We were told abortion wasn’t an important election issue. How wrong that was | Moira Donegan

Pro-choice anger propelled Democratic candidates, delivered decisive victories in four state referenda on abortion, and blocked the brunt of what was supposed to be a wipeout

We were told that abortion would not be a major issue in the midterm elections. Over the past weeks, pundits and political strategists alike suggested that the outrage over the Dobbs decision had been momentary, capricious; that by election day, women would forget. They insisted that the surge in new voter registrations among women was a fluke, or irrelevant.

Ahead of the election, it became conventional wisdom among a kind of self-serious, mostly male political commentator to insist that not only were the Democrats doomed, they had doomed themselves, specifically, by talking about abortion too much. The party had dragged itself down with a social issue that was ultimately not very important, we were told. The Democrats were going to lose, and it was going to be because they had spent too much time catering to the flighty and unserious demands of feminists.