A week after the Florida Supreme Court approved an abortion rights ballot measure for November, Arizona’s high court followed suit, giving voters a chance to have their say on statewide abortion access this fall.
At the same time, both supreme courts allowed highly restrictive bans to take effect in their respective states—supercharging the import of the ballot measures.
As Arizona Republic reporters Stacey Barchenger and Ray Stern wrote, “The state Supreme Court’s ruling puts a stark choice before voters: Choose the new reproductive rights measure or watch abortion policy turn back to the 19th century.”
The two ballot measures, along with one already set to appear in Maryland, are likely to juice turnout and help Democratic Senate candidates in the process. Abortion rights advocates have scored big wins in every state where abortion-related ballot measures have appeared since the 2022 Dobbs ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, the ’70s-era Supreme Court ruling establishing a constitutional right to an abortion. This year, Florida—with its 60% threshold for approving ballot measures—will be the biggest test yet for reproductive rights activists in a state where it’s incredibly expensive to run persuasion campaigns.
But from an electoral standpoint, the ballot measures provide an opening for key Democrats running for Senate in those states.
On Wednesday, former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, the Democratic front-runner to take on incumbent GOP Sen. Rick Scott in Florida in November, launched a statewide tour blasting the state’s abortion ban, which currently stands at 15 weeks but will drop to a near-total ban of six weeks on May 1. Last year, Scott tweeted that he would have signed the restrictive ban if he had still been governor of the state.
“If Rick Scott thinks that he can push a national abortion ban in the Senate and back a near-total abortion ban in Florida without facing any consequences, then he has another thing coming to him,” Mucarsel-Powell told Florida Politics. The Miami Democrat hopes to shine a spotlight on the advent of the six-week ban that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in the dead of night a year ago in an attempt to bury the news.
In a radio interview this week, Scott repeatedly dodged questions about his abortion stance, explicitly declining to admit he had stated his support for the near-total ban.
Polling shows why Scott is dancing around the issue: A 2022 Florida Atlantic University poll found 67% of Floridians think abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
While Mucarsel-Powell hopes to flip the Florida Senate seat blue, Rep. Ruben Gallego is working to hold the Arizona seat currently held by retiring independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who caucuses with Senate Democrats.
Upon news of Arizona’s high court upholding a draconian 19th-century abortion ban passed before Arizona was a state, Gallego posted an emotional video calling the decision “bullshit.”
“I stated before, after the Dobbs decision, that I’m sorry to the women of Arizona, and that this is bullshit,” Gallego said. “What happened today—the fact that women in Arizona now have less rights than they ever had, have no control over their bodies—it’s just inhumane,” he added, promising a “fight” all the way through November.
“Let’s keep going. We’re going to win this,” Gallego vowed.
An AP VoteCast survey of the electorate in the 2022 midterms found that 61% of Arizona voters believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases.
Gallego’s rallying cry stood in stark contrast to the response of MAGA extremist and unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who pulled an immediate 180-degree turn on the 1864 law she once cheered following the Dobbs decision.
“I’m incredibly thrilled that we are going to have a great law that’s already on the books,” Lake said in a June 2022 interview, mere days before the Supreme Court overturned Roe.
Lake, whose extremism on a host of issues didn’t play well at the ballot box in the midterms, had a change of heart Tuesday when news broke about the antiquated law taking effect.
“I oppose today’s ruling, and I am calling on Katie Hobbs and the State Legislature to come up with an immediate common sense solution that Arizonans can support,” Lake said, calling the “pre-statehood law” out of step with Arizona voters.
But much like Scott, Lake declined to detail what might qualify as a “common sense solution.”
A Maryland ballot measure enshrining abortion rights into the state constitution is posing a similar challenge to Republican Senate candidate and current Gov. Larry Hogan. Hogan, a largely popular governor, has single-handedly given Republicans a toehold in the contest for the blue-leaning state’s open Senate seat.
But abortion has put Hogan in a tough spot. Last fall, a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll found that 78% of voters supported a constitutional amendment bolstering the right to an abortion, which remains legal in the state. Though Hogan opposes a national abortion ban, he has dodged questions about whether he would vote to reestablish Roe v. Wade at the federal level.
“I think that we’re going to have to take a look at that as we move forward,” Hogan said at an Axios event last month in Washington.
After the moderator followed up by asking whether that was “yes or no,” Hogan declined to say.
“No, it wasn’t a yes or no,” he responded with a chuckle.
Senate Democrats have circulated the video on social media, charging that Hogan would “turn the Senate over to MAGA Republicans” and calling it “a disqualifying agenda for Maryland voters.”
Abortion could also play a defining role in several other critical Senate races as abortion rights activists work to add ballot measures in Nevada, Montana, and Missouri.
Trump’s lose-lose situation on abortion somehow got worse this week after he released a video attempting to spin a position on the polarizing issue. What does this mean? Bad news for the Republican Party, already in disarray.