Two years ago, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) signed a series of bills to expand abortion access and eliminate decades-old restrictions on the practice that had made the commonwealth a difficult place to obtain such a procedure.

The new laws were possible because Democrats had successfully flipped both chambers of the Virginia state legislature in 2019 and regained majority control of the bodies for the first time in more than two decades.

Two years later, Virginia may be on the brink of a dramatic reversal. Last fall, Republicans won back the governors mansion, retook control of the state House of Delegates, and trimmed Democrats majority in the state Senate to a single seat.

Now, with the Supreme Court apparently on the brink of a decision that would fully overturn Roe v. Wade, according to a leaked draft obtained by Politico on Monday night, the newly empowered Virginia GOP may be ready to join the bevy of states ready to severely limit or perhaps totally ban the practice.

While midterm elections usually turn on who controls Congress, the looming Supreme Court decision might mean that the most meaningful races will be often-overlooked campaigns for state legislative districts.

For all the attention on Washington , it is unlikely that Senate Democrats will manage to pass the Womens Health Protection Act, a bill that would codify Roe and legal abortion into federal law, any time soon. It will be in state capitals like Richmond, Lansing and Phoenix that the future of abortion rights in America is most immediately and directly decided.

Already, California is moving to codify abortion rights, as New Jersey did earlier this year . Republican-controlled legislatures, meanwhile, are racing in the opposite direction.

With the Supreme Court on the precipice of overturning Roe v. Wade, state legislatures will become the main battleground for protecting abortion rights in America, Vicky Hausman, the co-founder of Forward Majority, which has sought to flip GOP-controlled legislatures in recent cycles, said in a statement Tuesday. We can no longer count on the federal government or the courts. If you care about reproductive rights, you need to care about state legislative power.