Ohio voters dealt a blow to the hopes of pro-life advocates across the country on Nov. 7 when they voted to enshrine a right to abortion in their state constitution.

Ohio’s Issue 1 passed with the support of 57 percent of voters, and was the latest in a string of abortion-related ballot initiatives to grab national attention following the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade last year.

And, as with the other initiatives, its passage marked another gut-wrenching defeat for the pro-life movement.

“The passing of Issue 1 is a heartbreaking loss for families and the unborn in our state,” Ohio Right to Life told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. “Not only have parents’ rights been taken away to know if their minor child is making a life-altering reproductive decision, but children in the womb are now in danger of death by abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.”

The organization pledged to persevere in its efforts, especially heading into 2024.

“Ohio Right to Life will never stop advocating for the voiceless in our society, and the fight begins anew today to protect the innocent," the group said.

Heading into a crucial election year in which similar citizen-led amendments are already being planned, the question for many is whether a change in strategy will be needed to yield the victories advocates have been anticipating for decades.

Flipping the Script

While a majority of voters in Ohio gave Issue 1 their approval, opponents of the measure contend that its language was overly broad and left too much open to interpretation, including whether abortion would be legal through all nine months of pregnancy.

Priests for Life National Director Frank Pavone told The Epoch Times that he believed the amendment was deliberately crafted to deceive voters who would normally reject the idea of legalizing abortion through birth.

“There’s never been any poll anywhere, in any state or nationally, that shows a majority of Americans or any subset going for late-term abortion,” he said. “The other side spins a narrative to get these things passed.”

One claim abortion advocates have made in recent years is that restrictions on the procedure jeopardize miscarriage care.

Mr. Pavone said such arguments are nothing more than “fear mongering” meant to drive voters to the polls. Even so, he noted that they’ve had the desired effect—not only at the ballot box but also on politicians.

“The narrative that’s getting spun and fed to politicians and everyone else is that abortion is a losing issue—look at all these setbacks. And when you look at the big picture, what’s happened in America since Dobbs, the reality is just the opposite.”

Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe, he noted, more than a dozen states have passed laws tightening restrictions on abortion. But rather than tout those wins and call out the “extremism” of Democrats on abortion, he said Republican politicians tend to be “clumsy” in the way they address the issue.

“The other side has a very hard time when you ask them, ‘What are your limits? Where would you draw the line?’ This is a more difficult issue for them than for us,” he said.

“Secondly, we have the argument of compassion. Ours is the movement that reaches out to these women, both before and after abortion, to provide help, to provide alternatives, provide healing.”

That’s a view shared by other pro-life organizations, such as Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

In a post-election email to organization allies, the nonprofit stressed that the GOP must define its national stance on abortion. That stance, the group said, should highlight Republicans’ compassion for women and babies alike and align with “the national consensus that already exists, which is limiting late-term abortion when the child can feel excruciating pain.”

However, Mr. Pavone said that the pro-life movement also needs to show voters what abortion looks like with the same level of transparency as the videos depicting Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

“America will not reject abortion until America sees abortion,” he said. “And I am more convinced than ever that the hesitancy on the part of even many in our movement to take that approach is a real drawback and a real reason why we’re not making more progress on things like this.”

Playing Defense

Abby Johnson is the founder and CEO of And Then There Were None, a ministry that reaches out to people working in abortion clinics who want to leave the industry.

Ms. Johnson echoed others’ concerns about a lack of clear messaging on abortion, not only from politicians, but from the pro-life movement itself.

“Issue 1 passed, I think, ultimately, for the same reason that every pro-life ballot initiative has failed since Roe v. Wade has been overturned, and that is because the pro-life movement does not have a unified, decisive campaign,” she told The Epoch Times.

“We have many, many groups running their own campaigns, saying different things, competing messages. And meanwhile, you have the abortion movement saying the same thing, running unified campaigns, and they have a very decisive strategy.”

While one would expect the pro-life cause’s recent legislative and judicial wins to place the movement in a position of power, Ms. Johnson said a persistent lack of coordination between pro-life groups has instead left the movement fractured and disorganized.

“The reality is that the pro-life movement is always behind the ball, and they have been for decades,” she said. “We are still playing defense, even though we are in an offensive position, and that is going to continue to hurt us.”

