How Abortion, and I.V.F., Flipped an Alabama State House Seat

Marilyn Lands’s victory in a special election provided an early blueprint for Democrats who are eager to make reproductive rights central to their campaigns.

“I’ve heard it said that there are these arcs in history and these places are where the pendulum swings,” Marilyn Lands said. “And so I hope that’s where we’re at.”Skip to contentSkip to site indexHow Abortion, and I.V.F., Flipped an Alabama State House Seat

Marilyn Lands’s victory in a special election provided an early blueprint for Democrats who are eager to make reproductive rights central to their campaigns.

When Marilyn Lands, a Democrat, won an election last month for a northern Alabama State House district that Republicans had held for more than two decades, she stretched the political power of reproductive rights into the edges of Appalachia.

Democrats lauded her victory as an example of how potent the issue will be in November, more than two years after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade. And while Republicans argued that Ms. Lands’s suburban district had been ripe for Democratic pickup for years, it forced some to acknowledge that they needed to rethink their approach to talking about abortion on the campaign trail.

Democrats had long eyed Alabama’s 10th District, which encompasses Madison County and its seat of Huntsville. Nestled in the mountains less than 100 miles from the Tennessee border, the area is home to both NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal — and with it, a growing number of young families, plus scores of engineers and federal government employees. In his 2020 presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump won Madison County by eight points, his second slimmest margin in the state. The county is one of Alabama’s wealthiest and best educated.

ImageAlabama’s 10th District encompasses Madison County and Huntsville, Ala., and is home to both NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal.ImageThe county is one of Alabama’s wealthiest and best educated, with a growing number of young families, plus scores of engineers and federal government employees.

And Ms. Lands’s contest, a special election called when a Republican resigned after pleading guilty to charges of voter fraud, received a seismic jolt. Weeks before the election, the Alabama State Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos were considered children, casting immediate doubt on access to in vitro fertilization, a popular fertility treatment. Republican lawmakers in the state were forced to scramble in the face of public backlash and anger from families pursuing the treatment. And Ms. Lands adjusted, appealing to her party’s base voters as well as conservatives concerned about increasing restrictions on women’s health care.

“I’ve heard it said that there are these arcs in history and these places are where the pendulum swings,” Ms. Lands said in an interview at her home in Huntsville, which for the last three months served as the headquarters of her campaign’s canvassing operation. “And so I hope that’s where we’re at — that it’s beginning to tilt. Not necessarily so much in the other direction, but just back toward balance.”

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