On Tuesday, Ohio voters decisively rejected a proposal to make amending its state constitution harder. Issue 1 sought to require a 60% threshold for changing Ohio’s constitution rather than the current rules mandating only a majority vote.

I noted the problem with these efforts months ago in the pages of this publication . The immediate problem continues to be the timing of the effort. This fall, Ohio voters will consider another amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in that state’s fundamental law. Many voters saw Issue 1 as an attempt to stack the deck against that upcoming vote. And most supporters of the proposal clearly wished that outcome as a response to losing efforts in other state votes on the issue of abortion.

But Tuesday’s long-shot attempt failed. It failed not only because it seemed to cloak partisan policy preferences in the guise of disinterested constitutional reform. It failed because it bet, wrongly, against a trend more than two centuries old.

When given the choice, Americans have moved toward more direct democracy, not less. Frenchmen Alexis de Tocqueville, in his famous work Democracy in America, noted the trend and its underlying tendencies back in the 1830s. Since his time, Americans have only continued in that direction. We have extended the vote to essentially universal adult suffrage and lowered the voting age to 18. Through the 17th Amendment, we instituted the direct election of U.S. senators. At the state level, most states now have some combination of ballot initiatives and referendums regarding laws as well as the recall of elected officials.

Going forward, two groups need to rethink their efforts. First, those wishing for procedural and institutional reform should ask what path exists for their efforts. The American Founders, though committed to rule by the people, sought structures that aided that rule to be the best, most just, most rational form it could take. Legislation through elected assemblies and high thresholds for amending constitutions all resulted from this desire to make popular rule more wise.

Can we make a similar case today? Any efforts on that score will continue to face attacks for being undemocratic. But can we educate ourselves and our fellow citizens to see such efforts as a way to vindicate and improve government of, by, and for the people?

Second, the pro-life movement must reconsider how to make its case to the public. We won a judicial victory for the ages in Dobbs, one for which abortion opponents crafted a well-honed message directed at its primary audience: Judges. Now, we must make our case to another audience in our fellow citizens.

So far, we have had almost no success on that front. Legislators have protected the unborn in a number of states. But every time the issue has gone directly to voters, the people have sided with abortion rights.

Can we hone a winnable argument for the popular sphere as we did for the judicial one? On this front, I hold out greater long-term hope than for those trying to reform how we make policy in general. If anything, the trend toward greater democratization may prove a key ally for the pro-life movement. Beneath that democratization is the principle of human equality and the need to extend it further and further. In abortion, we find humans to whom this equality has not been extended. Advances in medical technology also continue to defeat arguments that devalue this life in the womb.

After Tuesday, let both groups that went down to defeat rethink their strategies. But let neither quit their efforts. Let us join them to enable wiser forms of exercising self-government. Let us join them in expanding government’s fundamental duty to protect the right to life for all. Let us join them, in short, to make our country a better place.

Adam Carrington is an assistant professor of politics at Hillsdale College.