This fall in Ohio, conservatives are at risk of losing a significant battle in the culture war. Unfortunately, very few on the right outside the state seem to sense the danger.
You can hardly blame most people for not noticing. By all appearances, the woke left has been on the retreat as of late. Poll after poll has shown that the GOP’s new focus on parental rights and protecting children from gender ideology is extraordinarily popular. Dozens of states have taken action to roll back the transgender agenda, protecting women’s sports and prohibiting transgender surgeries for kids. And the entire right — from Donald Trump to Ron DeSantis to Kevin McCarthy to The Heritage Foundation — has committed itself to this cause.
But even as these surface-level victories have piled up, the left has been busy scheming a way to overturn it all in one fell swoop. Instead of openly engaging in public argument, as conservatives are now doing, they aim instead to enshrine a vague provision into state constitutions that would allow judges to strike down any law opposing their gender insanity.
This November, their plan will get its most important test yet as Ohio is expected to vote on a new state constitutional amendment creating a virtually unlimited right to “make and carry out reproductive decisions.” Last year, amid the clamorous midterm campaign, a very similar amendment quietly passed in Michigan, as did like measures in deep-blue California and Vermont. Ostensibly, these efforts are about abortion. As written,
