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In both red states and blue ones, abortion opponents have been on a terrible losing streak on ballot initiatives in the four years since Roe v. Wade was overturned. This coming November, though, they may have finally found a way to change their luck: by confusing voters about what exactly they’re voting for.

Since the 2022 Dobbs ruling, the anti-abortion movement has largely failed to stop a barrage of ballot measures on reproductive rights. First, in 2022, voters in Kansas rejected an effort to undo a state Supreme Court decision protecting abortion. There were further setbacks in California, Vermont, New York, Kentucky, Montana, Michigan, and Ohio. Most strikingly, Missouri, a state with some of the nation’s harshest abortion laws, passed a ballot measure protecting reproductive rights, even as voters elected a Republican supermajority to the state Legislature and favored Donald Trump by an 18-point margin.

The few bright spots for abortion foes can’t be all that comforting. In one of the reddest states in the union, South Dakota voters rejected a strange proposal to reinstate something like the antiquated trimester framework from Roe v. Wade. And Nebraska voters enacted a ballot measure that banned later abortions (with exceptions for rape, incest, and medical emergencies), leaving most procedures in the state untouched.

That left the anti-abortion movement without a clear ballot-initiative playbook moving forward. Wins might be possible in the nation’s most conservative states, or in jurisdictions like Florida that require supermajority support before a ballot measure became part of a state constitution. Everywhere else, it wasn’t obvious how abortion opponents could stop the bleeding.

In Missouri, conservatives went to court,........

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