Last week, Ohio voters chose to add abortion rights to their state constitution.
Election observers are now turning their attention to what abortion could mean for 2024. Democrats are expected to try to put abortion measures on the ballot in key states to try to energize voters to turn out for the 2024 election, which some believe could boost support for President Joe Biden and other Democrats in local and state contests, per Axios.
Although polling has shown that the economy is on top of mind for most people, the results of the recent election indicate abortion might be a vulnerability for Republicans among some independent voters.
“Democrats have a message on abortion that’s more salient than Republicans,” Republican strategist Alex Conant told NBC News. “And Republicans need to figure out a way to talk about abortion that can win independent voters in the center.”
Republicans like Vivek Ramaswamy, a presidential candidate, said the pro-life movement “needs to be better about the way we discuss this issue,” at the presidential debate.
“There are deep reflections in the Republican Party and in the pro-life movement about how to improve from here,” he said, pointing to a lack of a roadmap on the right.
Others like former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley are trying to find the middle ground on the issue. During Wednesday’s debate, Haley said that although she is “unapologetically pro-life,” abortion is “a personal issue for every woman and every man.”
As Mary Ziegler, a University of California Davis School of Law professor, explained to The Guardian, the GOP is at risk of losing conservative donors and voters if the party takes a more moderate approach on abortion. These voters often “turn out the most reliably and also people who donate a lot of money,” she said.
Matt Walsh, a conservative commentator, opposed abandoning or compromising on the issue in a 14-minute video message posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Nov. 8, a day after the 2023 U.S. elections.
The Republican Party’s series of electoral defeats, which, he says, predates the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, might be a result of “running bad candidates and bad campaigns,” Walsh argued.
“This is especially worth considering given that many of the Republican losers of the past few years have not exactly been pro-life hardliners,” he said, giving the example of Mehmet Oz, known as Dr. Oz, who lost the U.S. Senate election in Pennsylvania in 2022. While campaigning, Oz said he believed abortion is between a woman and her doctor, as CNN reported at the time.
A moderate stance on abortion has been the “conventional milk-toast Republican wisdom” for a long time, he said, questioning its track record of success. Walsh also wondered how many GOP candidates have effectively “countered the pro-abortion narrative, with a strong and affirmative pro-life narrative.”
“The pro-life message is being blamed in races where the pro-life message is never even articulated. It’s being blamed for losing when there was never any fight,” he said.
Already in 2024, constitutional amendments providing abortion access are on the ballot in Maryland and New York. The Associated Press reported abortion access advocates are trying to get constitutional amendments on the ballot in Arizona and Florida, while in Iowa, Republicans are working to pass a constitutional amendment that says the state constitution does not guarantee the right to an abortion.
Meanwhile, in Colorado, there are competing efforts as both pro-life and pro-abortion rights advocates try to get their contrasting abortion-related amendments on the ballot, the AP said.
In Tuesday’s election, Democrats also gained full control of the Virginia legislature, which means Democrats will likely keep the state’s law that allows abortion up to 26 weeks of pregnancy. Gov. Glenn Youngkin had been campaigning on banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
“The disappointing results in Ohio and Virginia are a reminder that human rights battles are not won overnight,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a leading pro-life group, in a press release.
“Throughout history, great injustices have taken time and persistence to rectify. The Dobbs victory was an enormous breakthrough, but as with every other major shift in the status quo in our nation’s history, it will take time for the laws to reflect the reality of that decision.”
Ryan T. Anderson, the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, posted a statement on the political morality and political wisdom required when thinking about abortion after the election results.
“First, the principle: just as justice requires us to protect all unborn children, so too does it require us to protect access to life-affirming medical treatment for pregnant women facing grave medical complications,” the statement, which was signed by 20 scholars, said. “This is part of the pro-life ideal, not an exception to it.”
“Second, the prudential: while children at all stages of development ought to enjoy the law’s protections, political realities may make it impossible to achieve this fully and immediately in many jurisdictions. When that is so, enacting the most pro-life law realistically possible is justified.”
“A law better than the legal status quo is achievable,” the statement added.