The battle lines between Democrats and Republicans are becoming clear ahead of the midterms

Late on Friday night, Indiana’s governor, Eric Holcomb, signed a near total abortion ban into law after the state’s legislature became the first in the country to pass such legislation since the Supreme Court decision to strike down Roe v Wade. A few days earlier, on Tuesday, the people of Kansas voted in dramatic numbers and by an overwhelming margin to reject a ballot measure that would have allowed legislators to ban abortion in the state.

So the fight for abortion rights moves to individual states. “Following the overturning of Roe, I stated clearly that I would be willing to support legislation that made progress in protecting life,” Holcomb said in a statement after signing the Indiana measure. In Kansas, more than 900,000 votes were counted, with the result being to ensure protections for reproductive rights remained enshrined in the state constitution. That compares with less than 750,000 for the state’s primaries for the election of a governor. The strength of the turnout seemed to surprise both Democrats and Republicans, with president Biden calling the vote “something extraordinary”.

The result in Kansas has been a fillip for Democrats, showing that there is a case for making it a key issue for the midterms. National polls have highlighted the feeling across the nation: a CNN poll at the end of July found that 63 per cent of respondents disapproved of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade. But a win such as this in a state that is traditionally conservative at the ballot box is another matter.

Democrats have already started to go on the attack against Republicans who have recently won their party primaries ahead of the elections in November. In Arizona, Democratic senator Mark Kelly launched an advert criticising Republican opponent Blake Masters for his “dangerous ideas on abortion”.

Meanwhile, in Michigan, a group aligned with the Democratic Governors Association launched an advert against Tudor Dixon featuring quotes from her saying that she does not support abortion ban exemptions in cases of rape or incest. Dixon won the Republican primary on Tuesday to become the party's candidate for governor and has been backed by Donald Trump.

I would expect to see more of such adverts in the coming weeks across battleground states, with support from national Democratic Party-aligned groups, while many Republican candidates will point to Indiana as an example for other states to follow.