Abortion is not fading as a driving issue in America, coming up again and again everywhere policy is decided: in legislatures, courts, the Oval Office and voting booths.

And Republicans everywhere are struggling to adjust to a political environment in which an issue that motivated their base for decades has become a serious general-election liability.

Ohio voters on Tuesday rejected a Republican-backed proposal that would have made it harder for a ballot initiative aimed at protecting abortion rights to pass this fall. In the spring, an 11-point liberal victory in a pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court race was fueled by the issue. Days after that election, a Texas judge invalidated the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion drug mifepristone. (The Supreme Court has temporarily blocked the ruling.)

President Biden

President Biden once supported abortion restrictions — such as the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for most abortions — but now backs unfettered access, including endorsing congressional codification of the rights Roe v. Wade used to protect.

Last year, Mr. Biden called on Senate Democrats to drop the filibuster, a change he had long opposed, in order to codify abortion rights. When opposition from two Democratic senators kept the filibuster in place, he said he would make abortion rights his first priority if Democrats expanded their control of Congress. Instead, Republicans won the House.

His administration has told pharmacies that they risk running afoul of civil rights laws if they refuse to fill prescriptions for abortion pills, and hospitals that they cannot deny abortions in emergency situations. But while Mr. Biden has considered a range of other executive actions, he has indicated that he does not believe he has the authority to do more unilaterally.

He has, however, said he would veto a national abortion ban if Congress passed one.

Donald J. Trump

More than perhaps any other Republican, former President Donald J. Trump is responsible for the current state of abortion access: He appointed three of the six Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and the judge who invalidated the approval of mifepristone.

But lately, he has been loath to talk about it. He privately expressed concern that the overturning of Roe would hurt Republicans electorally — as it has — and his campaign has suggested that he wants to leave abortion policy up to individual states.

When he was in office, though, he endorsed a ban after 20 weeks’ gestation. He has already begun edging away from the idea of deferring to states, telling New Hampshire’s WMUR television station that he would “look at” federal legislation to prohibit abortion after 15 weeks.

In another interview, he said “many people” considered a six-week ban “too harsh,” but would not say whether he agreed. In a CNN event, he refused to be specific, saying, “Pro-life people are in a strong position to make a deal that’s going to be good and going to be satisfactory for them.” He did say he supported exceptions for rape, incest and life-threatening emergencies.

Ron DeSantis

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a bill in April to ban most abortions after six weeks. That is a more aggressive posture than he took in 2022, when Florida enacted a ban after 15 weeks and Mr. DeSantis, facing re-election, did not commit to going further. (Whether the six-week ban takes effect is contingent in part on whether a court upholds the 15-week ban.)

Polls show that most Americans, including Floridians, oppose six-week bans, a fact Mr. DeSantis seems conscious of: He signed the measure late at night with little fanfare and has generally avoided talking about it. At one news conference, though, he used it to try to position himself to the right of Mr. Trump on abortion.

He has not said definitively whether he wants Congress to pass a similar ban. In an interview on Fox News, he expressed concern that setting abortion policy nationally could allow a unified Democratic government to override restrictions like Florida’s. But he did not rule out the possibility, saying, “Dobbs returned the issue to the elected representatives of the people, and so I think that there’s a role for both the federal and the states.”

Nikki Haley

Nikki Haley has said she would sign a 15-week ban if Congress passed one, but indicated that she considered that possibility unlikely. Beyond that, she has dodged most questions by calling a full ban politically impossible and saying lawmakers will need to find a “national consensus.” (As governor of South Carolina, she signed a 20-week ban.)

“I think the media has tried to divide them by saying we have to decide certain weeks,” she told CBS News in May. “In states, yes. At the federal level, it’s not realistic. It’s not being honest with the American people.”

At the same time, she has indicated that she would support as strict a bill as Congress was capable of passing. “This is about saving as many babies as we can,” she said in Iowa in April.

She criticized the Texas judge’s ruling against mifepristone, though, saying she did not “want unelected judges deciding something this personal.”

Asa Hutchinson

Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas has indicated that he would sign a federal 15-week ban if elected president. “I’ve always signed pro-life bills,” he told Fox News in April when asked about that. “A pro-life bill that comes to me that sets reasonable restrictions, but also has the appropriate exceptions, yes, I would sign it.”

