In all our excitement over the past two days’ links, we lost track of some important news from this week, and that is the failed ballot measure in Ohio that would have raised the bar for amending the state constitution from 50% voter approval to 60%. As our link today from “The Wall Street Journal” notes, such a threshold doesn’t necessarily fly in the face of democratic ideals — the U.S. Senate, after all, is not a majoritarian institution. The goal of the Ohio measure, however, was not to mirror the U.S. Senate. It was to stymie a pro-choice amendment scheduled to appear on the ballot later this year. Voters knew that and rejected it by a wide margin. Conservative commentators were taken aback. They shouldn’t have been.

Statewide anti-abortion referenda have gone down in every state they’ve been proposed. While that isn’t overly surprising for a state like Michigan, it is for Kansas, where a strict pro-life amendment was defeated 59% to 41%. Republican lawmakers should have seen the writing on the wall then and tacked to the center. They didn’t have to move all the way. Just enough to show they’re listening. Because Americans’ views on abortion are extremely nuanced. According to a recent Gallup poll, while 70% of American adults support the right to abortion in the first trimester, only 37% support it for the second and 22% support it in the third. With the Dobbs decision, Republicans had the chance to seize the middle ground and pass reasonable legislation on abortion access. They’ve instead gone the other direction.

We understand opposition to abortion is a moral stance rather than a political one. We respect that. But passing six-week bans and proposing legislation that doesn’t allow for abortion in the case of rape and incest is a losing position. As long as Republican lawmakers push these measures, voters will continue to reject them, meaning the late-term abortions the right (not to mention the majority of Americans) oppose will remain legal. If Republicans want to make actual change on this issue, they need to change to their thinking. They can continue to have all of nothing, or they can settle for part of something. Maybe Ohio will help them make up their mind.