The abortion lobby shouldn’t celebrate too quickly in Ohio
Hudson Crozier
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President Joe Biden and abortion advocates are cheering after Ohioans rejected a ballot proposal that would make it harder for voters to pass amendments to the state constitution. The proposal threatened a pro-abortion amendment that will be on a November ballot, and many have declared Tuesday’s vote a “win for abortion rights.”
By itself, the vote is not a win for or against abortion. It is a step in a broader plan by the abortion lobby that, as a whole, faces difficult political odds.
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The abortion amendment has been marketed as a way to bring back the Roe v. Wade standard, allowing restrictions only “after fetal viability.” Local media have been throwing around a poll that suggests most of Ohio’s likely voters support the idea.
In asking the question, the poll relies on the amendment’s vague, ideologically slanted language about “a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions” and its red herrings about miscarriages, fertility, and contraception.
In a more straightforward poll last year, another organization simply asked if voters support Ohio’s current law, explaining that it bans abortion at six weeks or when a heartbeat is detected and has no exceptions for rape or incest. Support came down to a perfect 50-50 split, and the pollster has a history of undercounting right-leaning results.
Research from the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists also showed that the public is much less supportive of the “viability” standard when finding out it involves late-term abortion. The Ohio proposal may go even further because it allows exceptions to protect whatever is arbitrarily defined as the “health” of the mother.
Tuesday’s proposal performed poorly even in conservative districts, according to the Associated Press. Voter turnout was far more enthusiastic in liberal areas, and it seems that many conservatives did not care or had their own reasons for opposing this procedural change for amendments. We cannot infer from this that a mostly red state will adopt a sweeping constitutional right to abortion come November.
But pro-lifers should not rest easy, either. The public has a distorted view of what Ohio’s restrictions actually did before a court temporarily blocked them. Media coverage portrayed the state as a patriarchal dystopia that had criminalized miscarriage care when the law did no such thing.
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To sway more centrist voters, pro-lifers will need messaging that cuts through an avalanche of propaganda, plus the trickiness of the amendment itself. The abortion lobby’s grand plan relies heavily on voters’ lack of understanding of the specific policies they are supporting or opposing. It will take extensive grassroots outreach for pro-lifers to stop it, but the truth is on their side.
Hudson Crozier is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.