COLUMBUS, Ohio — Abortion opponents in Ohio are at odds not only over how to frame their opposition to a reproductive rights initiative on the state’s November ballot but also over their longer-term goals on how severely they would restrict the procedure.

The disagreements, roiling the anti-abortion side just six weeks before Election Day, are providing a window into the challenges the wider movement is preparing to navigate next year. Initiatives to protect reproductive rights are expected in multiple states, and abortion will be a central issue in candidate races up and down the ballot.

Scattershot campaign messaging in Ohio hints at some of the internal conflict among members of the broad anti-abortion coalition aligned against the constitutional amendment that seeks to protect abortion access in Ohio.

Early ads played on voters’ fears by warning the amendment, known as Issue 1, would be a gateway to teenagers getting abortions and gender-transition surgeries without their parents’ consent. Other efforts focused on advancing legal arguments about the amendment’s specific phrasing, including the meaning of “reproductive health care.”

In its first statewide TV ad, which began airing last week, the opposition campaign Protect Women Ohio went in yet another direction. It combined clips of former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden on screen to try to unite Republicans and Democrats against the proposal’s ability to protect abortions into the ninth month of pregnancy, even though health statistics show later-term abortions are a rarity, generally reserved for life-threatening circumstances.

Terry Casey, an Ohio Republican consultant, said the opposition campaign’s reliance on two unpopular politicians in the ad only extends a disjointed approach that ultimately will be unlikely to win the day with voters.

“The key thing I’m looking at is, ‘What’s the message on the no side, and is it clear and understandable?’” he said. “So far, I haven’t seen that, nor that they have the money and resources to define the issue to the people of Ohio.”

Casey said Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, the coalition advocating a “yes” vote, seems to have developed a consistent message — freedom from government interference in one’s personal reproductive health decisions — and stuck with it. That’s easier when you’re on a winning streak, he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last year that overturned Roe v. Wade kicked the abortion question back to the states. Since then, voters in both Democratic and deeply Republican states — California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont — have voted to protect abortion rights in one form or another. Abortion rights questions are planned in more than a half-dozen states next year.

David Zanotti, president and CEO of the conservative American Policy Roundtable, said “it’s crystal clear” the abortion rights movement was ready for the high court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, while “the anti-abortion community was not.”

Republicans across the country are divided over how to move forward on

the issue, particularly in light of public polling that suggests about two-thirds of people think abortion should generally be legal. Do Republicans capitalize on the Dobbs decision to push for an “abortionless future,” concede to a patchwork of individual state laws or compromise on federal legislation?

Ohio’s top Republican, Gov. Mike DeWine, is offering yet another message

to voters in an effort to bolster the opposition to the constitutional amendment. A staunch Catholic who opposes abortion, DeWine pledged if voters defeat Issue 1, he would work toward a legislative compromise “the majority of the people are comfortable with.”

To supporters of abortion rights, the divisions the Ohio amendment have exposed in the anti-abortion movement

are merely “cosmetic,” said NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio Executive Director Kellie Copeland.

“No matter who’s taking the lead, or what they’re saying, their goal has been and remains a total ban on abortion with no exceptions,” she said. “What they’re arguing about is strategy, tactics for holding onto voters who are not on their side.”