Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) called Tuesday's pro-abortion rights vote a "gut punch" and urged voters to set their sights on the "war" ahead.

On Tuesday, Ohioans voted in favor of Issue 1 to enshrine the right to an abortion in the state's constitution. It's the latest blow to the anti-abortion cause. The vote was the latest in a line of losses for the movement since the overturning of Roe v. Wade last year, with California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, and Vermont also passing measures to protect access to abortion or blocking attempts to restrict abortion. Vance, who campaigned against Tuesday's measure, gave a sobering analysis of the loss, urging constituents to look to the road ahead.

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"For pro lifers, last night was a gut punch. No sugar coating it," Vance said in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

"Giving up on the unborn is not an option. It's politically dumb and morally repugnant. Instead, we need to understand why we lost this battle so we can win the war," he continued.

His postmortem gave five major reasons for the loss or changes needed to ensure better outcomes in the future.

Among his points were: Many voters disliked both Issue 1 and the current six-week abortion ban but if forced chose the former rather than the latter; voters mistrust elected Republicans on abortion and view them as lacking empathy on the subject; Republicans must accept abortion exceptions, a popular move, in contrast with abortion bans with no exceptions; Republicans have overly focused on the legal argument against abortion, and have neglected the moral argument; and Democrats vastly outspent Republicans on abortion messaging — more money and better messaging must be the route for Republicans in the future.

"A lot of people are celebrating right now, and I don't care about that. I do care about the fact that because we lost, many innocent children will never have a chance to live their dreams," Vance concluded. "There is something sociopathic about a political movement that tells young women (and men) that it is liberating to murder their own children. So let's keep fighting for our country's children, and let's find a way to win."

Vance's reasoning is strikingly similar to a report from the conservative Heritage Action/Sentinel Action Fund, which gave much of the same reasons for Republican failures in the 2022 midterm elections.

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Republican pollster Wes Anderson, in a presentation titled "The Seinfeld Election: An Election About Nothing," concluded that a lack of a coherent vision and being massively outspent on abortion messaging was the primary cause for Republican disappointments in 2022.

Heritage Action found that Democrats outspend Republicans by a factor of 45 on abortion messaging, a pattern that appears to have been replicated for Tuesday's election. Anderson also argued that anti-abortion positions aren't actually unpopular, and only those viewed as "extreme" are. The "extremes" on both sides of the spectrum are equally unpopular, but the Democratic monopoly on abortion messaging allows them to portray themselves as moderate and Republicans as extreme.