Why Republicans Are Scared of Texas’ New Abortion Ban

When the Supreme Court allowed Texas’ 6-week abortion law to stand earlier this month, it was presented as a major victory for anti-abortion conservatives. After all, Republican state legislators in deep red states have long been passing increasingly restrictive abortion laws, only to see many later get struck down in the courts. Finally, one law got through (at least for now).

But if it’s the victory conservatives were hoping for, why aren’t high-profile Republicans celebrating it? Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell — never one to shy away from a political fight — had only this to say about the Supreme Court’s ruling: “I think it was a highly technical decision.” Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee who oversees the platform for the party, was out within hours declaring that she would challenge the legality of President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate, yet has been totally silent on the Texas abortion case — as well as the Biden Justice Department’s decision to challenge the law. Even most of Texas’ congressional delegation remained silent on the new abortion legislation.

What’s going on? When considering the political ramifications of the Texas abortion law, Ian Malcom’s famous line from Jurassic Park comes to mind, with a little social-wars twist: “Your [anti-abortion advocates] were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

For decades, Republican state lawmakers have been able to vote for and pass highly restrictive abortion laws without living through the political consequences, because the laws were typically enjoined by the courts before they ever took effect. The politicians got to check the pro-life box important to a segment of their voters without their constituents ever living under those strict laws. This kept the political backlash to their votes to a minimum.

This month, the Supreme Court called these legislators’ bluff by letting the Texas abortion law stand. Now the most restrictive abortion law in the country is under the political microscope and Republicans in Washington are being uncharacteristically quiet — at least in part because they sense that this law will do more to motivate the opposition than it will to rally the faithful.

Already, the Democrats can’t stop talking about it. After a brutal August that mired the Biden White House in one bad news cycle after another, the Supreme Court’s decision on Texas was like rain breaking a long drought for Democratic operatives. The issue allowed Democrats to unite their warring factions on the Hill, moved the news cycle off wall-to-wall coverage of Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal, and raised money for Democratic candidates.

If larger historical trends hold, Republicans would be favored to win back the House in 2022, but the question now is whether anti-abortion advocates just handed a beleaguered White House the key to energizing their pro-abortion rights voters and potentially staving off a GOP landslide. By finding a legal loophole that allowed the Texas law to go into effect, did they win the battle but lose the war?

In answering that question, first, we shouldn’t pay too much attention to abortion issue polls. As a general matter, issue polling is deeply flawed in that it asks people to summarize their often complex and contradictory views into answers like “agree” and “strongly agree.” And unlike campaign polling — plagued by its own inadequacies — the results are never verified by an actual election.

Moreover, abortion is uniquely poorly polled. Whether someone identifies as “pro-life” or “pro-choice” — which are highly correlated with partisanship — isn’t helpful when debating, for example, whether a woman should be required to have an ultrasound before aborting a pregnancy. Asking respondents whether Roe should be overturned is only useful if the pollster is actually trying to determine whether voters think abortion restrictions should be decided by federal courts or state legislatures. “Do you believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases” gives us no information on the voter who believes that abortion at eight months should be prohibited and at six weeks should be legal.

So the more relevant question is whether the abortion issue motivates voters in both political camps and which side it motivates more.

There’s some research to show that abortion doesn’t motivate Republican voters all that much. As Ryan Burge, an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, found based on data from 2018, “large numbers of white evangelicals don’t place a great deal of importance on abortion … and other issues like immigration and issues of race may be even more effective at turning out the base in the future.”