Three years after the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the battle over abortion access has splintered into a new era of legal, legislative, and political fights, proving that the end of Roe was only the beginning of a broader policy war. This Washington Examiner series, Aftershocks of Dobbs, examines how activists, lawmakers, and courts are driving the next phase of that fight. Part 1 was on the pending legal battles. Part 2 looked at how Republicans and the Trump administration are working to reverse what they call the Biden-era weaponization of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act against anti-abortion advocates. Part 3 is on the Republican Party’s approach to the politics of abortion.
Anti-abortion advocates are hopeful that Republicans will not run away from the politics of abortion during the 2026 midterm elections following the electoral upheaval in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade three years ago in June 2022.
Primary season is on for the 2026 elections, and anti-abortion advocacy organizations are already active in battleground states. They hope that Republicans will be willing to espouse anti-abortion views more than they were during the 2022 midterm elections and the 2024 presidential election, the first two major elections following the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.
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Anti-abortion advocates contend that the political will to restrict abortion has significantly improved since the election of President Donald Trump, who has implemented a variety of policies on the anti-abortion wish list during his second term.
So far, some of those policies include freeing anti-abortion protesters from federal prisons, ending federal foreign aid for abortion-rights groups operating overseas, and reversing Biden-era regulations regarding emergency abortions.
But the largest victory that would indicate anti-abortion advocates are back in the good graces of Republicans would be the passage of the GOP reconciliation bill’s provisions that prohibit federal funding from going to abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood.
Anthony LaBruna, executive director for the pro-family interest group the American Principles Project, told the Washington Examiner that even getting the language in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is an achievement.
“This is a huge victory for us to have this in the big, beautiful bill, and kind of coming to terms with not just getting Roe v. Wade overturned, but now being able to actually defund the organization that conducts a lot of these abortions,” LaBruna said.
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Kelsey Pritchard, policy director for SBA Pro-Life America, told the Washington Examiner that “Dobbs made everything possible.”
“From where we’ve gotten from 2022 to today, it was really the new beginning of the pro-life movement,” Pritchard said.
Navigating the post-Dobbs minefield
The GOP expected a “red wave” in the 2022 midterm elections, but Republicans lost key races in the House and did not gain control of the Senate. Analysts blamed heightened abortion-rights turnout following Dobbs, but several anti-abortion Republican candidates were able to survive contentious state-level races.
Govs. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Kim Reynolds (R-IA), Mike DeWine (R-OH), and Brian Kemp (R-GA), all of whom passed six-week abortion restrictions that year, were reelected in 2022.
But these candidates were largely the exception, not the rule, in terms of running anti-abortion campaigns.
Noah Brandt, vice president of communications for the anti-abortion group Live Action, told the Washington Examiner that Republicans were caught off guard by the Dobbs decision, which was leaked from the Supreme Court roughly six months before the November election.
“I think Republicans reacted in a pretty flat-footed, inarticulate, and ineffective way,” Brandt said. “They acted pretty surprised. They didn’t know what was going on.”
Republicans distanced themselves from the anti-abortion movement during the 2024 election, in part due to the experience from 2022. The toughest blow came in July 2024 when Trump pushed Republicans to remove language from the GOP platform about life beginning at conception, much to the chagrin of social conservatives.
But Democrats, particularly once then-Vice President Kamala Harris took the helm from President Joe Biden, made abortion their central talking point. Pritchard said the 2024 result of a GOP trifecta should prove that the Democrats’ strategy was ineffective.
“We saw Democrats go all-in on the issue of abortion. That was Kamala Harris’s top focus, and the American people didn’t buy what they were selling,” Pritchard said.
Sens. Dave McCormick (R-PA) and Bernie Moreno (R-OH) in 2024 were also able to unseat two long-term Senate Democrats who were staunch abortion-rights candidates.
Pritchard said the 2024 results should “embolden Republicans” to be more open and frank on abortion during the 2026 campaign season.
Ground game for 2026
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, told reporters ahead of the third anniversary of Dobbs that her organization is already beginning its ground game operations in battleground states.
She said their focus is on House races, considering the narrow majority in the lower chamber, but they’ll also campaign in states with open Senate seats where an anti-abortion candidate can win.
SBA is widely regarded as the most politically connected anti-abortion group in the broader movement. The organization spent nearly $2.3 million in lobbying during the 2024 campaign cycle and donated nearly $500,000 to Republican candidates, according to the campaign finance website OpenSecrets.
Dannenfelser told the Washington Examiner that most GOP candidates are confident they can succeed if Democrats make the 2026 election about abortion access yet again.
“I actually think that there are a lot of Republicans who are thinking, ‘All right, go ahead, make my day. Make abortion again the No. 1 issue. We’ll see how it goes this time,” Dannenfelser said.
LaBruna told the Washington Examiner that Republicans have been struggling for a long time “to figure out the way to message” on abortion but that they’re finally in a position to go on the offensive following Trump’s appointment of anti-abortion judges to the federal bench.
“We wouldn’t be in this situation without President Trump, what he did with the Supreme Court and what he did with the other 200 judges, we would not be having this conversation right now with Roe v. Wade being overturned,” LaBruna said.
Defunding Planned Parenthood and its election impacts
Like overturning Roe, prohibiting Medicaid and certain Obamacare subsidies from being given to clinics that provide abortions has been seen as a proverbial white whale of the anti-abortion movement for decades, under the rallying cry of defunding Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood’s 2023-2024 report indicates that the organization received more than $792 million from government reimbursements and grants, roughly 44% of its operating budget for 2023. During that time, the organization performed more than 402,000 abortions nationwide.
Although the Hyde Amendment prevents federal dollars from directly reimbursing abortion services, anti-abortion advocates argue that any federal dollars sent to a clinic that provides abortion subsidize the practice due to the fungibility of money.
Planned Parenthood’s president has said that the loss of federal government funding would result in more than 200 Planned Parenthood closures across the country.
Congressional Republicans and the White House have downplayed the importance of defunding Planned Parenthood with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but Democrats are poised to make it a central feature of their midterm campaigns should it be signed into law next month.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), during a press conference earlier this month, evoked the language used during the 2024 campaign season to denounce the reconciliation bill, saying that Republicans are trying to sneak in a “back-door abortion ban.”
Anti-abortion advocates are hopeful that the effort to defund Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers baked into the GOP reconciliation bill will not have the same electoral blowback that the Dobbs decision did for the midterm elections.
Public opinion polling since 2014 has shown that voters do not support using taxpayer dollars, particularly Medicaid, to fund abortion.
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Even still, Brandt from Live Action said he thinks that Republicans are “better equipped” to handle rhetoric from abortion-rights opponents than they were during the immediate aftermath of Dobbs three years ago.
“A big reason is they’re the ones voting for it. It’s not just happening to them from the Supreme Court. They’re doing it. They theoretically know what they’re voting on,” Brandt said.