This Democratic group is taking the fight over abortion rights to state legislatures

WASHINGTON — Democrats say they're taking the fight over abortion rights to state legislative races in 2024 as they seek to flip seats and expand their majority across the country.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, an organization that works to elect Democrats to statehouses, wrote that state legislatures have become “the arbiters of reproductive freedom, shaping the reality facing women and their access to care" in a memo first shared with USA TODAY.

The committee in January announced a $60 million budget that would be used to hold and flip state legislature seats this year by providing a boost to campaigns and reaching out to voters with their arguments about reproductive rights.

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, 25 states with Republican-led legislatures enacted laws to completely outlaw abortion or restrict the procedure after a certain number of weeks, ranging from six to 22, according to KFF, formerly known as The Kaiser Family Foundation.

Some states have gone a step further to try to clamp down on contraceptive access. For instance, Arizona Republicans blocked an effort from Democratic lawmakers to protect the right to contraceptives in the state last week.

The Alabama Supreme Court’s blockbuster ruling last month that frozen embryos created during in-vitro fertilization have legal protections also added another layer to the abortion debate. The ruling, the DLCC argued in the memo, opened the doors for more states to potentially enact fetal personhood bills that aim to define human life beginning at conception.

The group wrote that solutions at the state level "will end Republicans’ anti-abortion crusade and protect fundamental reproductive freedoms.” 2024 state legislative elections, they wrote, will “decide the future of abortion rights."

How effective will the DLCC's battle plan be?

Out of 99 state legislative chambers in the U.S., there are currently 57 Republican-led ones and 40 led by Democrats. In 2024, seats will be up for election in 85 of these 99 chambers, according to the DLCC.

The DLCC laid out a battle plan in its memo this week. Democrats won majorities in the Michigan House, Minnesota House and Pennsylvania House in 2022. Though the Michigan House no longer has that majority, the group is seeking to protect and expand their control in all three places.

It will also be aiming to flip seats in Arizona and New Hampshire that have Republican majorities in both chambers, according to the memo. In other states, such as Georgia, the group is seeking to build Democratic power in red legislatures to get the ball rolling for future majority control.

The committee will likely face challenges in flipping seats and building Democratic majorities in these races, experts say.

For one, state legislatures have become polarized due to a wide range of factors, such as gerrymandering, said Mary Ziegler, a politics of reproduction expert at UC Davis School of Law. Gerrymandering occurs when electoral district boundaries are drawn to give one party a clear advantage over another.

Because of that, some state legislatures have essentially been under the control of a single party, even when the electorate in those states might not be monolithic in that way, she said. Breaking that control would be an uphill climb for Democrats.

Although state races are local, which may pull in voters who are concerned with local issues, they don't have as high a profile as national races, said Amanda Roberti, a political science professor at San Francisco State University.

"The DLCC will have to spend a lot of time and resources making sure voters understand who the candidates are, and why those candidates are better for the people," she said.

Another issue is the advantage provided by incumbency. Incumbent candidates generally have an overwhelming chance of winning reelection, said Roberti. Republicans focused their efforts on the state legislatures to sweep and flip about a dozen state legislatures in 2010, so defeating the folks who are still there in 2024 will be a challenge, she explained.

But Heather Williams, president of the DLCC, argued that Republicans also have vulnerabilities in states the organization is targeting.

In Arizona, for instance, Williams said that there is an effort underway to get an initiative on the ballot in 2024 that would protect the right to abortion until about 24 weeks. Democrats have notched multiple victories with state-level ballot measures protecting abortion rights, even in states that often go red.

Though she acknowledged challenges the group will face, such as gerrymandering and incumbency, she said she is confident about the group’s movement in 2024.

“The aim of politics is to be able to create contrast and tell a story and to really challenge Republicans, whether they're, you know, in the majority, whether they're an elected official or they’re running for office,” said Williams. "I think the story is pretty clear in this election cycle.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: DLCC eyes state legislative races to protect abortion rights