One of the rare bright spots for Democrats on Tuesday was the continued success of ballot initiatives on abortion rights. Seven of 10 measures considered by voters passed—including in states, like Arizona and Missouri, easily carried by Donald Trump. Even in Florida, where a measure failed to clear a required 60 percent threshold, well over half the electorate voted to create new reproductive rights. Abortion rights have been a juggernaut as far as direct democracy is concerned. And yet Tuesday’s vote was also a reminder of the limits of ballot initiatives for supporters of abortion rights—either as a tool to win national races or a strategy to expand access to abortion.

These won’t be the last ballot-measure races we see. Abortion rights supporters can try again in states like Florida. Activists in states like Idaho have floated similar ideas too. The three defeats—in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota—in some ways seem like outliers, and it’s not hard to identify the reasons why they failed while others have succeeded. But these failures still spotlight some of the challenges facing the abortion rights movement going forward.

Florida’s ballot measure fell short because the state requires voter-driven constitutional proposals to clear a 60 percent threshold—a requirement Republicans unsuccessfully pushed in Ohio. To date, these proposals have been a hard sell. But even if conservative lawmakers can’t persuade voters to impose a higher threshold for passage of ballot measures, the anti-abortion movement may have identified other promising strategies. In Nebraska, voters opted to constitutionalize the 12-week ban currently on the books. Having dueling ballot measures may have been confusing, and in a red state like Nebraska, a law permitting abortion until 12 weeks might have struck much of the electorate as reasonable. Of course, anti-abortion groups embrace the argument that constitutional rights—and personhood—begin when an egg is fertilized, and Nebraska’s law doesn’t go nearly far enough for them. But this kind of incremental approach could prevent the progress........

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