Mississippi’s governor just signed a law, more restrictive than in any state, banning abortions after 15 weeks. Iowa’s state Senate is trying to go even further by stopping abortions at around six weeks. And 20 Ohio lawmakers have proposed outlawing all abortions, even if the woman’s life is in danger.

In many state capitols, Republican lawmakers are backing unusually strict anti-abortion laws. Many are emboldened by President Donald Trump, who has been more supportive of their agenda than any president in decades. Conservative lawmakers also are eager to get more tough restrictions on the books in case November’s elections bring a surge of Democrats hostile to them.

Federal courts have immediately blocked many of these anti-abortion laws, including Mississippi’s. But they still have a purpose: to set up legal challenges to Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationally, at a time when Trump could appoint the justice who helps overturn it.

“Trump has given hope to the pro-life movement,” said Ron Hood, a Republican state representative who introduced the total abortion ban in Ohio.

Under Hood’s bill, women could be criminally punished for aborting an “unborn human.” In an interview, Hood said prosecutors would decide what charges to seek, just as they do in cases of manslaughter or murder.

For years, many anti-abortion groups have argued that laws should penalize the doctor, not the woman, but Hood said about a quarter of his colleagues in Ohio’s 99-member House chamber are lined up behind his bill.

“Those who oppose abortion rights are seeing this as a time to push for the most extreme measures,” said Nancy Northup, chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which supports abortion rights

About 1 in 4 women have an abortion in their lifetime, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research organization, in a report recently published in the American Journal of Public Health.

In the Trump era, the long-running abortion wars are heating up again, and the country is increasingly divided when it comes to the availability of abortions.

Many Republican-controlled states are ratcheting back access — establishing waiting periods, outlawing common medical procedures, and cutting off Medicaid funding.

At the same time, Democratic-controlled states are expanding access to contraception and reproductive health; in Washington state, the governor just required insurers to cover abortion costs.

Charles Donovan, president of the research institute of the Susan B. Anthony List, which promotes politicians who oppose abortion, said the looming midterm elections “certainly do add a push” to get anti-abortion laws in the pipeline for a potential Supreme Court challenge.

In 2017, Trump’s first year in the White House, 19 states passed 63 anti-abortion restrictions, according to Guttmacher.

Collectively these measures send a loud message, Donovan said. “It’s a cultural message, not just a legal message, to the court.”

Before Trump ran for president, he very publicly said he was “very pro-choice.” But when he became a candidate, he promised to appoint judges to reverse Roe v. Wade and won over many Republican voters, including from the religious right, who remain among his steadfast supporters.

They applauded his appointment to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, who has never ruled in an abortion case and evaded questions at his confirmation hearings about Roe v. Wade but who has consistently voted with the court’s conservative majority. Another vacancy on the court would give Trump a chance to increase that majority, a prospect that has thrilled Trump supporters.

The opportunity has not worked out in the past. Justice Anthony Kennedy was once thought to be the missing vote to overturn Roe but instead affirmed the right of women to seek an abortion.

But Kennedy is 81 and is said to be considering retirement. Two of the court’s liberals, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, are 85 and 79, respectively.

The chance to replace one of the three offers abortion opponents “something they never thought they would have: a potential majority on the Supreme Court” who would overturn this landmark decision, said John Weaver, a Republican strategist who has advised Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Northup said Trump has unleashed a “new level of aggression” among abortion opponents. Recent bills include those that would prosecute doctors who perform one as early as six weeks, make no exception for rape, forbid women from getting an abortion if the reason is a high probability of Down syndrome; and, as in Ohio, allow a prosecutor to seek criminal charges against women.

“People better vote on November 6th like their life depends on it,” said Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio. She said the discussion in Columbus of criminally prosecuting women “is so far out of the mainstream” that there is urgency for voters to turn out.

Democrats, who overwhelmingly support preserving the rights of women to end an unwanted pregnancy, say energy is high and record numbers of women are running in November. They are hoping for wins that could shift the power balance in state capitols.

Conservatives also say they are energized.

Susan Swayze Liebel, coordinator of the National Pro-Life Women’s Caucus for the Susan B. Anthony List, and abortion opponents are working to turn out their base.

“The Trump effect is the hope effect for the pro-life movement,” Liebel said.

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A Pew Research poll last year found that 69 percent of Americans did not want to overturn Roe v. Wade.

But Pew also showed a stark party split: 75 percent of Democrats said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 65 percent of Republicans believed it should be illegal in those cases.

A big Republican-wave election in 2010, after the election of Barack Obama, sharply increased GOP and conservative clout in states that remains today. Since then, 33 states have passed laws to limit abortion.

In Texas, an increasingly hostile environment for abortion providers contributed to the closures of 20 clinics, abortion rights groups said, about half those in the state. In the Republican strongholds of Mississippi and Kentucky, one clinic is left.

In certain parts of the country, “It is unequivocally much harder now to access abortion care than any year since Roe v. Wade,” Northup said.