Alabama has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, and its highest court recently banned in vitro fertilization. In a special election for the legislation, candidate Marilyn Lands swept to victory by emphasizing reproductive rights.
Politico reported:
An Alabama Democrat who campaigned aggressively on abortion access won a special election in the state Legislature on Tuesday, sending a message that abortion remains a winning issue for Democrats, even in the deep South.
Marilyn Lands won a state House seat in a rare competitive race to represent a district that includes parts of Huntsville. Lands, a mental health professional, centered her bid on reproductive rights and criticized the state’s near-total abortion ban along with a recent state Supreme Court ruling that temporarily banned in vitro fertilization.
“Today, Alabama women and families sent a clear message that will be heard in Montgomery and across the nation,” Lands said in a statement. “Our legislature must repeal Alabama’s no-exceptions abortion ban, fully restore access to IVF, and protect the right to contraception.”
Her opponent, Madison City Council member Teddy Powell, focused his campaign on economic development and infrastructure.
Lands spoke openly about her own abortion experience, when she had a nonviable pregnancy that ended in abortion two decades ago. Her campaign ran a television ad sharing that story.
“It’s shameful that today women have fewer freedoms than I had two decades ago,” Lands says in the ad.
Open the link to finish the story.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Body autonomy for women is a winning issue for Democrats. The Huntsville area is more “enlightened” than the rest of Alabama. More people in Huntsville are well educated. It is known as “rocket city” because it is the home to The U.S. Space and Rocket Center whose scientists designed many of the NASA rockets, and other high tech. industries are located in and around the city as well.
A more complex reply of mine was swallowed by the electroverse. You are entirely correct about Huntsville. It does not represent the state of Alabama. Nor does Birmingham or Mobile. But this is the modern South. Every area has its island of urban moderation (I will not use the term liberalism because I do not agree that such an entity exists today in enough quantity to discuss). Tennessee has Nashville and Memphis, and even Knoxville and Chattanooga are politically moderate. Texas has Houston and Austin. Mississippi has Oxford. Georgia is dominated by Atlanta much the same way that New York is dominated by the City.
I believe Dobbs will radically change electoral politics. I just don’t know how.
Flor-uh-duh is an extremely backward state in which the Repugnicans have government here locked up. But it ranks SECOND IN THE NATION in percentage of abortions performed–369 for every 1,000 live births, according to usafacts.org, even though it disallows women’s bodily autonomy and bans abortion after 15 weeks. Floridians oppose abortion until they knock up a mistress or their 16-year-old daughter gets knocked up by her drug dealers. Then they are all over it like a fly on whatever goop Pence puts on his hair to make it that bizarre, unnatural white.
Florida is just a few voter roll purges from being a Purple state.
I believe the abortion issue is one that will get some of the younger people out of the mist and into the voting booth. As RT points out above, Huntsville is not Alabama. At one time there were more PHDs per capita than any other place in the nation, even considering the lab at Los Alamos, NM. This is a rich and prosperous city in a region that does not look like Alabama. Not only is the space program there and Redstone arsenal, but there is a new Toyoda plant 20 miles west, and a growth rate that reaches up into Tennessee. Granted that this is a protrusion into a very conservative territory, it still does not reflect the entire state.
It does, however, reflect a south much more complex than we generally discuss here. Southern people who oppose Trump exist in pretty big numbers, and pulling voters off the sidelines in a national race could affect state and local elections. Dobbs might awaken a lot of people.
It can’t only be about abortion. Independent voters are the voters who make or break a candidate’s election, and for many independents the word “abortion” still has a negative connotation.
The recent passage of laws against IVF, and the attacks in court on contraceptives, show that what’s in the works from the MAGA movement is a total ban on all forms of family planning.
And that’s the way the issue should be packaged for all voters: The right of a husband and wife to plan their family is in danger of having the government dictate the planning for them.
Emphasizing government interfering in and dictating a husband’s and wife’s most essential and personal rights and intimate decisions is what needs to be hammered home relentlessly because that is what will arouse the greatest number of voters, especially the independents.
MAGA is Big Government at its worst.
Emphasizing government interfering in and dictating a husband’s and wife’s most essential and personal rights and intimate decisions…
Not all these decisions are between a husband and a wife. All these decisions, in a democracy, belong only to the person for whom pregnancy is a possible outcome, with medical advice from a trusted professional.
Anything less confers a lesser status on one party.
Totally agree, Christine!
Taking away personal autonomy from more than half of the population should be ringing loud alarm bells for all. Majorities of all Americans support abortion access. Following the tactics of the minority to oppress the rest of us will give you insight as to what would unfold with a second Trump term, or that of some other wannabe autocrat.
Jessica Valenti is tireless on this topic; her substack is https://jessica.substack.com/p/strategy-watch-abortion-reporting
Jessica: abortion :: Diane: public education