prized by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.Familiar Arguments: The draft opinion, by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., draws on two decades-old conservative critiques of the Roe v. Wade decision.Legislative Activity: Some Republican-led state legislatures have already moved to advance abortion restrictions ahead of the court’s decision. Here is a look at those efforts.Without the court’s protection for abortion rights, states would be free to enforce their own restrictions or protections. That patchwork system is likely to shift the focus to governor’s races, where a state’s executive could have an outsize role in determining whether abortion is legal.Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s attorney general and a candidate for governor, said he would veto any legislation restricting access to abortions.Matt Rourke/Associated PressIn Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, the state attorney general and Democratic candidate for governor, signaled that he planned to seize on the looming threat to Roe to cast himself as a one-man firewall against abortion rights opponents in his state. On Tuesday, he pledged to veto any legislation from the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania legislature that would restrict abortion access.“Every Pennsylvanian should be able to raise a family on their own terms,” Mr. Shapiro said. “And that means deciding if and when and how they want to do that.”But for all the talk from Democrats about abortion being on the ballot this fall, Mr. Shapiro’s race is the exception. Far more states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Texas and Wisconsin, all have laws on the books effectively banning abortion that would go into effect once Roe is invalidated. The November elections are unlikely to give Democrats the numbers to reverse those.In Wisconsin, for example, an 1849 law made performing an abortion a felony unless the pregnancy endangered the life of the mother. That law remains on the books, though several of the state’s Republican candidates for governor have endorsed proposals to eliminate any exceptions to the ban.On Tuesday afternoon, Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin sent a letter, signed by 15 fellow Democratic governors, urging Congress to enact federal abortion protections — a plea that is almost certain to go unmet.Although Mr. Evers won’t be able to make the case that he can save abortion protections in Wisconsin, he will argue that he can make other key decisions about how much the machinery of the state is used toward investigations and prosecutions of abortions, said Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia played up a 2019 law that bans abortions in the state after six weeks.Alyssa Pointer/ReutersRepublicans were celebrating as they appeared on the cusp of victory. In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican facing stiff primary and general election challenges, took a victory lap Tuesday, playing up a 2019 state law that bans abortion in the state after six weeks. The law has been held up in a federal appeals court awaiting the outcome of the Supreme Court’s decision.“We are the voice of all those people that are out there and have been in the trenches for decades doing this and we’re glad to be in the fight with them,” Mr. Kemp said during a radio interview Tuesday.In South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican believed to have presidential ambitions, said Tuesday that she would immediately call for a special session to outlaw abortion in her state. Attorney General Eric Schmitt of Missouri said a broad ban on abortions in the state was just a signature away from enactment if Roe is in fact overturned. The speaker of the Nebraska Legislature told colleagues to expect a special session on abortion following the Supreme Court’s decision.Democrats running for Senate renewed calls to put Roe’s abortion protections into federal law and change the Senate rules, if necessary, to do it. Although Democrats currently control the Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote, they do not appear to have the votes to codify a woman’s right to an abortion, a major point of contention and blame-shifting among Democrats.Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia said Tuesday that he was still opposed to any changes to the filibuster, effectively ending any Democratic hopes of passing an abortion bill.Still, Democratic candidates signaled they planned to continue to promise to fight to codify Roe.“Democrats have to act quickly and get rid of the filibuster,” said Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who is running for Senate, to “finally codify Roe into law. We cannot afford to wait.”Kina Collins, a Democrat in a primary for a House seat in Chicago, called on the party’s leaders to “fight like our lives depend on it.”“There is no place in this party for Democrats who will not,” she said.Sensing the potential harm of yet another intraparty skirmish, Representative Sean Patrick Maloney of New York, the chairman of the House Democrats’ campaign arm, warned against blaming fellow Democrats.“Focusing on what’s wrong with Democrats in the Senate or elsewhere is (another) circular firing squad,” Mr. Maloney wrote on Twitter. “We can only end the filibuster, pass real protections for choice IF WE WIN more power.”Trip Gabriel contributed reporting. More

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      in Elections

      Roe’s Fall Would Alter Political Battle Lines. But in What Way?

