Leading pro-life groups are responding to yesterday’s vote in Ohio, where voters approved issue 1, which creates a so-called right to kill babies in abortions in the state constitution.
Pro-Life advocates told LifeNews they would keep fighting to protect babies from abortion and work hard to change hearts and minds in the pro-life direction.
Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, told LifeNews that the pro-life movement has to work overtime to combat the massive disinformation campaign from liberals and the media.
Misinformation campaigns funded by Big Abortion and its sympathizers pushed a “women will die without Issue 1” message on Ohioans in order to win. This fearmongering led to voters deciding to allow abortion at any time and for any reason in the state of Ohio.
“Sadly, the ones who will suffer for tonight’s vote will be women and their unborn babies,” she said. “As pro-abortion groups move in on Ohio and push to overturn protective laws, the people of Ohio will likely be shocked at the impact their decision will have.”
SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser also reacted to the loss and she also said pro-life Americans have to fight the lies.
“Issue 1 passed because abortion activists and outside Democrat donors ran a campaign of fear to Ohio voters: vote for this ballot measure or women will die. Their pervasive lie that women will die without Issue 1 was propped up by massive ad spending, funded by George Soros and a left-wing media machine which operated like Planned Parenthood’s PR department,” she said.
“The media failed to fact-check this obvious lie and reveal the black-and-white truth in Ohio’s law, which clearly allows pregnant women to receive emergency care. This lie not only deceived voters but put pregnant women at risk by sowing confusion, so much that even the state health department endeavored to set the record straight so women knew they could get care during a miscarriage,” she said.
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“The truth is that every state in the country with a pro-life law allows for timely and necessary care for pregnant women in an emergency. But abortion activists will continue to lie to voters because it is politically expedient. Without those lies, they can’t push their deeply unpopular agenda of no-limits, painful, late-term abortion on demand,” Dannenfelser added.
She told LifeNews that her group is already preparing for 2024 and fighting even harder.
“Moving forward in states where abortion will be on the ballot in 2024, pro-life, pro-woman coalitions will need to devote more resources to compassionate pro-life messages for women and their children, combatting the campaign of fear from the other side,” she said.
Mark Harrington, President, Created Equal, one of the Ohio-based groups that worked hard to defeat Issue 1, said pro-life Americans can’t let their foot off the gas.
“The enemies of life are now emboldened to take their murderous agenda to up to a dozen states in 2024. We don’t have time to lick our wounds. In the coming days, we’ll process what led to this defeat. But if abortion doesn’t stop, neither do we,” he told LifeNews.
Ohio voted 56% to 44% for Issue 1, which will make killing babies in abortions a so-called “right” in the state constitution.
The result was not surprising given how abortion advocates bought the vote. Also, Ohio voters also voted today on a ballot measure to legalize marijuana. That very likely increased turnout of liberal voters who were more likely to vote for abortion.
The pro-abortion side dominated fundraising – with reports towards the end of the election showing that they had 3-1 fundraising advantage over pro-life groups. The out of state dark money and millions from leftists like George Soros, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood allowed the pro-abortion side to dominate TV and online with blatantly false commercials that further angered liberal voters and drove them to the polls in higher numbers.
The Associated Press (AP) reported last Thursday that since September 8, the pro-abortion “yes” side in the referendum has raised almost three times more money than the pro-life “no” side: $29 million compared to less than $10 million. Much of the money for the pro-abortion side — likely over $50 million by the time it’s said and done — came from out of state and even out of the country while major pro-life donations came from within Ohio.
AP indicated that “the largest donations” supporting the pro-abortion “yes” campaign came from outside of Ohio. This included “three gifts totaling $5.3 million from the progressive Sixteen Thirty Fund, based in Washington, D.C.”
The Sixteen Thirty Fund is largely bankrolled by Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire.
According to the AP, the organization behind the “yes” campaign
received $3.5 million from the New York-based Open Society Policy Center, a lobbying group associated with the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, and $2 million from the American Civil Liberties Union, also based in New York. Billionaires Michael Bloomberg of New York and Abigail Wexner, the Ohio-based wife of retired Limited Brands founder Les Wexner, each gave $1 million.
The Ohio Issue 1 election results differ significantly from Gallup’s polling that it conducted on abortion this summer.
As Gallup notes, “Specifically, close to half of Americans, 47%, now say abortion should be legal in all (34%) or most (13%) circumstances, while a similar proportion, 49%, want it legal in only a few (36%) or illegal in all (13%) circumstances.”
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That means 49 percent of Americans take a pro-life position opposing all or most abortions while a lower 47% take a pro-abortion position supporting all or most abortions.
Even though Americans are still nominally pro-life overall, radical abortion activists are more angry that Roe was overturned than pro-life voters are happy about the Dobbs decision overturning it. That results in more abortion advocates turning out to the polls to vote for abortion because the smaller poll of pro-abortion voters are more incentivized to vote than the slightly larger poll of pro-life voters.
To counter this, pro-life groups need to a) emphasize the great things Dobbs accomplished – from saving babies to helping women, b) engage in more work to identify and turn out voters in elections, c) do more to fundraise and find large donors who can help the prolife movement overcome the massive fundraising disparity so it can counter the avalanche of false ads.
