Democrat Marilyn Lands yesterday decisively won an Alabama state House seat in a long-held Republican district, notching a special-election victory after centering her campaign on abortion acess and in vitro fertilization. Seems like Republicans will pay a price everywhere for their determination to quash women's reproductive rights! Via the Washington Post:

Lands’s win was the latest in a string of Democratic victories around reproductive rights after abortion rights advocates experienced a huge blow nearly two years ago. Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — which had established a constitutional right to abortion — in 2022, Democrats have found success in battleground elections and ballot referendums by focusing heavily on protecting abortion rights and running against GOP opposition to them.

Lands beat Republican Teddy Powell by a wide margin — about 25 percentage points — in a politically moderate section of northern Alabama that Donald Trump won by a single percentage point in 2020. Just fewer than 6,000 people voted — offering a limited snapshot of voter attitudes.

But the race tested election-year strategies that Democrats are hoping to deploy well beyond the district and the state. Lands bet her campaign that voters in the suburban district were angry about the state’s strict ban on most abortions and the Alabama Supreme Court’s recent ruling that frozen embryos created through IVF were people, a decision that temporarily halted the medical procedure in the state and affected many families planning to use IVF to have a baby.

By flipping the seat, Lands will join a small minority of Democrats in the Alabama House that has pledged to make repealing the abortion ban and ensuring access to IVF a core mission. The former aim faces near impossible odds in a Republican-dominated legislature.

When they talk about a low-turnout special election, here's my response: One side cared enough about the issues to get out and vote -- just like they will in November.