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Ohio shows abortion could cost US Republicans 2024 election [1]

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Date: 2024-02 

I had often been critical of the American punditocracy’s conventional wisdom that Republicans would never “allow” Roe v Wade to be overturned on the basis that it would cost them a powerful means of motivating their voters.

That conventional wisdom, of course, was finally shattered last June when the Supreme Court actually did overturn the decision, paving the way for Republican-dominated states to pass draconian abortion bans.

As someone who grew up in the Christian Right, I always knew the drive to ban abortion among the Republican base was real and fervent, and you can only feed a monster like that for so long before it gets out of control.

One implication of the old conventional wisdom is proving to be accurate, however. Getting rid of Roe has been disastrous for Republicans at the ballot box so far, and that trend shows no signs of stopping. After last Tuesday’s state and local off-year elections, in fact, I am cautiously optimistic that the Republicans have overplayed their culture-warring hand, and that enough Americans in various parts of the country are sufficiently tired of a politics of moral panic around abortion, education, race and the existence of LGBTQ+ people that they will punish the Republicans in 2024.

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Prior to last Tuesday, American media outlets were fixated on a recent poll showing Joe Biden trailing Donald Trump in key swing states – a troubling fact given that it’s the states’ “electoral votes,” and not the popular vote, that determines who wins a presidential election. But despite Biden’s relative unpopularity, it is difficult to imagine voters handing the White House back to the Republican Party if Democrats can drive home the point that reproductive rights are on the ballot in 2024 with consistent and unapologetic messaging throughout the election cycle.

As I noted when the Supreme Court overturned Roe, public opinion data at the time already made it clear that the illegitimately stacked court’s majority decision was wildly out of step with the American public. In the relatively short time since, voters in seven states where abortion rights have been directly on the ballot have voted to protect those rights.

Last week, the Midwestern state of Ohio became the seventh. Long regarded as a bellwether for its residents’ tendency to vote for the winning candidate in presidential elections, it saw voters pass a ballot initiative enshrining the right to abortion access in the state with a solid 57% majority.

Ohio’s vote is significant not least because the new constitutional amendment explicitly allows abortion to be prescribed “at any stage of pregnancy, regardless of viability if, in the treating physician’s determination, the abortion is necessary to protect the pregnant woman’s life or health”. This deference to the physician over the state is critical, since in some states with strict bans in place – including my home state of Indiana – it is currently unclear how to demonstrate that an abortion is necessary to protect the pregnant person’s life or health, which puts a chilling effect on providers who don’t want to risk being penalised.

Ohio’s new amendment also settles the issue of the draconian six-week ban passed by the state’s legislature, which has been tied up in court battles that are now moot, as the ban cannot go into effect. And it comes on the heels of the successful defeat of an initiative Republicans tried to pass over the summer that would have made it more difficult to amend the state constitution, something that would have stood in the way of attempts to enshrine abortion rights. Voters saw through the ruse and showed up to prevent it, undermining Republican expectations – historically reasonable, particularly for an off-year election and even more so in the summer – of low voter turnout.

Ohio’s vote wasn’t the only indicator from last week’s elections that voters, even in some conservative areas, are tiring of Republicans’ endless attacks on the rights of women and queer people. In Virginia, for example, Democrats held on to their majority in the State Senate and gained a majority in the House of Delegates, despite strong campaigning by the state’s Republican governor Glenn Youngkin for a Republican majority in both houses, with the goal of passing an abortion ban. This resounding defeat may even cost Youngkin his political future, though some have considered him a rising star in the GOP.

And then there’s the matter of school boards, which have been sites of intense conflict over the last few years. Right-wing Americans have taken many of them over and worked to ban books, deprive transgender students of rights, and curtail teaching about racism in America and about sexual and gender minorities. At the forefront of many of these efforts has been the SPLC-designated extremist group Moms for Liberty. Founded in Florida in 2021, the group quickly rose to prominence, fomenting moral panic nationwide with chapters sometimes working closely with members of the SPLC-designated hate group the Proud Boys who have shown up to school board meetings to engage in intimidation. Last Tuesday, the vast majority of school board candidates backed by Moms for Liberty lost their election bids in states including Virginia, Iowa, and Kansas.

I will say, as I always do when writing about potential Democratic gains, that Democrats cannot take anything for granted in the national elections coming up a year from now. While historically high turnout has bolstered Democratic candidates in recent elections, Democratic leaders must continue to work hard to maintain it, and to combat voter suppression. But Democrats should not be afraid to talk about social issues in their 2024 campaigns. Abortion is, and will remain, a winning issue for candidates who seek to improve access and protect women’s rights, and a losing issue for candidates who want to police people’s bodies.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/chrissy-stroop-abortion-republican-party-us-losing-issue-ohio/

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