The price of a conservative judiciary? Donald Trump is about to find out.

Conservatives spent a generation stacking the bench with anti-abortion judges. Donald Trump is now paying the price.

The former president is reckoning with high court rulings in Alabama, Florida and, most recently, Arizona, which have kept abortion and reproductive health care in the spotlight when he and much of the GOP would rather be talking about inflation or the border.

Taken together, they underscore the difficulty Trump and his campaign have in controlling a narrative that at any minute can be redefined by any judge in America.

Trump’s Monday announcement that abortion should be left to the states was supposed to neutralize an issue that has dogged Republican candidates since Roe v. Wade was overturned nearly two years ago. But by Tuesday — when an Arizona court ruled that an 1864 near-total abortion ban was enforceable — it was clear that it was futile to try to leave the issue behind.

Before Tuesday, “Arizona leaned Trump,” said Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based GOP strategist. “I would put Arizona now as lean Biden.”

Trump, sensing as much, tried Wednesday to distance himself from the decision.

“It's all about state’s rights and it will be straightened out,” Trump said at a campaign event in Atlanta when asked if Arizona’s ruling went too far. “And I’m sure the governor and everybody else have got to bring it back into reason and that it will be taken care of.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

The former president, who regularly boasts about appointing the three justices who helped overturn Roe, isn’t the only candidate grappling with the decision’s consequences. A crowning achievement for conservatives, the ruling hampered Republicans in key gubernatorial, congressional, attorney general and state legislative races in 2022 and 2023.

And in 2024, several GOP candidates including Kari Lake and Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.), have moderated their stance so as not to get tagged as extremist by Democrats. But the ripple effects from the Roe decision are not likely to stop.

Republicans are staring down two major Supreme Court decisions, which could have major implications for access to abortion pills and when pregnant people can undergo the procedure in emergency situations. Both cases could upend the presidential race and hurt Republicans down ballot, and state supreme court decisions — in Iowa, Nebraska and Utah — could come later this year, too.

“You have some who feel that that’s entirely worth it, and they will tell you if there’s a political price to be paid for doing the right thing, then so be it,” said Doug Heye, a veteran Republican strategist. “But there are ramifications, political and otherwise.”

Several Republican strategists told POLITICO they see a widening divide between the more socially conservative judiciary, ideologically aligned with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and the populist wing of the Republican Party under Trump. But they also don’t see well-funded, coordinated efforts to rear conservative lawyers and usher them onto benches changing anytime soon.

A GOP strategist working on races across the country this year, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about election strategy, said this moment is an “inflection point” for the party.

“The judiciary is going to continue on the path they’re on. It’s easier to make a very conservative case in a legal brief than it is in a general election TV ad,” said the strategist. “The schism is going to continue to grow — especially if there is a pretty serious downside electorally in 2024.”

In Arizona, the state’s GOP-controlled legislature is advancing a measure that would put the question to voters whether Supreme Court justices should serve lifetime appointments. And in Oklahoma, Republican legislators want to take the authority to appoint Supreme Court justices from a judicial nominating committee and give it to the governor.

“It doesn’t seem to be slowing down,” said Douglas Keith, senior counsel in the judiciary program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law. “If anything, it’s picking up.”

The right’s judicial recruitment apparatus — spearheaded by the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, also known as the Concord Fund — has spent years promoting judges to state and federal benches, far outpacing similar efforts by Democrats. Years of preparation not only secured the conservative majority that ruled on the marquee Dobbs decision, which ended the federal right to abortion until viability, but also put right-leaning justices in place to rule on subsequent challenges to state abortion bans and other reproductive health-related cases.

In Alabama, for instance, Chief Justice Tom Parker used his opinions to lay out a legal framework for overturning Roe's viability standard years before he authored a decision ruling that frozen embryos are children. In Arizona, former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, who denounced Tuesday’s court ruling, packed the court with appointees after lawmakers expanded the number of seats on the court from five to seven. All five of his nominees are still serving. And in Iowa, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed legislation giving her more control over the judicial nominating process.

While abortion rights groups acknowledge that they have long lagged Republicans when it comes to pushing judicial nominees, they are reveling in their chance to hang every unpopular decision around Republicans’ necks.

“A lot of the damage has already been done by [Trump’s] allies,” said Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All. “If you look at who his allies are, who he appointed in his last administration, who he appointed to the court, who his allies advocated for to be appointed to the court, it becomes very very clear.”

And anti-abortion groups, like Students for Life, are urging GOP candidates against running from the court decisions. They point to Republican governors, including Florida’s Ron DeSantis, who handily won reelection in 2022 despite signing abortion restrictions, and members of Congress like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) who have been outspoken about their anti-abortion views.

"The law says what it says. If you don't like it, you can work to change it. But don't run away from abortion,” said Kristi Hamrick, chief policy strategist at Students for Life. "They're thinking in election cycles but we know that we're in a marathon, not a sprint."

Alice Miranda Ollstein contributed to this report.