What They’re Saying: Republicans’ Efforts To Overturn Roe v. Wade Could “Backfire” for GOP in Senate Battlegrounds

Washington Post: “Democrats immediately signaled they would aim to make abortion rights a central focus in next year’s midterm elections.”

A wave of news coverage is highlighting how Republicans’ latest attacks on Roe v. Wade are set to “roil next year’s elections,” with Democrats already holding GOP Senate candidates accountable on “an incredibly powerful issue,” and GOP strategists openly fearing their attacks on women’s healthcare will “backfire.” See for yourself:

New York Times: Abortion Decision Could Spill Into Midterm Elections

• “What is fundamentally at stake is that every woman in our country should be able to make her own health care decisions and chart her own destiny and have the full independence to do that,” said Senator Maggie Hassan.

• That outcome, Democrats said, would transform the long fight over abortion rights from theory to reality and give new resonance to their arguments that a Democratic Congress is needed to protect access to the procedure and seat judges who are not hostile to abortion rights.

• “There is no question that should the decision be one that would overturn Roe v. Wade, it will certainly motivate our base,” said Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “Quite frankly, we know that a majority of the people in this country continue to believe it should be the law of the land.”

• “It will be an incredibly powerful issue,” Mr. Peters said.

• Party strategists say the abortion issue has already demonstrated salience in Nevada, another key race in the battle for Senate control. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, who is seeking re-election, is a strong proponent of abortion rights, while a leading Republican opponent, Adam Laxalt, opposes abortion rights and as attorney general joined efforts to limit the procedure.

• In New Hampshire, a state with a history of strongly favoring abortion rights, Ms. Hassan and fellow Democrats have repeatedly criticized state Republicans for cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood and instituting new abortion restrictions such as mandatory ultrasounds for those seeking to terminate a pregnancy.

Bloomberg: Democrats Poised to Grab Abortion Case as Fuel for 2022 Turnout

• Democrats stand to gain a powerful campaign tool to gin up support just ahead of the 2022 congressional midterm elections, based on the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to roll back abortion rights.

• Democratic candidates for Senate are also eager to raise the issue, with New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan joining a Zoom press conference on the Supreme Court case earlier this week and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly tweeting his opposition to the Mississippi law at the heart of Wednesday’s Supreme Court case that bans abortion after 15 weeks.

• In Arizona, Georgia, Ohio and Wisconsin, existing laws that restrict abortion would automatically go into effect if Roe were overturned. Incumbent Republican Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who has not yet decided whether he will run, would also face scrutiny over their votes to confirm the Supreme Court justices.

• The likely Republican nominee in Nevada, former state attorney general Adam Laxalt, has a record of opposing abortion rights, and wide-open Republican primaries in Arizona, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania in the spring could push candidates to stake out stronger positions against abortion rights that Democrats would use against them in the general election.

• Republican Senate “candidates end up taking positions in the primary that are really unpopular with the general electorate,” said Jazmin Vargas, national press secretary for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Washington Post: Potential collapse of Roe shakes up political landscape

• Democrats immediately signaled they would aim to make abortion rights a central focus in next year’s midterm elections.

• The DSCC, the campaign arm of Senate Democrats, issued a statement drawing attention to the hearing.

• “A woman’s right to make our own health care choices will be a defining issue in the 2022 midterms, and for voters it will reinforce the stakes of protecting and expanding our Democratic Senate Majority with the power to confirm or reject Supreme Court justices,” said spokeswoman Jazmin Vargas.

Associated Press: Democrats hope threat to abortion rights will rouse voters

• Democrats from Nevada to New Hampshire are promising to make abortion a centerpiece of their political strategy heading into the midterm elections, betting that an intense focus on the divisive issue can rally their voters.

• “This isn’t crying wolf. This is actually happening,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who is facing a difficult reelection test in Nevada, said in an Associated Press interview. She took to the Senate floor Wednesday and warned,, “The reproductive freedom of women everywhere is in jeopardy,” before casting her Republican opponents as “anti-abortion extremists” in the interview.

• Privately, some Republicans concede that a wave of dramatic new state restrictions on abortion that could follow the court’s ruling could change the conversation and disrupt their momentum heading into 2022. Twelve states have “trigger laws” that would immediately ban all or nearly all abortions if Roe is overturned, and other GOP-led states would likely move quickly as well.

• David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, vowed that the party would put “the threat that Republicans pose to women’s health care front and center in Senate campaigns.” And vulnerable Senate Democrats in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire leaned into the issue Wednesday and Thursday.

• Sen. Maggie Hassan… joined a handful of New Hampshire voters protesting Wednesday outside the Supreme Court. In a subsequent interview, she warned that the court was “on the verge of gutting Roe v. Wade.”

• “If the Supreme Court won’t protect a woman’s fundamental decision-making rights, and won’t respect a woman’s role as a full and equal citizen in a democracy, it leaves people at the mercy of a state legislature like the one we’re seeing in New Hampshire,” Hassan said.

• In Nevada… Republican Senate candidate Adam Laxalt joined GOP colleagues from other states in court briefs supporting strict abortion limits in Texas and Alabama.

Axios: Some Republicans fear Roe win could backfire

• The last thing top party operatives want is for the Democratic base to become energized if the Supreme Court narrows or overturns Roe v. Wade.

• By the numbers: A November poll by Quinnipiac University found that 63% of Americans agree with the 1973 Roe decision, including 87% of Democrats and 65% of independents.

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