The next big test for this issue is coming in November in Ohio, as noted in USA Today this morning.

A new USA TODAY Network/Suffolk University survey of Ohio showed the amendment guaranteeing access to reproductive services backed by a double-digit margin, 58%-32%. Significant support crossed partisan lines, including a third of Republicans and a stunning 85% of independent women, a key group of persuadable voters.

The poll of 500 likely voters in Ohio, conducted by landline and cell phone July 9 to 12, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points for the full sample.

The battle in Ohio, the only state likely to have an abortion measure on the ballot in November’s off-year election, is being watched by activists nationwide who are considering a push for state-based initiatives in the next election cycle to codify or restore abortion rights. That could include swing states such as Arizona and reliably red ones like Florida, Missouri and South Dakota.

When these sorts of stats come out, or when ballot initiatives enshrining abortion pass, it always gets thrown in the face of Republicans and conservatives as a sort of “Take THAT!”, as though they weren’t just screaming about the upcoming real-life performance of Handmaid’s Tale in statehouses across the country. What those progressives and members of the cult of abortion fail to realize is that even if Republicans lose in the statehouses on this issue, they have already won where it counts.

The issue of overturning Roe v. Wade was as much about the Supreme Court creating rights that never existed (nor were they meant to exist) in the U.S. Constitution. The Bill of Rights was very clear in that regard. Rights are something that cannot be created nor taken away by the government, and yet Roe did exactly that – it created a right that didn’t exist and also denied the right to life to the unborn. It made a mockery of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and was a black eye on constitutional law.

The point, as the Justices in the majority and most conservative legal scholars pointed out, was that Roe violated the idea that anything not specifically addressed in the Constitution was left for states to decide. Had there been a constitutional amendment to codify a right to an abortion and that pass in enough states, then it becomes specifically listed in the Constitution and made perfectly legal. But that never happened. The Supreme Court of the day managed to weave together enough implications to suggest a right to an abortion and called it a day.

Here we are, decades later, and that was undone. It was a victory for the Constitution and constitutional order. If states decide to codify a right to an abortion in their own state constitutions or in their own lawbooks, so be it. Conservatives need to start working on the state level to win supporters. Put in the legwork you put in for the last 50 years to win at the national level.

But progressives aren’t getting the win they think they are getting when a state passes a law or amendment like this. They are proving conservativism right. They are proving that these issues should be taken up by the states as laboratories of democracy, not implemented by judicial fiat or any other non-constitutional means.

Conservatives, if you want to win the policy fight, you’ve got to start putting in the legwork and not just assume your work ended with Dobbs. But Dobbs was a conservative win that progressives have yet to understand.