It’s an understatement to say that the 2010 elections were not good for those who advocate for reproductive health.  But few states are going to be feeling the local impact of those losses like those in the midwest, where multiple states shifted to all Republican legislative bodies, ended up with veto-proof anti-choice majorities, or are welcoming new highly anti-abortion governors.

Yet, despite the gloom that comes with extensive losses of advocates in legislature, Sarah Stoesz, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota is managing to find some sort of silver lining in the clouds.

“It was a really brutal election,” Stoesz admitted in a conference call with supporters.  “We lost many allies and friends both in congress and the state legislatures.   We’ll be working in a much more challenging environment, and will have much more difficulty setting a public agenda.”

But, Stoesz clarified, this was not a mandate on reproductive health by a longshot.  “We know what this election was about, and it was not about our issues.”

However hard the anti-choice movement might argue that the election was about abortion, the exit polling data just doesn’t support it, claims polling expert Celinda Lake, President and CEO of Lake Research Partners. “This election wasn’t a mandate for any particular policy,” Lake explained via conference call.  “They wanted change.  This time voters were net negative on both parties by 10 points.”

As to the idea that their stance on abortion somehow got pro-choice politicians ousted from their seats, the facts don’t support that, either.  “Only 2 percent of voters said that abortion was their #1 issue, a majority of them identifying as anti-choice.” 

In fact, this may be a case where because abortion became so little of the conversation, we now have an electorate that is vastly more anti-abortion than the people who voted for them.  According to Lake, only 11 percent of voters believe that abortion should be illegal in all cases except for the life of the mother, where as a large number of the politicians voted into office hold that exact same position.

Pointing to victories in Colorado, Nevada and California, where the issue of reproductive health managed to become a significant discussion in the races and a key differentiator between the candidates, Stoesz noted that the candidate who advocated for women’s health won in each instance.  And when it came to the Colorado “Personhood” Amendment, which would have effectively banned abortion in the state, voters rejected the initiative by a massive and overwhelming margin.

Even Minnesota itself offered some positive outlooks, with the likely (albeit pending) election of a pro-choice, Democratic governor, and only one federal congressional race lost, with the seat flipping from an anti-choice Democrat to an anti-choice Republican.

Less rosy, though, is the state of all three states’ legislative chambers, with Minnesota now having anti-choice majorities in both House and Senate. The Dakotas have both become even more dire, with the prochoice members of South Dakota’s House and Senate both numbering in the teens, and North Dakota’s prochoice senators dipping into the single digits.

Whether or not this election was a referendum on reproductive rights, the result is the same — massive prochoice losses in these local elections means two years in which the likelihood of making any sort of gains in these states are unfathomable.  Instead, it will be necessary to defend every last bit of reproductive freedom still left to the women living there.