With more ballot initiatives ready to go before voters, supporters of reproductive rights are hoping to continue their impressive winning streak. But conservatives looking at what just happened in Arkansas are hoping they’ve found a way to stop the bleeding: by using obscure rules favored by election deniers to keep voters from weighing in on reproductive rights in the first place.

Arkansas law now makes abortion a felony unless a patient’s life is at risk. Arkansans for Limited Government was promoting a ballot initiative that would make the procedure legal until 18 weeks, with certain exceptions thereafter. The effort did not attract the support of large national groups because it drew the line relatively early in pregnancy, but the proposal still seemed poised to set a powerful example: If it succeeded, it might have created a blueprint for success in other deeply conservative states. ALG had insisted first that messages centered on reproductive justice or even the health crisis produced by Dobbs might not resonate as well in states that Donald Trump resoundingly won in 2020. Instead, the group had focused on the issue of government overreach and attacked the state’s existing law as too strict, without embracing more copious protections that were part of initiatives endorsed by voters in states like Ohio or Michigan.

Even prior to the effort by ALG, Arkansas Republicans had already moved to make it harder for voters to initiate ballot campaigns, increasing the required number of counties represented for a successful ballot measure from 15 to 50. Now the state Supreme Court may have created a road map for conservatives looking to keep the issue from voters........

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