This is a multipart series on the different ways the 2024 Presidential Election is likely to affect Texas.
Abortion is all but banned in Texas, and the main reason is former President Donald Trump. If he is elected, then further restrictions on reproductive health care are likely to happen.
Trump has never been a particularly anti-abortion politician, at least when compared to other Republicans presidents and nominees such as Mitt Ronney and George W. Bush. When he first toyed with politics in the early 2000s, Trump supported the right to choose. It was only after he became a Republican that he expressed support for the abortion movement.
Regardless of his personal zeal on the matter, Trump vicariously ended half a century of constitutional protection for reproductive choice. By appointing three far-right justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, conservatives in states like Texas and Alabama were able to get Roe v. Wade overturned.
This struck down federal protection for abortion under the Constitution, allowing states to make their own rules. Texas immediately outlawed the procedure after six weeks, leading many pregnant wome to seek care outside of the state or forgo it altogether.
If Trump is re-elected, there is no chance of re-shaping the court to reverse course on abortion through legal action. Since 1980, there have been 15 U.S. Supreme Court Justices appointed across 10 presidential terms. That averages to 1 or 2 justices per term. It’s worth mentioning that Trump has the most since Nixon with 3, though one of those should have been filled by Obama as Justice Antonin Scalia died during Obama’s second term and the Republican-controlled Senate refused to hold hearings for a replacement.
Two of the conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, are in their 70s. It’s possible that whoever is elected president in 2024 will replace both of them. If this was Trump, there would be little change to the ideological bent of the court. If Vice President Kamala Harris is elected, the court would still be majority conservative, but two of its furthest right members might be swapped for enough left-leaning ones to perhaps make a difference.
Since the fall of Roe, President Joe Biden has been working hard to preserve reproductive choice through executive action. It was this way that medication abortion access has been preserved through the mail. His administration has also fought against lawsuits trying to strip abortion medication of their FDA approval.
Harris has been very upfront about her desire to restore the right to abortion in states like Texas. She’s condemned Trump for the deaths of women in Georgia who couldn’t secure abortion care. If congress passes a law protecting abortion access, she says she will sign it, while Trump has supported a national abortion ban.
A congressional bill is unlikely in either case as it would need a filibuster-proof majority in the senate to pass. Further action on abortion is likely to be done at the state-by-state level. This can be buoyed by support from the sitting president, who can protect interstate travel to obtain abortions.
Regardless of who is elected in November, the status quo on abortion has likely been altered for the foreseeable future. Trump would likely undo all of Biden’s executive actions, leaving Texans unable to obtain medication by mail and perhaps not even legally being able to leave the state for reproductive health purposes.
The most likely path to restoring the right to abortion is through the courts. That will depend entirely on who gets to nominate three or four justices over the next two presidential terms. This, more than any other factor, will determine reproductive policy for the next generation.