Republicans can’t make abortion go away in 2024

The Kate Cox story and the Supreme Court taking up the abortion pill case means that Republicans won’t be able to avoid the topic come next year

Sen Tommy Tuberville made his views about abortion well-known this year. The senior Republican from Alabama spent most of the year putting a blanket hold on US military promotions in protest against a Pentagon policy that reimburses US servicemembers if they travel to a state where abortion is more accessible. The move infuriated both Democrats and Republicans who said it affected the nation’s military readiness.

But the former Auburn University football head coach punted when asked about the story of Kate Cox, the woman in Texas who was pregnant but whose foetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition. After a court granted her the ability to have an abortion despite the fact Texas restricts the procedure at six weeks with no exceptions for rape or incest, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton threatened legal action and the state supreme court blocked the ruling from the lower court.

The story is damning specifically because Ms Cox is already a mother and forcing her to carry the pregnancy to delivery likely would have damaged her ability to have children in the future.

“I have not seen that,” Mr Tuberville told me. In the same respect, Mr Tuberville deferred when asked about the Supreme Court’s decision to hear a challenge to the long-standing approval of mifepristone, a widely-used abortion drug.

“That's their job,” he said. “You don't know which way they're gonna go. Wait and see.”

Abortion has become a massive liability for Republicans ever since the Supreme Court – which has a 6-3 conservative majority – overturned the right to seek an abortion guaranteed in Roe v Wade in its Dobbs v Jackson ruling last year. Republicans failed to flip a single Senate seat last year despite President Joe Biden’s low approval rating and this year, Democrats flipped the state legislature in Virginia, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear won re-election in Kentucky despite its strong support for Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell, and Ohio voted to enshrine abortion rights in its state constitution.

The outrage around Ms Cox’s story and the anxiety around the potential overturning of mifepristone’s approval shows that abortion will be no less salient next year.

Before Josh Hawley won his Senate seat in Missouri, he became a conservative hero for his role in arguing before the Supreme Court that for-profit companies could deny coverage for contraception on religious exemption grounds. In the same token, he said he would need to see how the court would decide the case.

“I have no prediction for which way they'll go,” the Yale-educated Mr Hawley, who clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts, told me. “A lower court said that the drug can be widely available if you get prescription for it. So I don't know.”

Similarly, when I asked him about the Cox story, he said he wasn’t familiar with it. When I explained it to him, he said “it’s Texas law.”

When I asked Sen Chuck Grassley, who served as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman during the confirmation hearings of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, the Iowa Republican told me the Supreme Court had the authority to take up the mifepristone case.

“Well, the Supreme Court can do whatever they want to do,” the Iowa Republican said. “They settle cases and disputes and this is something that is their job. How can I argue with that?”

His colleague from Iowa, Sen Joni Ernst, called the Kate Cox story “a Texas issue.” But it’s an issue that is bound to come up given her state’s governor, Kim Reynolds, signed a bill restricting abortion at six weeks.

The only Republican who offered a somewhat humane response was Sen Rick Scott of Florida, who is up for re-election next year. Florida Democrats are hoping to put a referendum protecting abortion rights on the ballot next year in a state where Mr Scott’s successor in Tallahassee (and nemesis) Governor Ron DeSantis signed a six-week ban.

“You know, your heart goes out to people who are going through this,” he said. “I mean, I can't imagine what she's going through.”

But Democrats seem all the more willing to talk about abortion, particularly Sens Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana, the two Democrats seeking re-election in states Mr Trump won twice.

“I've talked about protecting abortion rights, my whole career now, so why would I stop,” Mr Brown told me.

Mr Tester for his part hails from a state that last year pushed back a ballot referendum that would have restricted abortion. Now, some Democrats in Big Sky Country hope to put an Ohio-style amendment on the ballot, which friend of the Inside Washington newsletter Leigh Ann Caldwell of The Washington Post asked Mr Tester about. When I asked Mr Tester if he would run on abortion rights, he said “we’ll be running on freedom.”

Sen Tina Smith of Minnesota, the only senator who has worked at a Planned Parenthood, was more explicit about her concerns.

“The Cox case demonstrates that in states like Texas, there really is no such thing as an abortion exception,” Ms Smith told me. “If she can't qualify for an exception, who does? And understand that if there is a national abortion ban in my home state in Minnesota, it's all going to be like Texas.”