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Guest Essay

By Jill Filipovic

Ms. Filipovic is a lawyer and an author who writes on gender and politics.

In some ways, the 2024 election results seem incomprehensible. Majorities voted in favor of abortion rights in eight of the 10 states where the issue was on the ballot. But Americans also elected the man most responsible for the demise of those same rights. And in several states where abortion won, so did Donald Trump.

How could significant numbers of voters cast their ballots for legal abortion and also for the man who helped make it possible to criminalize abortion in the first place? Mr. Trump boasted about overturning Roe v. Wade and being the most pro-life president in American history, while Kamala Harris pledged to use her presidential power to protect and expand a broad range of reproductive freedoms. Yet, according to the vote tallies released so far, in every state where abortion was up for a vote, more voters cast those ballots for abortion rights than for Ms. Harris.

The positions of these voters are indeed incoherent. But they’re also reflective of the new political coalition Mr. Trump has built, and the kind of men and women who back him.

Abortion rights measures passed in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and New York; abortion rights secured well over half of the vote in Florida, although not enough to reach the 60 percent threshold to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s Constitution. (Abortion rights measures also failed in Nebraska and South Dakota.) Mr. Trump won the three states where abortion rights failed and he’s on track to win more than half of those where they passed, often by significant margins: In Montana he won by about 20 points, and in Missouri by nearly as much.

The first explanation is perhaps the most obvious: Mr. Trump successfully distanced himself from the abortion mess he created. His comments about abortion have been all over the place this cycle — he’s bragged about appointing Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe and claimed that he wouldn’t support a national abortion ban, despite........

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