That was a reversal from an interview last year in which he called a national ban “inconsistent with what we’ve been fighting for for decades, which is that we wanted the Roe v. Wade reversed and the authority to return to the states.”

He did not specify what restrictions he considered reasonable — leaving the door open for a ban earlier than 15 weeks — or what exceptions he would want. Though he has expressed support for a rape and incest exception, he signed a ban without one in Arkansas, saying that legislators didn’t want it and that he accepted their judgment as the will of voters. (A poll found the opposite: More than 70 percent of Arkansans supported an exception.)

Mike Pence

Former Vice President Mike Pence has been more open than most Republicans about his opposition to abortion.

He has said that abortion opponents “must not rest” until it is banned nationwide, and criticized Mr. Trump’s suggestion that abortion policy should be left to states. His political organization, Advancing American Freedom, has endorsed federal bills to ban abortion after about six weeks and to establish fetal personhood, which would confer legal rights starting at fertilization and make abortion illegal with no, or almost no, exceptions.

He was also among the few presidential candidates to praise the Texas ruling against mifepristone. “I fully support efforts to take the abortion pill off the market,” he told a local Fox station in California.

Tim Scott

After some initial waffling, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina confirmed in April that he supported a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks’ gestation — and suggested that he would support an even stricter ban if Congress could pass one.

“Every day I would sign that bill into law,” he told Newsmax, referring to a 15-week ban. “I would sign the most conservative pro-life legislation you can bring to my desk.”

Mr. Scott also co-sponsored legislation in the last Congress — from 2021-22 — that would have established a constitutional right to life from “the moment of fertilization.”

Chris Christie

Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has said he wouldn’t sign a federal abortion ban unless he saw a “consensus” at the state level.

“Only then, after all 50 states do it, should the federal government take a look and see, is there consensus that has developed among the 50 states?” he told CNN in June. “And if there is a consensus, then the federal government can take a look at doing something. But until you give the states their opportunity to do it and the people in the states, we’re not being true to what we said for 50 years post-Roe.”

That is a reversal for Mr. Christie: During his first presidential campaign in 2015, he endorsed a 20-week ban. It is particularly striking because, before the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, he worked closely behind the scenes with the leader of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, an anti-abortion group that is demanding that Republican presidential candidates support a 15-week federal ban at a minimum.

Vivek Ramaswamy

The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy has rejected the idea of a national abortion ban, saying the matter should be left to states while nonetheless calling abortion “murder.” He has said he supports six-week bans at the state level.

“I don’t believe a federal abortion ban makes any sense, and I say this as somebody who is pro-life,” he told CNN in May. “This is not an issue for the federal government. It is an issue for the states. I think we need to be explicit about that. If murder laws are handled at the state level, and abortion is a form of murder, the pro-life view, then it makes no sense for that to be the one federal law.”

Doug Burgum

Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota has said he wouldn’t sign a federal abortion ban because “I believe in limited federal scope of the federal government.”

Mr. Burgum signed a near-total ban in North Dakota in April — it makes exceptions for rape or incest only in the first six weeks of pregnancy, and allows abortions after that point only to prevent “death or a serious health risk” — but told both New Hampshire’s News 9 and CNN that he believed such bans should be passed only at the state level.

Francis Suarez

Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami has endorsed a 15-week federal ban with exceptions for rape, incest and life-threatening emergencies, describing this to The Associated Press as “a position that will save a tremendous amount of babies.” (More than 93 percent of abortions are performed before that point.)

Mr. Suarez said in the same interview that he would not — for now — support a federal ban at six weeks. “I think that the country is not there yet,” he said.

Will Hurd

Former Representative Will Hurd of Texas has expressed his support for a 15-week federal ban, while suggesting that he doesn’t think passing one is politically realistic.

As a member of Congress, he voted for a 20-week ban twice, in 2015 and 2017. He also voted against federal funding for Planned Parenthood and supported a bill that would have banned funding under the Affordable Care Act for any health care plan that included abortion coverage, except in cases of rape, incest or life-threatening medical complications.