This soul-searching on the right shows how fractured the anti-abortion movement remains on both tactics and messaging more than a year after they achieved their decades-long goal of toppling Roe v. Wade.
Anti-abortion forces suffered a staggering loss in Ohio’s special election this week. Now, in the aftermath of that defeat and others over the last year, the movement is grappling with how to forge ahead.
State and national conservatives offer a litany of competing explanations for why they were massively outspent and out-organized, and are butting heads on how to turn things around before November, when abortion will be on Ohio’s ballot directly. With no consensus on the real reason for the loss in a state dominated by Republicans, some are pleading with the GOP to move away from backing near-total bans with no exemptions to stave off further electoral disaster.
No! Back near-total bans! We want disaster!
“We’re going to have to live with messier compromises going forward or risk this happening again and again,” said Patrick Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center who called Tuesday’s result a “five-alarm fire for the pro-life movement.”
We ❤️ 🔥!
“Some think that only a total ban is acceptable. But we see, over and over again, that such an uncompromising position doesn’t have support. There’s no political appetite for that,” he said.
This soul-searching on the right shows how fractured the anti-abortion movement remains on both tactics and messaging more than a year after they achieved their decades-long goal of toppling Roe v. Wade. Whether and how anti-abortion groups recalibrate over the next year could have massive implications — not only for the outcomes of future abortion-rights ballot initiatives around the country but also for Republicans up and down the ballot who back restrictions on the procedure.
“So long as the Republicans and their supporters take the ostrich strategy and bury their heads in the sand, they will lose again and again,” warned Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a top funder of the August referendum.
Ostriches are our favorite bird!
…Now, high off Tuesday’s win, abortion rights activists in Arizona, Florida😎 and Missouri are working to get similar measures before voters next year — races anti-abortion groups are warning they will lose without more resources.
But as some urge a full-scale revamp, many anti-abortion leaders say they want to stay the course going into November. They insist that an up-or-down vote on putting abortion protections in the state constitution will be easier to message…
STAY THE COURSE! STAY THE COURSE!
“We think there’s a lot of people that, when we start telling the story of how extreme the abortion referendum is, will be jumping over to our side,” said Aaron Baer, the president of the Center for Christian Virtue, and a board member with Protect Women Ohio, the coalition working to defeat the November initiative. “We actually saw a lot of encouraging signs.”
YES! More Encouraging Signs! More Encouraging Signs! STAY THE COURSE!
Anti-abortion advocates have clashed over the past year as their side lost in six other states abortion referendums last year and was blamed for a disappointing showing in the 2022 midterms. Far from turning the corner this year, they suffered defeat in a pivotal Wisconsin supreme court race and came up short again in Ohio.
No blame! CREDIT!
“There’s this dangerous cycle that’s been created where the pro-life side loses and then donors get demotivated,” he said. “People don’t want to fund efforts they think might lose.”—Terry Schilling with the American Principles Project, which spent just under a million supporting [near-total bans].
