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Was it only last July that pro-life forces were cheering themselves hoarse? After years of battling in the streets, the legislatures and the courts, they had won their greatest victory: a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, Inc. that gives states enhanced power to restrict abortions. It was only a matter of time, pro-lifers predicted, before abortions were severely restricted, if not banned.

Three months later, pro-lifers must be wondering what hit them. Abortion- rights groups, perhaps with their fingers crossed, had promised that the Webster decision would galvanize a silent pro-choice majority. Last week, as pro-choice activists won stunning victories in Florida's legislature and the U.S. Congress, that promise began to be fulfilled. With the political landscape seeming to undergo a seismic shift, many antiabortion politicians have concluded that the only way to maintain their footing is to tiptoe away from their former positions.

Nothing better illustrated the growing fear of a pro-choice voter backlash than the special session of the Florida legislature. Just days after the Supreme Court's Webster ruling, first-term Republican Governor Bob Martinez, a staunch pro-lifer, called the session to consider new antiabortion laws. In a state with a fast-growing G.O.P., it appeared to be a politically astute move.

But polls quickly showed that more than 60% of Floridians opposed further restrictions and that only 24% would vote for Martinez again. Even members of his own party, worried that an antiabortion label would hurt Republicans among suburban and women voters, began denouncing the special session as a costly waste of time. Just days before the session opened, Florida's supreme court ruled that abortion was protected by the state constitution, which contains a right-to-privacy clause approved by the voters in 1980. The court went on to overturn a state law requiring that parents be notified when their teenage daughters seek abortions.

The session, scheduled for four days, collapsed after only two, during which pro-choice legislators turned back 14 antiabortion bills -- three of them proposed by the Governor. Abortion-rights activists were jubilant. "This has gone better than we hoped," exulted Eleanor Smeal, president of the Fund for the Feminist Majority. "It should encourage state politicians everywhere who are pro-choice to take a stand."

It has already encouraged several in Florida. Though he had expected to be easily renominated by his party for next year's gubernatorial race, Martinez must now overcome a primary challenge from pro-choice Republican State Senator Marlene Woodson-Howard. Anxious not to revive old charges that he is an indecisive leader, Martinez has vowed to reintroduce the defeated bills when the legislature meets in regular session next April. He dismisses the notion that he may have suffered politically. "When you're functioning out of conviction," he says, "you can't think of politics."