I didn’t follow the Ohio thing closely, but from what I read, this week’s vote was sort of a double-bank shot against abortion. I can certainly see that some voters may have voted against raising the threshold for initiatives in OH but may also wind up voting against abortion. But the margin of defeat here doesn’t look good.
But with that said, I think banning abortion (however one wants to define that) just isn’t as popular even inside the Republican Party as one might have thought. Perhaps that explains why folks who want to protect babies (and social conservatives generally) have gotten the dirty end of the stick from the Republican Party for so long.
It seems to me borderline political malpractice that the Republican Party was basically left stammering when Roe was overturned after months of notice. It still seems crazy to me that almost no Republicans seem to be able to speak intelligently on this issue, even a year later. “Don’t permit Democrats to hack babies to death” seems like a winning message (even if it’s not all of what those of us here would like to see). But maybe I’m the one who is out of touch.