More than a year after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, handing states the power to decide if and how to ban abortion, voters have again overwhelmingly rejected attempts to curtail access to the procedure. A string of successes for abortion rights groups on Tuesday are raising hopes among Democrats that, despite recent dismal polls, the issue will lift their odds in 2024.
In Ohio, the only state to hold an abortion-related ballot referendum in 2023, more than 56% of voters agreed to enshrine the right to the procedure into the state constitution. In Virginia, Democrats won back full control of the state legislature after Republicans campaigned on the promise of a “sensible limit” that would ban most abortions past 15 weeks of pregnancy. In Kentucky, the incumbent Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, bested his anti-abortion Republican opponent. And in Pennsylvania, in a race dominated by talk of abortion, Democrats won a seat on the state supreme court.
On Tuesday evening in downtown Columbus, Ohio, abortion rights advocates crowded into a hotel ballroom to watch as results streamed in. Once the vote was called in their favor, the conversation in the room immediately turned to the topic on everyone’s minds: what does the victory mean for next year?
In 2024, abortion-related referendums may be on the ballot in roughly a dozen states, including in critical swing states like Nevada, Florida, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Iowa. Democrats will almost certainly lean on the issue to buoy their party in races for Congress and the White House. And Tuesday’s results in Ohio raise hopes that they might be able to pluck voters from the other side. While Joe Biden lost Ohio in 2020, garnering only about 45% of the vote, Issue 1, the proposal to add abortion rights into the state constitution, won with an estimated 56% of the vote on Tuesday. That sweep indicates that Republican voters are abandoning their party on this issue.
“Abortion is a winning issue, including in states that are considered red,” said Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of Urge: Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity. “Young people, black voters, rural voters – voters all across the state came out and we saw support in every single corner of the state. The lesson for other states is: don’t take anyone for granted. Don’t assume they’re gonna support you, but also don’t assume that they’re gonna oppose.”
The issue turns voters out in high numbers, which could also prove a boon for Biden at a time of low enthusiasm: nearly 4 million people voted this year on Issue 1, according to early data from Ohio’s secretary of state office. That’s only slightly less than the 4.2 million people who turned out to vote in Ohio’s gubernatorial race last year – even though 2023 was considered an “off-off” election year.
The failures in Ohio and Virginia also leave Republicans without a clear roadmap for messaging on abortion – an issue that led them to underperform in the 2022 midterms. In Ohio, opponents of the ballot initiative, Issue 1, focused much of their message not on the morality of abortion, but on the idea that Issue 1 threatened parents’ rights to know if their children underwent an abortion or gender-affirming care. (That claim is dubious, legal experts told the Guardian.) In Virginia, Republicans tried to take advantage of Americans’ lack of support for abortion in the second and third trimester by proposing to ban abortion past 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and medical emergencies.
Both efforts were viewed as tests for next year – had either message won over voters, Republicans across the country may have adopted them in their own races in 2024. Now, their strategy is in question, and any course they choose risks alienating key constituencies.
“If the GOP moves to the center on abortion, they’re afraid that they’ll lose conservative donors and base voters – who are the ones who tend to be the most passionate Republican voters, the ones who turn out the most reliably and also people who donate a lot of money,” said Mary Ziegler, a University of California, Davis School of Law professor who studies the legal history of reproduction. “Republicans have been trying to finesse that, with pretty much no success to date.”
Despite being directly responsible for overturning Roe v Wade through his appointments to the supreme court, Donald Trump has attempted to stem the damage by distancing himself from much of his party, coming out against a national abortion ban. But polling shows that voters don’t necessarily trust Republicans who say they will not totally ban abortion. That may be in part due to their decades-long partnership with an anti-abortion movement that would like to eliminate the procedure entirely.
Hours before polls closed on Tuesday, Jamie Curry, Ohio regional coordinator for the anti-abortion group Students for Life, tried to convince passing Ohio State University students that Issue 1 was too extreme. “You seem to be in favor of a commonsense, middle of the road, but there’s plenty of people who align more pro-choice and are voting no on this issue,” Curry told one student.
But Curry’s message of moderation and compromise were contrasted by her group’s nearby poster board, which read: “All human beings are valuable persons, no matter their stage in life.”
“Republicans can spend their money saying that, ‘We are the moderates on this,’” said Joey Teitelbaum, vice-president of research for Global Strategy Group, a Democratic polling firm. “But in voting for Democrats in Virginia and voting for Andy Beshear, where abortion was a major part of that race and the communications, voters are clearly saying, ‘We do not trust Republicans on this.’”
