Republicans gearing up for the midterms in Southern states could provide clues as to how their party plans to talk about abortion in campaigns moving forward.
No other region in the country has had more success when it comes to pushing anti-abortion legislation: Of the 16 states with some of the most restrictive policies on abortion, many of them, including Texas and Louisiana, are Southern states, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health research organization.
In conversations with NOTUS, several Republican candidates indicated that when Roe v. Wade was overturned, they saw the issue as settled and didn’t plan for it to be a key part of their 2026 campaigns.