Democrats, who retreated from their focus on abortion rights after losing the White House in 2024, see an opportunity to go back on the offensive after a federal court endangered access last week.
Abortion rights advocates are hoping to capitalize on the legal uncertainty, as they did when scoring a string of Democratic victories in the 2022 midterms shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
On Friday, a federal appeals court severely curbed abortion access when it required women to get an abortion pill in person rather than by mail. Activists called the decision the biggest attack on reproductive rights since Roe’s fall. A Supreme Court justice on Monday then restored mail access to the drug, mifepristone — for one week.
Democrats with presidential aspirations are raising alarms while congressional candidates in competitive districts have stayed relatively quiet, a sign that the party is still figuring out how to react. Advocates view the legal scuffle over the pill as a fresh opening for Democrats to take abortion off the back burner and capitalize on the issue as they look to win back majorities in Congress.
The full fate of access to mifepristone, the most widely used abortion pill, hangs in the balance. Medication abortion is the most common method for terminating pregnancies, and mail delivery made it accessible even in states with abortion bans. The new legal limbo adds urgency to an issue that had lost its potency and was overtaken by affordability concerns.
“Reproductive freedom is not safe,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of the national abortion rights group Reproductive Freedom for All. “And moments like this are opportunities to continue to drill that down.”
Several Democratic governors seen as potential 2028 presidential candidates condemned the threat to mifepristone. “I’ll always protect a woman’s right to make choices about her own body — that includes her right to choose a medication abortion,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) posted Friday on X before joining a legal challenge to protect access to mifepristone.
After the Friday appellate ruling, mentions of abortion and related topics from Democrats and left-leaning influencers spiked online, reaching the highest level since the January anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, according to a Washington Post analysis of public social media posts and podcasts.
The abortion pill fight did not garner as much attention from Democratic candidates in battleground Senate and House races, who are largely focused on affordability issues such as gas prices and health care costs. With post-Roe restrictions now established, abortion has fallen off the agenda as immigration enforcement and the war in Iran dominate the news cycle and political conversation.
Still, party strategists said the potential restrictions on mifepristone could drive voters, especially women, to turn out with the issue front of mind.
That mindset had faded over the past two years after the battles over enshrining abortion protections in state constitutions or enacting new bans were mostly resolved, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said.
“Voters felt like we’ve done everything we can,” Lake said. “Where we could, we passed initiatives. We’ve tried to vote for politicians who support a woman’s right to an abortion.”
If the in-person pickup requirement for mifepristone is reinstated after the Supreme Court’s pause, advocates warn it would dramatically curtail abortion access. The drug is the first of the typical two-step regimen for medication abortion and can be used up to 10 weeks of pregnancy.
Women in any state, including those with bans, can access mifepristone via telehealth and the mail from abortion providers in states with “shield laws,” which protect the clinicians from interstate prosecution. As a result, abortions have increased despite the fall of Roe. By the end of 2024, a quarter of them were provided through telehealth, data shows.
Democratic groups said the legal threat to mifepristone highlights the stakes for voters.
“Electing Democratic governors who will protect fundamental freedoms has never been more important,” Meghan Meehan-Draper, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, said in a statement. “The DGA is on offense to hold Republicans accountable for their extreme anti-choice views.”
J.J. Abbott, a Pennsylvania-based Democratic strategist, said abortion is more politically salient in gubernatorial and state legislative races. That’s because even if the party captured control of Congress, Democrats’ ability to enact laws protecting abortion would be limited with President Donald Trump unlikely to sign them.
The party notched a slew of successes in the 2022 midterms, especially in state races, held months after abortion bans took effect. That year, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) emphasized abortion access in her reelection campaign perhaps more than any other gubernatorial candidate, helping to usher in Democratic control of both the state House and Senate for the first time in roughly 40 years.
In 2024, abortion rights advocates were energized when Vice President Kamala Harris, who by then had become the White House’s chief abortion rights defender, moved to the top of the presidential ticket. They believed the issue could help the party in the 2024 elections, and polling showed that Democrats’ advantage on abortion widened after she became the nominee.
Ultimately, Harris lost as inflation, the economy and threats to democracy were the top issues for voters. Months before the election, the Supreme Court upheld broad access to mifepristone, reducing the relevance of the issue.
Abortion rights advocates learned the same lesson from the loss as other Democrats, Timmaraju said: Focus more on affordability. Her group began emphasizing how the decision on whether to have a family is inherently an economic one.
“There’s an opportunity for us to connect the dots,” she said.
With Trump back in office, antiabortion advocates hoped he would crack down on abortion — especially the mifepristone pill. On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump said he would leave abortion up to states. During his first term, he nominated three of the Supreme Court justices who later helped overturn Roe.
Antiabortion activists who helped deliver voters for Trump’s third presidential bid are frustrated that his administration has largely kept quiet on the issue since retaking the White House.
Kelsey Pritchard, a spokeswoman for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, called the abortion pill fight “a five-alarm crisis for the pro-life movement and for the GOP.” She said SBA had invested $160 million in candidates who support national antiabortion policies.
“If the administration continues along the path of being ‘indifferent’ to abortion drugs that kill millions of Americans and send droves of women to the ER, get ready to lose big in the midterms,” Pritchard said in a statement.
Clara Ence Morse contributed to this report.
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