Part of the problem, she said, is that for decades, the pro-life movement was losing battle after battle in the courts and legislatures. And now that the ball is finally in their court, the movement’s leaders and organizations simply don’t know what to do with it.

On Issue 1, Ms. Johnson noted that pro-life groups campaigned against the amendment with varying messages, with some decrying the law’s lack of a gestational limit for legal abortion and others focusing on its potential erasure of parents’ rights regarding their children’s reproductive decisions.

But parental rights, she said, are not a motivating factor for voters when it comes to abortion.

“A lot of people voting aren’t parents,” she said. “These young people definitely are not parents, so that is not something that is going to resonate with them.”

Informal exit polling conducted by Students for Life of America on Election Day showed that 85 percent of respondents who voted against Issue 1 did so primarily because they did not want to legalize abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.

Just 8 percent said parents’ rights were their primary concern.

“Our strategy is wrong,” Ms. Johnson said. “No one seems to really know how to talk about these issues in a way that matters to the public. And the bottom line is that a lot of these large pro-life groups are not listening. They are not listening to those of us who actually know what the people care about.”

A former Planned Parenthood clinic director, Ms. Johnson has firsthand knowledge and experience inside the abortion industry. But that insight, she said, is often undervalued by others in the pro-life movement.

“Nobody’s asking any of us who have actually been on the inside of the abortion movement to come and sit at the table,” she said.

A Personal Touch

Another group that is often overlooked when discussions of abortion arise is the growing population of survivors—the babies who are born alive despite attempts to end their lives through abortion.

A case study conducted last year by the Missouri-based Abortion Survivors Network (ASN) indicates that approximately 1,780 infants were born alive after a failed abortion in the United States in 2019. The study was based on available Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data—which is sparse—and the annual Canadian rate of such births (0.28 percent).

Meanwhile, overall abortion rates have spiked in certain states where abortion restrictions have been loosened or shot down post-Roe.

Kansas, for instance, saw a 57 percent year-over-year increase in abortions in 2022 after voters rejected an amendment that would have affirmed that the state’s constitution doesn't guarantee a right to abortion. Minnesota recorded a 20 percent increase after a judge struck down abortion restrictions last year that previous state Legislatures had passed, including a 24-hour waiting period and parental notification requirements for minors.

Noting that the number of abortion survivors in those states will likely increase as well, ASN founder and CEO Melissa Ohden told The Epoch Times that she hoped Ohioans will pay attention to how their state’s abortion statistics change going forward.

“No matter where they stood on this issue ... they should be reading those reports to understand what happens after this vote. … Because for people like me, who survived abortions, we live knowing that there are more of us to come. And the question is, what’s going to happen to them?”

In 1977, against all odds, Ms. Ohden survived her 19-year-old mother’s failed saline abortion and has been grappling with the physical and emotional toll of that attempt on her life ever since.

Her journey to healing led her to found ASN, a nonprofit that aims to help other survivors to find the peace, support, and strength that comes from knowing they’re not alone. But on the rare occasions those survivors’ stories are shared, they are often dismissed by the media as far-fetched.

Ms. Ohden stressed that, in order for the pro-life cause to be successful, leaders in the movement need to get better at sharing those stories and others that humanize the abortion issue.

“I think that, unless people are in shoes like mine or other leaders’ in the pro-life movement who have a personal story, they’re missing that personal aspect of what abortion is and what it has done and what it continues to do. And that, I believe, is one of those big hurdles that we face in the pro-life movement, is personalizing the issue,” she said.

Strategy and Collaboration

One subject on which all three leaders agreed was that change is necessary for the sustainability of their movement.

On that matter, Ms. Johnson said her prayers for direction were answered with just two words: strategy and collaboration.

“Those are the two things that are really in my heart,” she said. “And those are the two things that I think we desperately need in this movement. We need strategy and we need collaboration among all the groups because, if we don’t, we are going to see state after state fall.”

Mr. Pavone and Ms. Ohden said the same—that strategic coordination between all pro-life organizations can only help their cause.

However, Mr. Pavone stressed that he feels it’s important for groups to be able to do so while maintaining their own identity and independence.

“We have got to find a way to collaborate together in a way that we’re all aiming for the same goal, but that we respect the autonomy and differences between each group,” he said. “We want that autonomy.”

He noted that if each group had the same message and the same approach, there wouldn’t be any need for multiple different organizations.

“It’s all different aspects of the message,” he said. “But all those aspects are crucial.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.