Abortion may not technically be on the ballot in Tuesday’s off-year state elections, but in the post-Roe v. Wade era, abortion is always on the ballot. Since the US Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs ruling that ended the federal right to abortion, statewide elections have become opportunities for reproductive rights supporters and opponents alike to expand or limit access to care by voting on the politicians who create the laws, the judges who enforce them, and, sometimes, on the laws themselves.
When voters have had the opportunity to weigh in directly on ballot measures enshrining abortion protections, those measures have mostly won, even in red states. When the vote is indirect—that is, for people rather than policies—the results are much more mixed. Just consider what happened in 2024, when states that approved abortion-rights measures also went for anti-abortion judges and Donald Trump. This week’s elections are the first time that large numbers of voters can express their feelings about the country’s radical change in direction under Trump 2.0. In five states, the results will also have major statewide and even national implications for access to reproductive care.
CALIFORNIA
California’s Proposition 50, the blockbuster redistricting measure designed to stop Republicans from rigging next year’s midterm elections, will affect all kinds of democratic rights, including reproductive autonomy. Prop 50 would temporarily suspend California’s current congressional maps, which were drawn by an independent citizens commission, and allow the Democratic-controlled legislature to create new maps that would remain in place through 2030. Governor Gavin Newsom and his allies got the idea after Texas lawmakers, buckling to Trump’s demands, redrew their congressional map to elect more Republicans—potentially enough to keep the US House of Representatives under GOP control in 2026 and beyond. If approved by voters, Prop 50 could sufficiently alter the partisan makeup of California’s House delegation—currently 43 Democrats and nine Republicans—to effectively negate the Texas redistricting effort. Polls show that California voters are very much on board.
Republicans currently have a slim six-seat majority in the House; a wider margin could empower them to unleash all manner of new legislative horrors on the country, including, potentially, an extension of this year’s temporary defunding of Planned Parenthood and even a national ban on abortion after 15 or 20 weeks of pregnancy. A Democratic majority, on the other hand, would bring the GOP legislative machine in Congress grinding to a halt. With so much at stake, total spending by both sides is well north of $175 million. During a press call, Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, described the GOP efforts to further gerrymander red states as “a naked attempt to steal congressional seats” and “an emergency for our democracy.” Prop 50, added John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, is “a defensive shield for our democracy and for reproductive rights.”
NEW JERSEY
New Jersey voters will pick a new governor and all 80 members of the General Assembly. With Democrats currently holding a 52-to-28 majority there—and a 25-15 margin in the state Senate—most of the attention has been on the tight race between Democratic congresswoman Mikie Sherrill and Republican ex-assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, to replace termed-out Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy. Recent polls show Sherrill—a former Navy helicopter pilot and onetime federal prosecutor—narrowly ahead. But Ciattarelli, who nearly ousted Murphy in the 2021 race, is hoping he can ride Donald Trump’s 2024 coattails to victory on Tuesday. (Trump didn’t win the state but made huge gains compared to 2020.) New Jersey’s pattern of flip-flopping between Democratic and Republican governors may be another factor in Ciattarelli’s favor: No party has held the office for three consecutive terms since 1961.
Months before Roe was overturned, New Jersey lawmakers passed the Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act, enshrining protections for abortion care into state law; Sherrill would go further, adding these protections to the state constitution. Ciattarelli, by contrast, would ban abortion after 20 weeks (currently there are no gestational limits), end coverage under state Medicaid, and require parental consent for minors. A Democratic legislature, however, would thwart any efforts to put those policies in place.
But Ciattarelli would be able to stop new reproductive protections from becoming law—for example, potential legislative efforts to strengthen the state’s shield laws that protect abortion providers who care for out-of-state patients. Reproductive rights advocates point to what happened during the tenure of Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican who was in office from 2010 to 2018, during which he repeatedly vetoed funding for family planning. “We’ve been here before, and we know what we could expect under a Ciattarelli governorship,” Kaitlyn Wojtowicz of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund of New Jersey told the New Jersey Monitor. “It would be devastating for public health.”
PENNSYLVANIA
For decades after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, Pennsylvania activists and politicians led the fight to narrow its reach—if not overturn it altogether. These days, despite Roe’s reversal, Pennsylvania continues to allow abortion through 23 weeks of pregnancy, albeit with significant restrictions, including a 24-hour waiting period, bans on Medicaid coverage, and a parental consent requirement for minors. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court demonstrated last year just how much the state has shifted, ruling that the 42-year-old Medicaid ban is a form of sex-based discrimination under the state’s Equal Rights Amendment. The decision suggested that courts might be open to throwing out other abortion restrictions that lawmakers—with Republicans controlling the Senate and Democrats holding a single-seat majority in the House—seem unlikely to repeal anytime soon.
