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Republicans wanted to weaponize abortion against vulnerable Democrats in 2020, but a wave of strict bans across the country has upended their strategy, leaving them scattered and mostly mute. Before Alabama passed its law, Republicans had made clear they would make abortion a central issue in the next election. They had homed in on a host of state laws expanding access to abortion, seizing specifically on a New York bill that Republicans inaccurately claimed would legalize “infanticide.” (Barron-Lopez and Zanona, 5/29)

Ever since Georgia passed a “heartbeat bill” earlier this month, there has been a growing pressure in Hollywood to speak out, given that the state has become a major production hub for film and television due to generous tax incentives. Some celebrities have vowed to boycott Georgia if the law is officially implemented in January, while others will instead donate earnings to organizations fighting against it. But it wasn’t until Tuesday that a major Hollywood studio contributed to the conversation. Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos declared that while the streaming giant wouldn’t yet refrain from working in Georgia, it would partner with organizations in the legal fight against the law, which is among the most restrictive in the nation. (Rao, 5/28)

The district attorney for Henry County is joining several of his peers in metro Atlanta in pledging not to prosecute women for seeking an abortion under the state’s new “heartbeat” law.“ HB 481 is unconstitutional because it is contrary to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which is presently the law of the land,” Henry District Attorney Darius Pattillo said in a statement. (Stafford, 5/28)

A reader asked us to investigate this repeated claim by the president of Planned Parenthood — that “thousands of women” died every year from botched abortions before the Supreme Court in 1973 nullified antiabortion laws across the United States in Roe v. Wade. This turned out to be an interesting inquiry, taking The Fact Checker through a tour of decades of musty academic literature. Statisticians had tried to parse data on what was, for the most part, an illegal act. Unplanned pregnancy and abortions were deeply shameful at the time, so the official statistics were not necessarily reliable indicators of mortality rates from abortion. (Kessler, 5/29)