Photo: Robyn Stevens Brody/Sipa USA via AP
We’re still reviewing the results of Tuesday’s blue tsunami, but something is already clear: Voters have largely rejected anti-abortion extremism, even in some of the most conservative parts of the country. In the midterms, Americans passed measures to protect abortion care in three out of four states that voted on the issue, expelled the architects of some of the nation’s worst bans, and elected enough pro-choice lawmakers to either break Republican supermajorities at the state level or flip the chambers altogether. Here are all the breeding victories we’ve seen.
Preliminary results show that the right to abortion has significantly progressed in three states. Let’s talk about Missouri first. Two years ago, Missourians codified the right to “reproductive freedom” in their constitution and overturned the state’s near-total ban on abortion. In this election, Republican lawmakers introduced a ballot measure to overturn the 2024 result. If it had passed, it would have reinstated abortion restrictions. In a sneaky effort to confuse voters, lawmakers even called it Amendment 3, the same name of the 2024 pro-choice initiative, and added a ban on gender-affirming care for minors. But Missourians saw through it and rejected the amendment with 55 percent of the vote.
Then there’s Nevada, where a ballot measure was also tied to the 2024 election. Two years ago, the state’s voters passed Question 6, which enshrines the right to abortion until viability, or about 24 weeks of pregnancy. The issue returned to voters in the midterms because Nevada requires any amendment to pass in two consecutive election cycles before it can be added to the state constitution. And, once again, Nevadans decisively chose to protect reproductive rights, passing the measure with 63 percent of the vote.
Four years later DobbsVirginia remains the last Southern state without an abortion ban. Voters on Tuesday weighed in on a ballot measure to codify reproductive care protections before, during and after pregnancy in the state constitution. Virginians passed it with 55 percent of the vote.
Idaho’s near-total ban on abortion is one of the strictest in the country, leading to an exodus of obstetrician-gynecologists who have fled the state out of fear that the government will prosecute them. The Prop 1 citizen initiative sought to codify the right to make reproductive health care decisions without government interference. On Tuesday, 56 percent of voters rejected the amendment, meaning the abortion ban will remain in effect for now.
In Michigan, which codified abortion rights in 2022, Mike Rogers boasted of having a “100% pro-life record” while serving in Congress. In Kansas, Roger Marshall called himself a “pro-life” obstetrician-gynecologist, even though he sued more than 700 patients for medical debt, leading to the arrest of at least 81 of them. In South Carolina, Darline Graham has proposed the expansion of pregnancy crisis centers, which systematically discourage pregnant women from seeking abortion care and provide them with harmful misinformation. All lost their Senate races.
Meanwhile, Democrats’ control of the House and Senate means President Donald Trump has no chance of passing a national abortion ban. Congress can also now prevent efforts to defund abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood, and push to eliminate the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion care.
In the absence of a federal ban, abortion restrictions have been determined at the state level since Dobbs. Democratic progress in many GOP-led states means it’s possible some of these bans could be overturned or new restrictions lifted. In Georgia, which bans abortion at six weeks of pregnancy, Democrats flipped the governor’s seat, the attorney general’s office and the House of Representatives. In North Carolina, where abortion is legal up to 12 weeks and which already has a Democratic governor, the House of Representatives has also flipped. Democrats also broke Republican supermajorities in one or both chambers of the legislatures of Florida, Kansas, Nebraska and Ohio.
And then there’s Texas, home to Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton — two of the nation’s most rabid anti-abortion lawmakers, who have pushed the boundaries of state-level restrictions in an effort to terrorize and control women across the state. Abbott lost his reelection bid, while scandal-wracked Paxton won’t get the chance to further persecute the women of the U.S. Senate.
The blue wave has also lifted up people like Allie Phillips, a mom who, in 2023, was forced to travel to New York to terminate her unviable pregnancy due to Tennessee’s near-total ban on abortion. That experience motivated her to run for state legislature in 2024 — a long-shot race that she lost. Phillips tried this cycle again. On Tuesday, she turned the neighborhood upside down.
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