On November 4, the Democratic justices responsible for that ruling—Kevin Dougherty, Christine Donohue, and David Wecht—will come before voters in a retention election with enormous consequences not just for abortion, but for next year’s midterm elections and the 2028 presidential election in a crucial swing state. This is the same court, after all, that struck down Pennsylvania’s congressional map in 2018 as an unconstitutional gerrymander and rejected complaints about election monitoring by Trump’s 2020 campaign.
The three justices were first elected in 2015, in a sweep that flipped the court to Democrats. If they win on Tuesday—and in the state’s history, only one justice has ever lost a retention vote—they will serve for up to another 10 years. If they lose, only two Democrats and two Republicans will remain, and the next judicial election will not take place until 2027. Political infighting in the meantime would hamper efforts by Democratic governor Josh Shapiro to appoint temporary replacements—a situation that Justice Donohue told the Associated Press could lead to “chaos.” Spending in the races is expected to exceed $15 million—far surpassing previous retention elections—as Democrats try to blunt Republican efforts to retake the court.
TEXAS
Texas parents have long had the right to oversee their children’s education and health care and direct their upbringing. Those protections got a lot stronger this year, with the passage of Senate Bill 12—the “Texas Parents Bill of Rights”—which, among other things, requires schools to obtain parental consent before students can receive health services, including counseling, or participate in school clubs and organizations. But that bill—and a slew of other new laws that make it easier for parents to challenge the policies and curricula in schools that they don’t like—still weren’t enough for Texas’s parental-rights extremists. Lawmakers also approved Proposition 15, a constitutional amendment on Tuesday’s ballot that would enshrine a parent’s rights “to exercise care, custody, and control of the parent’s child, including the right to make decisions concerning the child’s upbringing. ” It would also enshrine a parent’s responsibility “to nurture and protect [their] child.”
Supporters claim the constitutional amendment is needed to ensure that parents’ rights can’t someday be repealed. Opponents say the amendment would make it even harder for minors to access contraception and sex education, and for LGBTQ kids to navigate an ever-more-hostile political environment. Prop 15’s vagueness and allusions to parental “responsibility” are also concerning. The measure would “open the door for another parent’s personal beliefs to strip rights from other people’s children and their families,” the reproductive justice group Avow Texas warns, and could lead to “delays in young people getting care, censorship in schools, and increased family policing.”
Opponents’ other big fear is that Prop 15 will inspire conservative lawmakers in other red states to pass copycat bills. Denise Rodriguez of the Texas Equal Access Fund says the ballot measure is “about perpetuating the culture wars” and conservatives’ desire to crush dissent: “They want to do everything that they can to control the way that people live.”
VIRGINIA
Virginians will choose a new governor to replace Republican Glenn Youngkin, who is barred from running for a second consecutive term, as well as a new lieutenant governor, attorney general, and members of the 100-seat House of Delegates. According to recent polls, Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer and three-term congresswoman, is leading her Republican opponent, current Lieutenant Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, in the race to become the state’s first female governor. That comes as a relief to abortion rights supporters, given Earle-Sears’s past statements equating abortion to “genocide” and supporting a six-week ban. Virginia is the only Southern state that hasn’t restricted abortion in the post-Dobbs era; the procedure remains legal through 21 weeks of pregnancy, which has made it a destination for patients from around the South who can no longer obtain care where they live.
The real battle over the fate of abortion in Virginia is taking place in legislative races. Democrats now control both chambers of the General Assembly—the House of Delegates by a 51-48 margin and the state Senate by 21-19. That narrow majority allowed Democrats to pass a proposed ballot amendment this past winter that could let voters decide whether to enshrine abortion protections in the state constitution. But under Virginia law, legislators must pass the amendment again during the 2026 session; then voters will get the final say next November. Republicans are targeting a few key races in Tuesday’s election in hopes of flipping control of the House and derailing the constitutional amendment. (The next elections for the state Senate take place in 2027.)
The House of Delegates races also could affect two other proposed constitutional amendments passed by lawmakers this year. One would restore voting rights for people with past felony convictions. The other would remove a ban on same-sex marriage from the state constitution—a now-defunct “zombie” law that could potentially be revived if the Supreme Court were to overturn its 2015 ruling that gave gay couples the right to marry. It’s a lesson Democrats learned after the Dobbs ruling: Counting on the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority to protect existing rights is dangerous. Especially when some of the same conservatives who worked so hard to overturn Roe are now gunning for gay marriage.
