Pro-life Republicans could have waited for the court to rule on the Mississippi law before pursuing additional, more restrictive abortion bans in other states. But they are pursuing an impatient strategy, clearly hoping that enacting more abortion bans now will have a normalizing effect that helps persuade the Supreme Court to take the next step and take down Roe. And if the Supreme Court has five justices determined to repeal Roe regardless of the surrounding politics, then Roe will go.

But the opposite could also come true. A wave of harassing lawsuits might turn the public away from the pro-life cause, spooking the Supreme Court, leaving Roe unscathed and uniting the Democratic base in advance of November 2022.

Republicans have overreached on abortion before. In 2012, Missouri’s Todd Akin derailed his chances to win a Senate seat when he claimed that rape victims rarely get pregnant because “if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.” Indiana’s Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock made a similar gaffe when he defended his position against allowing rape victims to get abortions by saying, “I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” In 2013, Virginia gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli was hammered for supporting legislation requiring women to get an invasive “transvaginal ultrasound” before getting an abortion. All lost winnable races.

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