Three years after Roe’s overturn, Democrats less focused on abortion

Three years after the fall of Roe v. Wade turned abortion rights into one of Democrats’ most powerful rallying cries, the party has largely shifted its focus to other fights, as some acknowledge the difficulty of battling President Donald Trump on the issue.

Democrats say they still view championing abortion rights as an important way to persuade centrist voters and their base to vote for them, and plan to bring it up in battleground races, including this year’s governor’s elections in Virginia and New Jersey. They will mark Tuesday’s anniversary with speeches, rallies and other public events, while Trump and his party - still showing discomfort discussing abortion - have been quieter about it.

But abortion is no longer the dominant topic for many Democrats, as they scramble to fight Trump on other fronts, from his deportation raids to his dismantling of some federal agencies to the pocketbook issues strategists are most eager to center in the 2026 midterms. The economy, some said, has become a more promising target than abortion, which has had mixed results in recent elections.

Abortion “was the defining issue of the midterms in 2022,” said Democratic strategist Mark Riddle. “There’s no question since then that cost of living has moved way up higher on the list of voting priorities.”

Like many Democrats, Riddle is urging his party to keep talking about abortion rights. But the outrage they tapped into in the immediate aftermath of the June 24, 2022 Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe has changed over time, in part due to Trump. Even though he paved the way for the decision by nominating three of the justices who supported it, his shifting positions made it difficult to pin him down, some Democrats said.

“Trump’s campaign basically undercut some of our most compelling arguments about what he had done to overturn Roe and what he would do … [by saying] ‘I’m going to leave it to the states,’” said Mini Timmaraju, president of national abortion rights group Reproductive Freedom for All. “To the average person, that sounds like a really reasonable answer.”

Trump stumbled over abortion on the campaign trail last year, at one point flip-flopping on the ballot measure to restore access in his home state of Florida. Yet he also tried to defuse Democrats’ warnings that he would ban abortion nationwide, angering some antiabortion activists by refusing to campaign on a national restriction.

Even as Trump has focused on other matters, he has taken some steps to restrict abortion while in office. Abortion rights advocates say they plan to ramp up efforts to put a spotlight on his administration’s actions, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. directing the Food and Drug Administration to review data on mifepristone, the pill used in more than half of U.S. abortions. GOP efforts to defund Planned Parenthood as part of Trump’s signature legislation this year could also elevate the issue.

“We know that we have our job cut out for us to educate voters on the list of things that Trump is actively doing,” Timmaraju said.

Marcie Johnson, a Michigan Democrat in her 40s, had heard about the Trump administration’s changes to hospital guidance on emergency abortions and brought them up unprompted in an interview this month.

She also heard recently about a brain-dead woman in Georgia who was kept on life support until her baby was born. “It’s really sad and scary,” Johnson said. “The right to choose,” she said, was still the most important issue to her in a vote.

Another challenge abortion rights activists are facing is they have exhausted their best opportunities for citizen-led ballot initiatives expanding abortion access. And in Missouri, Republican lawmakers have put forth a 2026 ballot measure seeking to reverse the state’s previous vote that enshrined abortion access in their constitution.

The Supreme Court upended the politics of abortion with its June 24, 2022 ruling overturning the constitutional right to abortion established nearly 50 years earlier in Roe. Republicans’ support for once-hypothetical abortion restrictions became a clear liability as near-total bans snapped into effect at the state level.

Abortion rights became a winning issue even in red states such as Ohio, where voters overrode a six-week ban and changed their state constitution to guarantee access, and Kansas, where voters rejected an amendment restricting abortion rights. Many Republican candidates dodged the issue that year, while Democrats who brought it up prevailed in many marquee races.

The 2024 election, however, was a mixed bag for abortion rights. Democrats campaigned heavily on the issue, spending more than half a billion dollars on ads related to abortion, and notched some wins downballot. But Trump prevailed in the presidential race - even in battleground states such as Arizona and Nevada that voted at the same time to protect abortion access.

The abortion rights movement also suffered its first defeats on ballot measures, losing in Nebraska, South Dakota and Florida, where an effort to override a six-week ban fell just short of the 60-percent threshold to pass.

The debate over abortion was still helpful to Democrats, strategists said, but could not overcome the party’s biggest problems: a disadvantage on the economy, and broad dissatisfaction with the people in power.

“Despite a lot of efforts, the economy became nationalized and abortion became localized, and that was a bad situation for the Democrats,” said strategist Celinda Lake, who has polled for the Democratic National Committee and many candidates.

Upcoming elections will pose a fresh test for both sides, as well-funded groups line up to renew their fights.

Reproductive Freedom for All and the Democratic organization Priorities USA are launching a $2 million effort to work with online “creators” to raise awareness about the impacts of Roe’s fall - and the implications of the 2025 and 2026 elections for abortion.

Republican candidates for Congress and governor, Democrats say, may be more vulnerable to abortion-focused attacks than Trump, a former Democrat who once supported abortion rights and has shape-shifted on many topics.

Meanwhile, antiabortion advocates are pushing for more restrictions and pointing to Democrats’ losses last election as vindication. Many Republican strategists argued the issue’s political resonance has faded.

“Republicans should be emboldened to stand for life,” said Kelsey Pritchard, political communications director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

The organization plans to door-knock in this year’s legislative races in Virginia, a purple state where Democratic lawmakers are working to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

Democrats also expect to zero in on abortion in the competitive governor’s race there: The Republican nominee, Winsome Earle-Sears, has made many comments opposing abortion and recently declined to say if she would sign a bill limiting access as governor.

The White House declined to comment. It has not announced any presidential events marking the three-year anniversary of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision Tuesday, when Trump will be traveling to The Hague for the 2025 NATO summit. On Capitol Hill this week, as Democrats promoted plans to mark Tuesday’s anniversary, their GOP colleagues did not show the same eagerness.

At the same time, Democrats at every level of politics have turned much of their attention to Trump and his party’s handling of the economy, his dramatic cuts to the federal government and GOP proposals to cut benefits.

American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic group focused on opposition research, still maintains a database of Republican candidates’ comments on abortion - but since Trump took office, none of their hundred-plus press releases hitting him and GOP allies have focused on the issue.

“When the time comes, when we’re in the election season,” said American Bridge President Pat Dennis, “then we can expand our messaging a lot more.”