The New Yorker:

Democrats failed to make the Court itself a major campaign issue, but what comes after the Dobbs decision could very well be worse, and more far-reaching.

By Jane Mayer

Two and a half years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which for nearly fifty years had guaranteed Americans’ right to make their own decisions about abortion, voters reëlected Donald Trump—the President who had packed the Court with the Justices who took that right away. Many observers expected women voters to lead a defeat of Trump, in what some had called the “Hell hath no fury” election. But although there was a sizable Democratic advantage with women on November 5th, it appears to have been smaller than it was for either Joe Biden, four years earlier, or Hillary Clinton, in 2016. Exit polls indicate that the majority of voters, including fifty-three per cent of white women, spurned Kamala Harris, a female candidate who had made the restoration of reproductive freedom a passionate centerpiece of her campaign.

It might be tempting to conclude that most Americans approve of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which declared Roe “egregiously wrong.” But poll after poll shows that isn’t the case. In fact, the election provided additional evidence that a majority of voters, even in red states, ardently support abortion rights. Seven states—Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Montana, Missouri, New York, and Nevada—passed a variety of ballot measures safeguarding abortion. Voters in an eighth state, Florida, approved a similar measure by more than fifty-seven per cent, and it failed to pass only because of a required threshold of sixty per cent. Similar ballot initiatives failed in two other states, Nebraska and South Dakota.

Go to link