In some states where abortion protections were passed, Donald Trump won

American voters this week chose to re-elect a man who has repeatedly bragged about hand-crafting the Supreme Court majority that was overturned Roo against Wadeconsistently spreads disinformation about pregnant people aborting their fetuses ‘after birth’ said there should be “some form of punishment” for women who terminate their pregnancies, and believed it was up to states whether they wanted to monitor individual pregnancies to see if women are having abortions.

At the same time, Americans in Missouri, Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Montana, New York and Nevada voted to pass ballot measures that would secure abortion rights through their state constitutions. Abortion became legal again in Arizona and Missouri. Both states now guarantee access to viability, a sometimes misleading term that usually means about 24 weeks or later to protect the physical or mental health of the pregnant person. Missouri’s total ban was one of the strictest in the country, and the winning measure is the first since Dobbs that voters should have repealed the abortion ban by popular vote.

Several states where these ballot initiatives received majority support were also handily chosen Donald Trump. That voters would choose both Trump and the pro-reproductive freedom measures is baffling – and confusing. It’s a reality that dovetails with another fact: that no matter how people vote, they may one day need an abortion or other reproductive health care to save their lives.

On Tuesday, this dissonance was evident. In Montana, more than 57% of voters took action to preserve access to abortion in the state. Still, about 58% of voters wanted Trump to win the presidency. Arizonans passed Proposition 139, and while the state is not officially involved in the presidential race, Trump is currently in the lead. In Missouri, the first state to officially ban abortion after the Dobbs Following this decision, nearly 52% of voters enshrined reproductive rights in the state constitution, while 58% of voters elected Trump. And in Florida, where more than 57% of voters said yes to Amendment 4, the initiative that would have reversed the state’s six-week abortion ban (but because Florida requires 60% approval for ballot measures, it did not pass), 56 % of voters chose Trump.

Exit polls suggest that, while more women voted in favor Kamala Harris then Trump, white women – as in 2016 And 2020– were more likely to vote for Trump than for the Democrat. While it is unclear how many white women, or other voters, chose to enshrine protections against abortion and vote for the man who took credit for creating the climate to reverse this abortion, there is post-election clarity that these split voters clearly exist.

The 2024 election, like the midterm elections before it, will go down in history as determined in part by abortion. Harris, who spoke in unprecedentedly stark terms about reproductive freedom during her campaign, is the first sitting vice president to visit an abortion provider while in office. Her campaign marked the stories of people who were denied access to abortion, who survived sexual violence, and who were on the front line in medical facilities across the country. For millions of voters, abortion was reportedly the top issue on their minds this week. Four in ten female voters under the age of 30 said abortion was the solution most important issue to their voice. And that also applied to the swing states. A New York Times/Siena College series of polls of registered voters in seven battleground states from August found that for women under 45, abortion had overtaken economics as the single most important issue on their ballot.

Plan C, an organization that provides resources to self-manage abortions with pills, released a statement after Trump’s victory: “Donald Trump’s second administration is a coming disaster for reproductive justice. While we can expect the worst for abortion rights, we also know that abortion has a permanent future regardless.”

Trump, his running size J.D. Vanceand his cohort mouthpieces walked one coordinated campaign to rewrite and misrepresent the former president’s impact in decimating access to reproductive health care for millions of women across the country. Yet his legacy is clearly visible, as is the right’s disdain for abortion and those seeking to expand access to it.