The abortion fault line is about to start rumbling

But Kristin Ford, national communications director for NARAL Pro-Choice America, a leading abortion rights group, says the court would precipitate pitched political battles even in the red states if it weakens or reverses Roe. "Once these [state] bills can become law and it is less of an intellectual exercise, I think there will be significant backlash," Ford says. "It is not the case that voters in red states believe abortion should be completely illegal or inaccessible." James Henson, executive director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas (Austin), largely agrees. In a recent University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll, a 49% to 41% plurality of Texas adults said they supported the six-week abortion ban that state Republicans approved this month (but which cannot be implemented unless the Supreme Court revises Roe). But Henson says he does not believe "support would hold up" if the law could actually go into effect because "it's effectively a ban on abortion." And while many Texans "are very open to making the process of obtaining an abortion a strict one," he told me, a consistent majority want to ensure "the option is there." Support for such a restrictive limit, he predicts, would erode if the issue switched from "thinking about a poll question or hearing an opinion leader talk about it" to "the experience actual real women are going to have" in not even necessarily realizing "that they are pregnant before they hit the six-week marker."