ATLANA – For months, Republicans have been ready to invade the diverse and economically convenient suburbs of cities like Atlanta. Moderate communities here have turned to Democrats in recent years, led by women terrified of Donald J. Trump. But recently, rampant inflation and rising crime have had a political impact on President Biden and his party.
Sandra Sloan, 82, is the kind of voter Republicans are counting on to help them regain that contested stretch of the new purple state. Still, Mrs. Sloan, a retired high school teacher who lives in Atlanta’s luxury Buckhead neighborhood, is worried about the party for one main reason.
“I’m a Republican, but I still believe it’s a woman’s right to choose,” Ms. Sloan said.
Ms Sloan said she had followed the news of a recent Supreme Court draft ruling removing Rowe v. Wade, as well as the passage of anti-abortion legislation in states such as Texas and Oklahoma. She said she was not sure how she would end up voting in the fall, but abortion rights would be a factor.
“We still don’t know, after the draft, when he’s ready to write,” Ms. Sloan said. “But leaving it to men alone – sorry, no.”
It is voters like Ms. Sloan in communities like Buckhead who may be the biggest challenge for Republicans in the renewed national debate on women’s rights to legally terminate pregnancies.
If the Supreme Court removes Rowe in the broad way of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s draft opinion, it will unleash a fierce battle between countries over abortion regulations – and introduce a powerful new problem in counting voters who would otherwise be inclined to treat interim elections such as an up or down vote for Mr Biden’s representation in the presidency. Moderate women who have leaned back toward Republicans can now think; young people who feel disappointed with Mr Biden could find motivation to vote for a Democrat out of fear and outrage at the Supreme Court.
The urgency of the abortion issue may be particularly intense in Georgia, where state lawmakers in 2019 adopted a ban on abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, knowing at the time that existing Supreme Court precedent would ban the law. If this precedent is removed, then Georgian voters could find themselves under one of the country’s most restrictive abortion bans.
The National Democrats have indicated they intend to campaign on the issue ahead of the November midterm elections. On Wednesday, Senate Democrats voted to provide a broad guarantee of abortion rights across the country, even though they knew the bill lacked enough support to overcome the Republican opposition.
However, many Republicans are reluctant to discuss abortion outright. During the campaign, Republican candidates were encouraged by party leaders to focus on the economy, crime and the border, according to a note from the National Republican Senatorial Committee received by Axios.
From Opinion: Rowe v. Wade Challenge
Commentary by opinion authors and Times columnists on the forthcoming Supreme Court ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case.
U.S. Sen. Jen Jordan, a Democrat running for Georgia’s attorney general, said she expects the issue of abortion rights to overshadow other concerns as a major factor for voters.
Earlier, Ms Jordan said she had campaigned on the cost of living, promising to tackle rising prices. The Supreme Court’s expired opinion “completely changed the conversation,” she said.
“I think fundamental rights are a little higher than the daily economic problems they are struggling with,” Ms Jordan said.
In tightly divided states and congressional districts across the country, many moderate voters suddenly find themselves choosing between the Democratic Party, which disappointed them with taking power in 2021, and the Republican Party, recently encouraged to introduce a right-wing social program that drives many voters deeply restless.
This could pose a major challenge for Republicans in their efforts to win back the center-right and center-right communities that shunned them during the Trump years and turned America’s suburbs – from areas near Atlanta and Philadelphia to Minneapolis and Salt Lake City – at least in desert for the party. This expulsion was particularly pronounced among centrist and even Republican white women, a constituency that tends to support abortion rights with modest restrictions.
Christine Matthews, a sociologist who has researched abortion and worked for Republicans in the past, said she expects abortion rights to become a major concern in the 2022 election. But she said it was too early to assess how voters would give priority to abortion rights as a problem over other home-related considerations, such as the price and availability of consumer goods.
“We have never been in a situation like this,” Ms Matthews said, adding: “We are in a situation where abortion rights are now threatened in a way that they have not been for nearly 50 years.”
Voters, she added, are likely to see six-week abortion bans like the one in Georgia and “far beyond the mainstream.”
National Republicans sought to stifle Roe’s political influence by urging their candidates to focus on unpopular elements of the Democratic Party’s position on abortion, shifting the focus from right-wing views and forcing Democrats to defend their opposition to most abortion restrictions. In Washington, Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, acknowledged that Republicans may seek to ban abortion at the federal level, but did not stop committing to doing so.
Some Republicans were far less cautious about their intentions to regulate abortion. Georgia’s Gov. Brian Kemp, a conservative Republican who signed the six-week ban, faces a major challenge from former Sen. David Purdue, who urges Mr. Kemp to convene a special session of the state legislature to ban abortions altogether.
Other swing states have passed strict abortion laws, including a 15-week ban in Arizona, and Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin have introduced a measure banning the procedure six weeks later. The most extreme restrictions were proposed in deeply conservative states such as Louisiana, where lawmakers debated a bill that would classify abortion as a form of murder and make it possible to prosecute women who terminate their pregnancies. Lawmakers repealed the bill Thursday before a vote.
In Wisconsin, where the offices of an anti-abortion group were set on fire Sunday, Republicans are defending a Senate seat in a bid to defeat Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat. The crackdown on abortion may repel some moderate voters who would otherwise be credible Republican votes. The state already has a dormant law passed in 1849 that bans abortion in almost all cases. The current Republican candidate for governor, Rebecca Cliffish, has said she is completely against abortion.
Many voters feel more conflicted. Nancy Turtenwald, 64, of West Alice, Vis. Ms Turtenwald said she would prefer abortion not to be a major issue in the country’s political discourse, citing access to health care, the price of gas and housing and the availability of a baby formula as more important issues.
Rowe v. Wade
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What is Rowe against Wade? Rowe v. Wade is a remarkable Supreme Court ruling that legalizes abortion in the United States. Decision 7-2 was announced on January 22, 1973. Judge Harry A. Blackman, a modest Republican from the Midwest and an advocate for the right to abortion, wrote the majority opinion.
What was the case? The decision overturned laws in many states that banned abortion, declaring that they could not ban the procedure before the fetus could survive outside the womb. This time, known as fetal viability, was about 28 weeks when Roe was decided. Today, most experts believe it is about 23 or 24 weeks.
What else did the case do? Rowe v. Wade created a framework for regulating abortion based on the trimester of pregnancy. During the first trimester, he allowed almost no regulations. In the second, it allows regulations to protect women’s health. In the third, it allows states to ban abortions, as long as exceptions are made to protect the life and health of the mother. In 1992, the court dropped this framework, while confirming Roe’s main possession.
If Rowe is repealed and Republicans try to ban abortion, Ms Turtenwald said, she will consider switching to vote for Democrats. “I think a lot of women would,” she said.
A Pew Research Center study published last week found that about three in five Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, although many said they preferred some restrictions on the procedure.
In Michigan, Republicans are seeking to defeat Gov. Gothen Whitmer, a rising star of the Democrats, and win several seats in Congress. Like Wisconsin, Michigan has never repealed an archaic law that makes abortion a crime, meaning the procedure can be immediately criminalized in the event of a court decision that closely resembles Judge Alito’s draft.
State Attorney General Dana Nessel has announced she will not enforce the law; like Ms. Whitmer, she faces a competitive battle for re-election.
Rose Deveson is a 60-year-old housewife from Birmingham, Michigan, a city in the politically divided Auckland County, about 25 minutes from downtown Detroit. Ms. Devson said she had been a trusted Republican voter for 20 years, while aversion to Mr. Trump led her to vote for Democrats.
Mrs. Deveson …
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