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In election, support for abortion rights was about much more

Protesters fill the street in front of the Supreme Court after the court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in Washington, June 24, 2022. Support for abortion rights drove women to the polls in Tuesday’s elections. But for many, the issue took on higher meaning, part of an overarching concern about the future of democracy. Women, especially Democratic women, were more likely than men to say the Roe v. Wade reversal was a top factor in their vote.(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
Protesters fill the street in front of the Supreme Court after the court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in Washington, June 24, 2022. Support for abortion rights drove women to the polls in Tuesday’s elections. But for many, the issue took on higher meaning, part of an overarching concern about the future of democracy. Women, especially Democratic women, were more likely than men to say the Roe v. Wade reversal was a top factor in their vote.(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File) Protesters fill the street in front of the Supreme Court after the court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in Washington, June 24, 2022. Support for abortion rights drove women to the polls in Tuesday’s elections. But for many, the issue took on higher meaning, part of an overarching concern about the future of democracy. Women, especially Democratic women, were more likely than men to say the Roe v. Wade reversal was a top factor in their vote.(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

By JOCELYN GECKER and NUHA DOLBY / Associated Press 7 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) — To Mona Cohen, a lifelong Philadelphia Democrat, democracy is under attack in the United States. In the midterm elections, she lists a woman’s right to abortion as one of many fleeting freedoms she voted to defend.

Cohen, 68, feared the Supreme Court’s decision in June to eliminate women’s constitutional protections for abortion was only the beginning of a broader erosion of rights. So she backed Democrats in her state of Pennsylvania, where the party flipped a U.S. Senate seat and won the contest for governor against a pair of Donald Trump loyalists.

A government dominated by Republicans, Cohen said, “would have gone on to impede contraception, to impede marriage equality, to impede any kind of civil rights that we as a society have fought for in the past 50 years.”

Support for abortion rights did drive women to the polls in Tuesday’s elections. But for many, the issue took on higher meaning, part of an overarching concern about the future of democracy.