• Pro-choice activists elected 23 new pro-choice representatives and three new pro-choice senators
• South Dakota voters rejected a near-total abortion ban at the polls
• California and Oregon voters both rejected divisive anti-choice ballot measures

These are huge wins for which pro-choice activists should be proud. Through all of your help and support, we worked together to act on our pro-choice values and laid a foundation for a future where privacy and freedom are protected.

And yet, with the extreme unpredictability of the anti-choicers, we can never predict where and when anti-choice politicians will overstep in their attacks on legal abortion, access to birth control, and medically accurate sex education.

Already in states across the country, lawmakers are considering new near-total bans on abortion. In Georgia, anti-choice lawmakers are even trying to pass a ban that includes a penalty of life imprisonment or death for women who have abortions and the doctors who provide them. Outrageously, we hear that in North Dakota, anti-choice legislators are going to mark the Roe anniversary on Monday with a hearing on a near-total abortion ban. Add to that that legislators in states including Texas, Virginia, and Oklahoma are pushing bills that would outlaw abortion if the Supreme Court were to overturn Roe, and you’ve got an unsettling trend that must be stopped.

For more on anti-choice activity, click here.

So yes, challenges remain and this report reiterates the fact that favorable election returns won’t erase the calculated way in which anti-choice politicians and groups use the states as laboratories to test new ways to undermine women’s access to safe, legal abortion and birth control.

But before you get too depressed, here are a few positives trends with which we hope to build upon in our new-and-improved political climate:

• States considered 470 pro-choice measures in 2006; 187 of these were Prevention First measures.
  
• The number of pro-choice measures considered in 2006 increased three percent from 2005, when states considered 458 pro-choice measures.
  
• Every state with a regular legislative session considered pro-choice legislation in 2006, except for the District of Columbia, Idaho, and Mississippi.
  
• The majority of state legislative bodies are now either pro-choice or mixed-choice.

I hope you’ll take a moment to visit Who Decides on our website and read more about the opportunities and challenges that we face as pro-choice Americans in this new political climate.