The abortion issue lifts Democrats to electoral victories

With Tuesday’s election, Ohio became the seventh state in the United States where voters voted to protect the right to abortion after the US Supreme Court last year struck down abortion rights guaranteed by the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.

The issue is important to Democrats, who hope it will motivate voters to help President Joe Biden in his re-election bid next year.

Biden welcomes

President Joe Biden welcomed the referendum result in Ohio, where Donald Trump was the strongest in the 2020 presidential election.

“Tonight, Americans voted again to protect their fundamental freedoms — and democracy won,” President Biden wrote in a statement, stressing that voters rejected attempts by Trump-friendly Republicans to impose “a strict ban on abortion that puts women’s health and lives at risk.”

Before the Ohio referendum, voters in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont, among other states, voted to protect or reject proposals that undermine abortion rights in the states.

The governor was re-elected

There was also a strong message that the abortion issue could help Democrats in Kentucky, a state where Trump won a large majority in the presidential election. On Tuesday, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear was re-elected after a campaign in which he denounced Republican challenger Daniel Cameron’s opposition to abortion as extremist.

Similar gains came in other Democratic positions and on abortion rights files in Pennsylvania and Virginia.

And now the full conclusions are being drawn before the full-scale election next year, when Trump is again expected to face Biden for the presidency. Voters in Arizona and Missouri, among other states, will then vote on similar constitutional protections for abortion rights as Ohio has now agreed to.