Four years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, 41 states have abortion bans in effect with only limited exceptions, and 13 states ban abortion entirely. That is not what the country asked for. Sixty percent of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases — a number that has barely moved in decades.

We already know what the bans do to people. In Texas, ProPublica bought and analyzed seven years of hospital records and found that after the state's ban took effect, the rate of sepsis rose more than 50% for women hospitalized when they lost a pregnancy in the second trimester. Doctors delayed care because treating a miscarriage can look like performing an abortion. Women got sicker. Some died.

The politicians below didn't just go along for the ride. They wrote the laws, filed the briefs, picked the judges, and are now working to make it national — reaching into states where voters have said no.

Michael Guest helped build the case that killed Roe

Mississippi's 15-week ban was the law at the center of Dobbs — the case that ended the constitutional right to abortion for everyone in America. In July 2021, Michael Guest was one of the members who led 228 members of Congress in an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold it.

Guest had told Mississippians that abortion should be "a state's rights issue" and that "the federal government should allow each state to be able to set their laws." Four days after Dobbs came down, he signed on as a cosponsor of the Heartbeat Protection Act — a national six-week ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. So much for states' rights.

He's still going. Guest is an original cosponsor of this Congress's Life at Conception Act, which declares that constitutional personhood begins "at the moment of fertilization." The bill contains no exception for rape, for incest, or for the health of the pregnant woman.

Cindy Hyde-Smith blocked a bill to protect IVF

Cindy Hyde-Smith signed that same Dobbs brief, and she now chairs the Senate Pro-Life Caucus. She is the person Senate Republicans put in charge of this issue.

In February 2024, after Alabama's Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children and clinics started shutting down, the Senate tried to pass the Access to Family Building Act to protect IVF nationwide. It needed unanimous consent. Hyde-Smith stood up and said, "Therefore, I object" — killing it on the spot while claiming she supports "total access to IVF."

This January she reintroduced the SAVE Moms and Babies Act, which would end mail-order and telehealth prescriptions for mifepristone and force every patient to appear in person. Abortion pills account for roughly 63% of abortions in this country. That's the point.

Eli Crane voted to pull the abortion pill off the shelf

Eli Crane cosponsored the Life at Conception Act in June 2023 — the same fertilization-onward personhood bill, the one with no exceptions at all.

Then he voted for it in a spending bill. In September 2023, Crane voted yes on the Agriculture-FDA appropriations bill that carried a provision reversing the FDA's decision to let pharmacies dispense mifepristone. The bill failed on the House floor — because more than two dozen Republicans wouldn't go as far as Crane did.

Tom Tiffany wants to run the state whose limits he voted for

Tom Tiffany is running for governor of Wisconsin. In March 2026, asked whether he'd like to see any changes to Wisconsin's abortion laws, he answered plainly: "No. So, I voted for the current law, which, 10 years ago when I was in the state Legislature, which is you can have an abortion up to five months. I voted for that law, and as governor I will uphold it."

What he didn't mention: in June 2022, he cosponsored the federal Heartbeat Protection Act — the six-week national ban, no rape or incest exceptions. Five months for Wisconsin, six weeks for everyone. And as he geared up to run statewide, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Tiffany erased abortion, gun rights and other issues from his website. A record you have to hide is a record you know we don't want.

Mike Flood wrote the first 20-week ban in the country

Before he came to Congress, Mike Flood was speaker of the Nebraska Legislature, where he introduced the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. When it was signed in April 2010, Nebraska became the first state in the nation to ban abortion at 20 weeks — a model that spread to statehouse after statehouse and helped build the legal road to Dobbs.

Sixteen years later he hasn't moved an inch. Flood is a cosponsor of the Life at Conception Act in the current Congress.

Juan Ciscomani helped pick the judges who revived an 1864 ban

Some of this work doesn't happen in public. From 2015 to 2022, Juan Ciscomani was one of four staffers in Governor Doug Ducey's office who vetted judicial applicants — "I have the privilege of being part of the Governor's team who interviews judicial candidates," as he put it. All four Arizona Supreme Court justices who voted to reinstate the state's 1864 near-total abortion ban were appointed during his tenure in that role.

When the ruling landed and Arizonans were furious, Ciscomani called the 160-year-old ban "archaic" and "a disaster for women." He helped build the court that resurrected it.

Pat Harrigan changed his answer when his district changed

Pat Harrigan ran in one North Carolina district in 2022 and a different, more conservative one in 2024. His position on a federal abortion ban changed right along with the map. Spectrum News reported: "In 2022, when Harrigan was running in the 14th District, he told us he did not support a federal ban on abortion. He now said, given the makeup of this different district, he would support one."

Your rights shouldn't depend on which precincts a politician needs to win.

This is the party's position, not seven bad apples

Look at what connects these seven. A congressman in Mississippi and a congressman in Arizona cosponsoring the same personhood bill. A senator objecting to IVF protections. A House candidate trading his position for a friendlier district. A governor candidate deleting the issue from his website. None of them stops at their own state line — the personhood bills, the pill restrictions, and the six-week bans are all written to apply everywhere, including the states where voters have already said no.

They can only do that if we keep sending them back. In 2026, we don't have to.