Are abortions about to be even harder to get?

Democrats hope that voter outrage about abortion remains a potent tool, even in Republican Ohio. The GOP, however, hopes tonight’s referendum will prevent the state from enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution

The Supreme Court’s Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision turned the 2022 midterm election on its head. It went from a year that should have been a blowout for Democrats, to one where Republicans narrowly won the House of Representatives and lost races for governor and Senate that otherwise should have been aces in the hole.

But more tellingly, voters pushed back referendums that would have restricted abortion even in solidly Republican states such as Kansas, Montana and Kentucky. Naturally, this has scared Republicans, particularly in red states.

Even the most hardened anti-abortion Republicans acknowledge that they don’t have the votes to pass a national abortion ban, and such an effort would even be a lift were they to win the White House and the Senate. Combine that with conservatives’ preference for state government as opposed to governing on a national level and they have plenty of reason to worry about their voters stonewalling their ability to tighten abortion access.

If Republicans can’t stop voters in Kansas, Montana or Kentucky, what chance do they ever have to oppose abortion access anywhere else?

That makes tonight’s vote in Ohio all the more important, for both supporters of abortion rights and its critics. As my colleague Alex Woodward reported, the Buckeye state will hold a referendum in November to amend its state constitution to enshrine the right to abortion care.

But before then, it faces another hurdle. As friend of the Inside Washington Newsletter, Grace Panetta, at the 19th News reported, in January, Republicans in the state legislature eliminated the August special elections - but then added them back as it was clear abortion rights activists could get the necessary signatures to put the abortion referendum on the ballot. Indeed, Ohio’s Secretary of State Frank LaRose, now a candidate for Senate, said the move was “100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”

As a result, voters will cast their ballot tonight to determine whether to raise the threshold for amending Ohio’s state constitution from a simply majority to 60 per cent. Doing so would add an additional burden for supporters of abortion rights, specifically because the election in November would happen in an off-year, where turnout is already low.

This is to say nothing of Ohio’s political makeup. In the past decade, Ohio went from being a firmly down-the-middle state known for deciding the presidency to a much more solidly Republican state. Former president Donald Trump beat both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden by eight points in both of his elections. The state now only has one Democratic official who was elected statewide, Sen Sherrod Brown, whom Republicans hope to knock off in the 2024 election.

Even when Republicans underperform in the state, they still tend to win. Last year, despite the fact that Sen JD Vance severely underperformed his predecessor Rob Portman and Gov Mike DeWine, who was running for a second term, he still beat Democrat Tim Ryan by six points. This came despite the fact that Mr Vance went from a Trump-critical conservative to “kissing my ass” as Mr Trump said at a rally with Mr Vance.

At the same time, Ohio became a flashpoint last year, when a 10-year-old girl who was raped in the state had to travel to Indiana to obtain an abortion. While President Joe Biden and Democrats held it up as an example of a post-Roe v Wade world, Republicans, including Rep Jim Jordan, questioned the veracity of the case, calling it “another lie.”

When it turned out to be true, Republicans sought to deflect to point to the fact that the man accused of raping the girl was an undocumented immigrant.

In recent months, anger about abortion shows little sign of petering out. Last week, in a special election in Tennessee, the two legislators who were expelled from the state legislature vastly overperformed Mr Biden’s 2020 performance in their districts, friends of the newsletter over at the Daily Kos noted. Similarly, abortion rights proved to be an especially potent motivator in Wisconsin’s supreme court judicial race in April.

All of this is setting up a race where Democrats and abortion rights activists are hoping that anger will overcome apathy while Republicans hope that voter apathy in an off-year works in their favour.