WASHINGTON — Advocates mounted a massive push to protect abortion rights at the state level in Tuesday’s election, but several notable defeats, and a new Trump presidency, leave abortion rights advocates staring down their biggest setbacks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
After the broadest push for abortion rights since that 2022 Supreme Court decision, the mixed results mean the country remains a patchwork of bans, restrictions, and safe havens for the procedure. Florida rejected a ballot initiative that would have reversed a six-week abortion ban and extended access up to a fetus’ viability, or roughly 24 weeks. South Dakota also turned down a ballot that would have protected abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy.
Nebraska had two competing measures on the ballot: One to protect abortion access up to fetal viability, and another to enshrine the state’s current 12-week ban in the state constitution. The 12-week ban won out.
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