Ohio has counted its votes for the infamous Issue 1, an act that enshrines in the Ohio constitution abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, and Ohioans voted yes. What a tragedy.

In 2020, Ohio went more than eight points for former President Donald Trump. So it’s not exactly a purple state. Yet Tuesday night’s vote wasn’t even close. Pro-life dissenters lost by 12+ points.

Ohio wasn’t the only red-leaning state to have the abortion issue hurt them on election night. Kentucky and Virginia did as well. Well-liked Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin wants to pass a 15-week abortion ban, but Virginians voted blue and flipped the state House and maintained their hold on the state Senate. Deep-red Kentucky reelected Governor Andy Beshear to a second term over his opponent, Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Beshear is a Democrat and also pro-abortion.

As much as we are loathe to admit it, pro-life positions on the ballot seem to be losers for Republicans. Which prompts the question: Why? For those of us who are ardent pro-life supporters, there are several hurdles that need to be overcome in the quest to end that particular practice. The biggest obstacle is left-wing lies about what being pro-life means and what abortion actually is.

Lefty Lies: “Stay Out of My Bedroom.” “My Body, My Choice.”

This particular combination of slogans at once embodies the libertarian distaste of government control and the liberals’ notion of bodily autonomy. And they are both misleading.

The “stay out of my bedroom” sentiment is laughable when colored by the stark truth of what abortion is — killing an innocent and completely helpless human. Murder is something the government is against, ergo it is against the law to kill someone. So why is it suddenly acceptable to murder just because the victims are at their smallest stages of development? It’s also interesting to note that the same people who want the government out of their bedroom are many of the same people who want the government to dedicate whole months to what they do in the bedroom (e.g. Pride Month) along with all the other LGBTQ+ liturgical days of forced celebration.

“My body, my choice” is a false premise. It implies a mother has a right to murder her unborn child simply because that child resides in her body. Leftists push the lie that if abortion were limited or abolished, mothers wouldn’t have a choice, i.e. no bodily autonomy. For most of these women, that choice happens before conception — before they jump into bed with someone to create that life.

Granted, in the cases of rape or incest, which by definition are coercion or force, that particular choice is taken away. Yet according to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion group, rape and incest make up just 1% of all abortion cases.

There are several other lies employed by the Left, but these are the ones most often heard.

The Left’s View of Abortion Is, in Fact, Radical

This is perhaps the biggest pro-abortion boon of the whole debate. As much as Democrats try to deny that they support abortion up till birth, their every action and even party statement supports it. It’s absolutely radical to allow abortion at any point through all nine months of pregnancy. To put this in perspective, most Western countries only allow abortion through 20 weeks of pregnancy, give or take. The U.S. is one of seven countries that allows abortions past 20 weeks gestation. The other countries are Canada, China, Netherlands, North Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam. Note how many of those countries are oppressive communist regimes. It’s not a group we should be proud to be a part of.

In Virginia, Youngkin wants to pass a 15-week abortion ban. Fifteen weeks is pretty far along as it is, but not enough according to the Democrats. Twenty weeks is halfway through a pregnancy, and even that is not good enough for them.

As a mother of a 22-week unborn baby, abortion at this stage is unjustifiable. Babies this age have survived birth and are thriving; my cousin’s son is one of them. It’s also impossible to deny the humanity and life of the little human inside. They are wiggling, hiccuping, hitting and kicking, and responding to light and sounds. This is a life.

Lack of Republican Unity

Just like the clown show that Republicans enacted by unseating Kevin McCarthy before eventually choosing a new speaker of the House, Republicans are far from unified. Republicans become the catch-all party for a variety of ideological perspectives, particularly since the Democrats are increasingly radical. Abortion is no different, as Republicans hold a variety of positions on the pro-life question. Those who do support the pro-life cause tend to do an inadequate job of articulating the issue. As political pundit Matt Walsh put it:

Before you tell me that the pro-life message is a political loser, answer me this: how many Republican candidates fought back hard and effectively on this issue, actively went after the Left, ran ads attacking their opponent for supporting the dismemberment of fully developed infants (which nearly every Democrat does), and actually countered the Left’s pro-abortion narrative with a strong and affirmative pro-life narrative? It seems to me that the pro-life message is being blamed in races where the pro-life message was never even articulated.

Has anyone ran an ad saying “Here’s what happens in a third trimester abortion. My opponent supports this”? This is the most basic strategy and I’m not aware of anyone who has even attempted it. The strategy is simple: go on offense and tell the truth.

Fox News’s Kayleigh McEnany articulates this sentiment another way, saying: “Every ballot initiative, post-Dobbs, has been a loss for the pro-life movement. As a party, we must not just be a pro-baby party. That’s a great thing. We must also be a pro-mother party. We need a national strategy.”

Republicans also often neglect to show compassion toward the mother and help her feel more supported. Support is something a huge number of these desperate women are seeking. That’s hard to demonstrate on the campaign trail but not impossible.

Pro-life Republicans have an uphill battle in the continued fight for life. However, it is one that we can and should win. It may not happen now — it make take another 50 years just like overturning Roe v. Wade — but it is a battle worth fighting. These mothers and their children are worth it.