Will Abortion Issue Drive Election Turnout?

The likely U.S. Supreme Court ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made legalized abortion, gives Wisconsin Democrats an election-year chance to mobilize voters on two issues — abortion and same-sex marriage.

But that potential opportunity for a high Democratic turnout on Nov. 8 comes with a big if.

If voters are more concerned with high gas and food prices, higher rents and interest rates driving up home mortgage payments, pocketbook issues could outweigh abortion and same-sex marriage.

Democrats and women’s’ health-care rights advocates fighting to keep the 1973 ruling on abortion make this argument: If Roe is overturned, the conservative majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices could next overturn the 2015 ruling that allowed same-sex marriage. They cite language in the draft Supreme Court ruling that says the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee abortion access – logic that could also theaten the same-sex marriage right.

“The stakes of the 2022 elections couldn’t be higher: we’re fighting for the ability of each person to make their own decisions about their body, life, and future,” said Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler.

“Lives are on the line,” warned Assembly Democratic Leader Greta Neubauer, who is also a leader of the Legislature’s LGBTQ caucus.

Marquette University Law School polls show the potential political appeal of both issues:

-61% of those surveyed in Marquette’s October 2021 poll supported access to abortions in most or all cases, while 34% of those surveyed opposed the procedure in most or all cases. And that majority support hasn’t changed in recent years; 60% supported access to the procedure in September 2016, and 36% opposed.

-Support for allowing gays and lesbians to marry – the question asked by Marquette pollsters – has grown. In an April poll, 72% of respondents supported same-sex marriage, while 19% opposed. In Marquette’s May 2018 poll, 55% supported same-sex marriage, while 37% opposed.

But even if those two issues motivate Democrats to vote, they face an uphill fight to assure abortion rights. That’s because a law passed in 1849 — a year after Wisconsin became a state — criminalizes an abortion, unless the woman’s life is in danger. That law was never repealed, despite nearly a half century under the Roe standard.

The state’s top two Democrats, Gov. Tony Evers and Atty. Gen. Josh Kaul, are both up for re-election on Nov. 8 and promised to do all they can to protect what they believe is a woman’s right to have an abortion.

Republicans who control the Legislature passed new restrictions on abortions between 2011 and 2018 signed into law by then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Evers vetoed all new GOP-passed new restrictions since 2019.

If re-elected, Kaul has promised to not use any state Justice Department resources to enforce the 1849 law. District attorneys could prosecute them, however.

“I do not think that a ban on abortion should be enforced by any district attorney or law enforcement agency, both because it infringes on a fundamental freedom, but also because the resources of those agencies, and DOJ likewise, are much better used investigating things like violent crime or drug trafficking,” Kaul told the Wisconsin State Journal.

The two Republicans running for attorney general vowed to enforce the 1849 law, if elected. They compete in the Aug. 9 primary. Balsam Lake attorney and former legislator Adam Jarchow said Kaul’s “unwillingness to enforce the laws of Wisconsin should disqualify him from the job of attorney general.”

Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney, the other Republican running for the position, offered this take: “I am pro-life and I will enforce and defend the laws…Kaul [is] nothing more than a politician seeking to defend the laws he agrees with and virtually ignore laws he disagrees with.”

A new state report summarized induced abortions in 2020. There were 6,430 reported abortions in Wisconsin in 2020, a 1.2% one-year decrease and 18% fewer than in 2010. The most reported in the state was 20,819 in 1981.

Of induced abortions to Wisconsin women, 61% were surgeries and 39% were chemically induced – an increase from 31% in 2019.

About 30% of women who had induced abortions in 2020 were ages 20-24; 13% were older than 35; 7% were ages 18-19, and 3% were 15-17.

White women made up about 54% of abortions in 2020; African-Americans, 34%; Hispanics, 12%. And 84% of women who had induced abortions had never married; 12% were married.

In the 1970s, an Iowa feminist pioneer, former state Sen. Minnette Doderer, told a young Iowa Capitol reporter that there are no winners in the abortion debate: “Calling someone ‘pro-abortion is like calling them ‘pro-car wreck’.” Doderer, who died in 2005, would probably be surprised to see the high court ready to strike down Roe.

Steven Walters started covering the Capitol in 1988. Contact him at stevenscotwalters@gmail.com