So, This Seems Bad

A handful of key U.S. Senate races will decide the fate of Democrats' narrow majority in the chamber this November and, as of this week, I have some not-so-great news out of Wisconsin. According to the Cook Political Report, the race for Senate in Wisconsin is officially a toss-up, as the GOP candidate who's previously equated Plan B with abortion threatens to unseat Democrat Tammy Baldwin. That GOP candidate is Eric Hovde, a businessman with deep roots in California. Before Tuesday, Baldwin and Hovde's race was classified as "lean Democrat."

Cook gives Baldwin a meager two-point lead over her opponent, while FiveThirtyEight still has Baldwin up by five points this week and The Hill's polling average has Baldwin up 4.3 points. Of course, all of these only slight point differentials are terrifying when the stakes are this high. Baldwin and Hovde's race could decide whether Senate Democrats will have a prayer of restoring reproductive rights or, at minimum, blocking Republicans’ anti-abortion extremism.

When Hovde last ran for U.S. Senate in 2012, he said he was “totally opposed to abortion,” and “oppose[s] legalized abortion”—“from conception.” That's an explicit endorsement of fetal personhood, which accords legal rights to embryos and fetuses at the expense of the pregnant person. Fetal personhood results in not just the criminalization of pregnancy outcomes and abortion, but, as we saw in Alabama earlier this year, can also outlaw IVF. In April, Hovde seemed to walk back these positions, tentatively saying that people have "a right to make a choice" early in their pregnancy—but that's still an endorsement of an abortion ban. In May, Hovde said a 12 to 14-week abortion ban seems "reasonable." Fact-check: No abortion ban is "reasonable."

Since Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, Wisconsin has felt the direct toll of extreme abortion bans and the legal chaos wrought by the overturn of Roe v. Wade. In 2022, Wisconsin enacted a pre-Civil War, 1849 abortion ban with no exceptions, which was eventually blocked in 2023, but still threw access to health care in the state into disarray.

Most recently, in August, Hovde seemingly conflated emergency contraception with abortion pills, and compared the dissemination of Plan B pills to drug trafficking. “The vast majority of abortions today are done through the day-after pill,” Hovde told a WisPolitics reporter at a campaign event. But Plan B prevents a pregnancy while abortion pills end a pregnancy that’s underway. When asked at that event if he'd move to ban or prohibit Plan B, Hovde replied, “We can all talk in theory, let’s just talk in reality, you’re not changing that. That pill will be around, just like hard narcotics transfer from state to state or from other countries into our countries, medications move all over our country, and that’s just reality.” As I wrote in August, equating medication abortion with illegal drugs is all about teeing it up to not just be banned but criminalized, as we're already seeing in Louisiana—with chilling consequences for maternal health in the state.

After Hovde made these comments, a spokesperson for Baldwin told Jezebel that Hovde's "ignorant comments... show that he’s not fit to hold an office that could impact women’s health care decisions," and warned that he "supports passing a new abortion ban." Indeed, Hovde is endorsed by Right to Life Wisconsin, whose stated mission is to make abortion "legally unacceptable," citing Hovde's "strong support for federal right-to-life issues.” Hovde's campaign told Jezebel that he "supports access to contraceptives," and was "referring to the movement of goods across borders and how difficult it would be for states to enforce restrictions on contraceptives." K.

The Hill characterizes this race as "Baldwin's toughest reelection battle" yet, after she cruised to a second term in 2018 by an 11-point margin over Republican opponent Leah Vukmir. Her race this year is one of several toss-ups, including the races between Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D) and former Rep. Mike Rodgers (R) in Michigan, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) and Bernie Moreno in Ohio, and a handful of others currently marked as "lean Democrat," but that could easily switch to "toss-up." Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) is polling behind his Republican opponent Tim Sheehy—who recently mocked young women for being "pro-choice"—by about four points as of this week, and Brown is in a statistical dead heat with Moreno, who last month called women voters "a bit crazy" for supporting abortion rights. So, pardon me if I'm a little on edge going into next month!