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      Democrats who were privately hoping for a surprise development to shake up the midterms have gotten their wish. Nobody expected it to come in the form of a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, however.It’s a political bombshell. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to discern where the shrapnel lands.Democrats we spoke with on Tuesday were furious about Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion, which was presented in the document as the view of the court’s conservative majority. Universally, these Democrats viewed it as an assault on the fundamental rights of women to control their own bodies.But in coldly rational political terms, they expect the news to energize their base and motivate key swing groups, such as suburban college-educated women. They also pointed to polling showing that banning abortion, as a number of states have indicated they would do if Roe were overturned, would be unpopular with the broader public.“The more you see Republicans cheering the decision, the more you’re going to have voters saying, ‘Wait a second, this is not what I thought they were going to do,’” said Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster.“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote in the draft, which a representative for the court emphasized in a statement was not necessarily a final opinion. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”Understand the Challenge to Roe v. WadeThe Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization could be the most consequential to women’s access to abortion since 1973.The Arguments: After hearing arguments in December, the court appeared poised to uphold the Mississippi law at the center of the case that could overturn Roe v. Wade.Under Scrutiny: In overturning Roe v. Wade, would the justices be following their oath to uphold the Constitution or be engaging in political activism? Here is what legal scholars think.An America Without Roe: The changes created by the end of abortion rights at the federal level would mostly be felt by poor women in Republican states.An Extraordinary Breach: The leak of the draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade suggests an internal disarray at odds with the decorum prized by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.Familiar Arguments: The draft opinion, by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., draws on two decades-old conservative critiques of the Roe v. Wade decision.Legislative Activity: Some Republican-led state legislatures have already moved to advance abortion restrictions ahead of the court’s decision. Here is a look at those efforts.Omero pointed to an April 26 polling memo by Navigator, a Democratic messaging group she is involved with, arguing that a Supreme Court ruling along these lines “would motivate Democrats and pro-choice Americans significantly more to turn out in 2022 than Republicans and those who are pro-life.”Now that Roe’s elimination is no longer hypothetical, Omero said, she expects voters will begin paying more attention to the issue. “We’re going to have a decision that is going to lay bare the differences between the parties,” she said.What Republicans are sayingSo far, top Republicans would rather talk about the leak itself than the potential decision’s political implications.Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, called the disclosure “an attack on the independence of the Supreme Court.” It was “a judicial insurrection,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. “An act of institutional sabotage,” said Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska.“They’re always unsure how to talk about abortion,” said Rachel Bovard, a senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute, a right-leaning think tank. Bovard said she had spent the past day discussing the implications of the leak with nervous Republican lawmakers and aides.Privately, Republicans are still trying to gauge how the issue will affect the midterms. On Tuesday, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a memo urging candidates to “be the compassionate consensus-builder” on abortion, while also highlighting what Republicans say are extreme views among Democrats.Indicating some concern about how Democrats and activists on the left might try to portray Alito’s draft opinion, the memo also recommended that G.O.P. candidates “forcefully refute” statements by Democrats that Republicans want to ban contraception and “throw doctors and women in jail.”Several G.O.P. operatives said that the issue could ultimately play to Republicans’ advantage if the debate becomes about whether to enact restrictions on the timing of abortions rather than about whether there ought to be a federal right in the first place.“Running on overturning Roe is not a winning issue” in a general election, said Garrett Ventry, a Republican political consultant. “Late-term abortion is.”Other Republicans expressed skepticism that abortion, rather than inflation or crime, would move many voters in November.“The battle lines on this issue have been drawn for a long time,” said Sean Spicer, a former press secretary for the Trump White House and Republican National Committee strategist.But the decision is likely to affect how candidates, donors and activists approach the political fights ahead of them, funneling millions of dollars into Senate and state-level races that could determine the shape of the post-Roe world.“If you’re running for Senate, you are tied to the national ideological debate,” said Kristin Davison, a Republican consultant involved in midterm races across the country. Running for governor is more complicated, she added, because “now you have to do something about it.”For social conservatives who have waited decades to overturn Roe, the fight is just beginning.“There’s no doubt the battle goes to the state level,” said Bob Vander Plaats, a Christian conservative leader in Iowa, who added that the next focus for the anti-abortion movement would be pushing across the country for laws on fetal cardiac activity. “It’s not a political issue. It’s a right or wrong issue.”What to readWhat would the end of Roe v. Wade look like? Here is our map showing where various states stand on abortion, and here are key questions and answers.The leak of the draft decision on Roe was an extraordinary breach and left the Supreme Court seriously shaken. Our reporter Adam Liptak explores the possible motives, methods and whether defections are still possible.Outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday, scores of supporters and opponents of abortion rights gathered with megaphones and signs. Here’s what they had to say.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More