Abortion has haunted Republicans since the fall of Roe v. Wade.
But the issue failed to stop former President Donald Trump, who on Tuesday overcame a large gender gap — and Democrats’ relentless focus on women’s reproductive health — to win back the White House.
With message discipline that often eluded other parts of his campaign, Trump and his allies positioned themselves as moderates on abortion, arguing the issue should be left to states, pledged to veto a national abortion ban should it reach his desk, pitched government support for in-vitro fertilization and other reproductive health services, and promised to be a champion for women. These attempts to neutralize an issue that has dogged Republicans since Roe’s fall in 2022 helped Trump notch a clear victory against Vice President Kamala Harris with an electorate angry over the economy, inflation and immigration bent on punishing the party in power.
Vice President-elect JD Vance, who himself backpedaled after years of supporting federal abortion restrictions, also worked to tamp down widespread outrage from the fall of Roe by promising to preserve federal access to abortion pills and fund more generous social programs for new parents. Trump allies even invoked the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in a nearly $20 million ad blitz just before Election Day arguing Republicans aligned with her views on abortion. But more than anything, Republicans mostly avoided the issue and pivoted to more politically favorable territory, including the economy, crime, immigration and transgender rights.
“Donald Trump has been very, very clear in saying this is a states’ rights issue and we’re not going to get involved at the federal level,” Pete Hoekstra, the chair of the Michigan GOP told POLITICO in September. “The bottom line is that if we’re debating the abortion issue, we’re debating the issue that the Democrats want to talk about, and if we’re debating on the economy, if we’re debating on the border, jobs, and those types of things, we believe we’re debating on the issues that are most important to voters today.”
Democrats had bet on abortion remaining as strong a motivator as it has been in races around the country since Dobbs. But other issues, including the economy, proved more salient to many voters.
CNN’s national exit poll found that abortion was the top issue for only 14 percent of voters, behind democracy at 34 percent and the economy at 31 percent. That exit poll also underscored the political pragmatism of the GOP’s attempts to appear moderate on abortion: 28 percent of people who believe abortion should be legal voted for Trump.
“The post-Dobbs Dem overperformance was non-existent. Or at least was swamped by other factors favoring Trump,” said Tom Bonier, a senior adviser to the Democratic data firm TargetSmart, on X. “Clearly Trump was not viewed as a threat to abortion rights by enough voters, which is mind-boggling.”
With control of Congress hanging in the balance, a national abortion ban isn’t out of the question — though Trump campaigned on promises to veto such a bill. But there are myriad ways his administration and the judges he appoints can curtail access to the procedure without passing legislation.
Conservative allies of the president-elect at the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and other groups have urged him to direct the FDA to reimpose pre-pandemic restrictions on online prescription of mail delivery of abortion pills or revoke their FDA authorization — outcomes judges could also bring about as several lawsuits over the pills make their way through federal courts. These steps would block access nationwide to drugs that account for more than two-thirds of U.S. abortions, including in states with laws protecting the procedure.
Abortion opponents have also called for his administration to enforce the Comstock Act, an 1873 law banning the shipping of “lewd” items including drugs or instruments used for abortions. Trump, in August, said he had no plans to enforce the Comstock Act.
Trump is, however, expected to reimpose many of the anti-abortion policies of his first administration, including restrictions on the Title X family planning program and global HIV programs.
“Now the work begins to dismantle the pro-abortion policies of the Biden-Harris administration,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America said Wednesday. “President Trump’s first-term pro-life accomplishments are the baseline for his second term.”
Most anti-abortion groups stood by Trump throughout the campaign even as he repeatedly broke with them on federal abortion restrictions, exceptions for rape and incest and other policies, bucked them on the party platform, and welcomed into his inner circle people with a mixed-to-liberal record on abortion. SBA Pro-Life America poured tens of millions of dollars into boosting Trump and down-ballot Republicans despite previously saying his rejection of a national ban could be disqualifying.
But some in the movement fear that Trump’s success will convince other Republicans to run as abortion moderates.
“They’ll certainly be opportunistic GOP consultants who will try to seize on that and say, ‘See, we need to drop the abortion talk,’” said Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America. “The party needs to see this is not the way of the future.”
Yet Hawkins and her allies argue his victory would be worth these setbacks if he appoints hardline anti-abortion officials to key positions at HHS, FDA and the Justice Department who they can depend on to implement their agenda.
Throughout her campaign, Harris spotlighted women who suffered severe health complications — and some who died — after being denied abortions, and she repeatedly reminded voters that the chaos resulted from “Trump abortion bans,” her nickname for the state laws that kicked in after the fall of Roe.
In the election’s final weeks — as polls showed a virtual tie — Harris held abortion-focused rallies in Atlanta and Houston, dispatched former first lady Michelle Obama to Michigan and went on the popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast to highlight the fallout from GOP policies and warn of national restrictions should Trump win power.
It wasn’t enough.
Michigan Democrats warned in the final stretch of the campaign that they were struggling to persuade voters that abortion remained under threat after the state passed a ballot initiative protecting access to the procedure in 2022. And even in other battleground states like Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona where abortion restrictions remain in effect Democrats’ message was overpowered.
While Arizona has yet to be called, Democratic strategists in the state are attributing their expected loss, in part, to the Republican-controlled legislature. It moved earlier this year to repeal a Civil War-era near-total abortion ban and leave in place a law prohibiting the procedure after 15 weeks, which Democrats said made it harder to convince voters that abortion access was under threat.
“I’m more concerned with economic problems than stuff that’s already in the state rights,” said Yusuf Isaak, a 19-year-old community college student in Mesa, standing outside a polling place Tuesday afternoon. “I feel like economic problems are more pressing because they actually affect everyone’s day-to-day life.”
Edna Meza Aguirre, a board member of Planned Parenthood of Arizona based in Tucson, said in the run-up to the election that despite her and other volunteers’ efforts to focus voters’ attention on abortion rights, many in her community were backing Republicans because of immigration concerns.
“They’re listening to what conservatives are saying about individuals crossing the border, taking our jobs, and raping our women, and also complaining that they’re a burden upon society,” she said. “It’s a really effective way they’ve determined to have hate be an issue.” Too many other voters, she added, planned to sit out the election. “We hear people say that they’re too discouraged to vote, or we hear them say that voting doesn’t matter when it does.”
Democrats’ abortion-rights playbook also failed in New Hampshire, which the party had viewed as its best chance to flip a governor’s seat this year. Democratic nominee Joyce Craig, the former mayor of Manchester, had made expanding abortion access the focal point of her campaign — and her main line of attack against her Republican rival, former Sen. Kelly Ayotte. But Ayotte parried in ads vowing to uphold New Hampshire’s law allowing abortions up to 24 weeks of pregnancy and in limited cases afterward, and to protect access to in-vitro fertilization.
And though Democrats had insisted that abortion ballot initiatives in Arizona and other swing states would help drive progressive turnout and give their candidates an edge, the measures had a limited impact even when they passed overwhelmingly — and may have even helped Republicans by giving voters a “release valve” for their feelings on the issue. In a swath of states, including Arizona, Florida, Missouri, and Montana, a majority of voters backed both abortion-rights ballot measures and GOP candidates with records of opposing abortion, including Trump.
Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.
