“It will be a huge motivator for individuals to come out and vote,” Terry McAuliffe, the former Virginia governor who is running again, said in an interview. He repeatedly described himself as a “brick wall” on women’s rights.

Between the Supreme Court’s initial action in the Texas case — allowing a law that bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy to take effect Wednesday — and a looming high court case challenging the Roe v. Wade precedent, abortion rights are moving to the forefront of the 2022 midterms. The Supreme Court’s next major abortion case will be heard in the court’s new term beginning this fall and is likely to be decided by next summer, months before the election.

“We’re in this historic moment where the court has chosen to take up a major abortion case. There’s been a crescendo,” Mallory Quigley, a vice president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List, said of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. “A lot will depend on what the outcome of the Dobbs case is. All of us on the pro-life side, we’re hoping that the outcome is that governors’ handcuffs will be taken off.”