Ohio Republicans' Inexplicable & Baffling Abortion Blunder

I support expansive abortion access purely as a matter of practical considerations because of how legal prohibitions encourage horrific black market alternatives. I part ways with the pro-choice crowd when they respond to a difficult morality question with flippant dismissal. So at least from that standpoint, I sympathize with the earnest pro-life crowd because they’re helplessly witnessing what is (by their definitions) a massive genocide made worse by the fact that it’s legally-sanctioned.

So if you’re in that unenviable position, what are your options? The major practical problem is that abortion restrictions have been and continue to be extremely politically unpopular. The Dobbs decision generated a lot of what basically amounted to legislative reshuffling at the state level. Some states had trigger laws banning abortions, that awakened from their long slumber only for courts, legislatures, or voter referendums to strike them back down to sleep.

Ohio’s law banning abortions when a fetus heartbeat could be detected (typically occurs within 6-7 weeks of pregnancy) was struck down by a court last year, and so currently abortions there are legal up until “viability” (typically understood to be 22 weeks). On top of that, a referendum was set to be voted on this upcoming November election which would solidly enshrine abortion access within the Ohio state constitution (worth noting that this is the only referendum on the ballot). Given where public opinion is at on this issue, the amendment is virtually guaranteed to be approved by voters. What can you do to stop this train?

Ohio Republicans responded in a very bizarre and inexplicable manner (part of a pattern it seems). Apparently aware that the November referendum was going to be a shoe-in, they organized a whole special election in August as a preemptive maneuver to increase various thresholds for constitutional amendments, including raising the passing percentage from 50% to a 60% supermajority. That measure failed in the special election held yesterday, with 57% of voters against it.

Where to start? First, asking voters to vote against themselves was always going to be a challenge, and Elizabeth Nolan Brown notes the rhetoric supporters of Issue 1 had to resort to:

One talking point has been that it protects the Ohio Constitution from out-of-state interests. (For instance: "At its core, it's about keeping out-of-state special interest groups from buying their way into our constitution," Protect Women Ohio Press Secretary Amy Natoce told Fox News.) Another has been that it signals trust in elected officials to safeguard citizen interests, rather than letting a random majority of voters decide what's best. (The current simple-majority rule for amending the state constitution "sends the message that if you don't like what the legislature is doing, you can just put it on the ballot, and soon the constitution will be thousands of pages long and be completely meaningless," Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, told Politico in a prime example of this tack.)

Some of the TV ads the supporters ran were so incoherent. I don’t know how representative this particular example is but the 30-second spot avoids saying anything at all about abortion and instead argues that voting yes on Issue 1 would somehow…protect kids from trans drag queens in schools? The fuck? I guess they knew that “vote yes on Issue 1 to keep abortion restricted” wasn't going to be a winning message so this tangent was the only option.

Even if somehow Issue 1 had anything to do with gender identity indoctrination in schools or whatever (if anyone can explain this please do!) it bears repeating that the only referendum on the ballot in November was about enshrining abortion access. Voters are dumb but they’re not that dumb.

Just this last January Ohio Republicans passed HB 458 which eliminated almost all August special elections, but then they insisted on passing another law walking that back specifically to make sure Issue 1 got its very own election. The gambit apparently was to help its chances by leveraging low voter turnout in special elections. This too is baffling, because the timing gimmick very likely energized the “Democrats’ highly educated neurotic base” as my boy Yglesias so eloquently put it. Also, the type of voter that is willing to show up to a special election is not going to be the type that is inclined to wrest control away!

None of these decisions made any sense. By investing into a preemptive referendum to raise the threshold, they loudly advertised they knew their issue was going to lose in November. By carving out an exception for an August election, they demonstrated they knew they couldn’t win unless they act like a Turkish ice cream man with voters. By conspicuously avoiding talking about abortion, they’re acknowledging their policy position’s unpopularity.

I’m again acknowledging that the pro-life crowd faces an unenviable challenge in advocating for their position, and clearly their attempts at persuasion over the last several decades have not been panning out. But who actually thought the blatant gimmickry described above was actually going to work? All it did was showcase how weak they must be if the only tool in their arsenal was comically inept subterfuge.