COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Right to Life, a powerful organization that generally operates behind the scenes of state politics, has experienced a rare public controversy over its internal operations.

The episode surrounds the departure of its now-former communications director, and comes ahead of a November election that will be pivotal for the future of abortion in Ohio. It also shows a fundamental tension the anti-abortion movement is confronting in today’s politics, in which it must package a political argument – that abortion is an unequivocal wrong that should be banned – to an increasingly skeptical public that has repeatedly voted for abortion to be legal when given the chance.

Last week, Ohio Right to Life parted ways with Lizzie Marbach, who had served as the group’s communications director since March 2022. The reason comes down to what could be described as strategic differences ahead of the November vote on abortion rights and Marbach’s prolific use of social media.

ORTL leaders took issue with Marbach’s tone on Twitter, including an Aug. 10 post in which she called an abortion-rights backer a “murderous liar.” Other recent posts included one from Aug. 12 that described an iconic image of the Virgin Mary in a Mexican Catholic church as “idolatry” – the Catholic church is a key ally in the effort to defeat the November abortion-rights amendment – and one sharing an Aug. 10 post that said people who support abortion rights shouldn’t be allowed in the medical profession.

In a message to cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, Marbach said her former bosses generally “just had problems with me using bolder terms to describe abortion like ‘murder’ or ‘evil.’ They preferred softer tones.”

Such a personnel move typically wouldn’t attract broader attention. But it occurred around the same time Marbach was the subject of a brief, viral Twitter controversy following an exchange with a local Republican congressman, Rep. Max Miller, of Rocky River. Some media outlets, mostly right-leaning ones, linked the two events together, suggesting that Marbach got fired for being an outspoken Christian.

Miller, who is Jewish, responded to a tweet last week from Marbach in which she declared “There’s no hope for any of us outside of having faith in Jesus Christ alone.” Miller called the post “bigoted” and told Marbach to delete it, which she refused to do.

In true social media form, the exchange quickly drew in a wide range of national commenters including Jenna Ellis, a former campaign lawyer for ex-President Donald Trump’s campaign, and Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who is one of the few Muslim members of Congress. Marbach’s in-state defenders included Ohio Republican politicians and operatives.

Miller, a public defender of Judaism, apologized later in the evening, saying his post had conveyed something he hadn’t intended.

Around the same time, Marbach lost her job. An internal email obtained by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer show that before the exchange with Miller, Ohio Right to Life was in the process of parting ways with Marbach, including interviewing a potential replacement. Ohio Right to Life pointed out this general timeline in a press release on Monday, in which they announced that their board had voted to back Marbach’s right to religious expression while also emphasizing that Marbach has said publicly her departure was unrelated to the exchange with Miller.

In a spate of post-firing publicity, including podcast interviews, op-eds and sympathetic articles from right-leaning outlets, Marbach has portrayed herself as the victim of an anti-abortion movement cowed by censorious, progressive antichristian forces in society.

Other political groups within Ohio’s anti-abortion movement have come to Marbach’s defense, including the Ohio Christian Alliance, which plans to interview Marbach this week on its podcast, and the Ohio Legislative Prayer Caucus, a group of socially conservative, religious Republican lawmakers.

“We are more offended and embarrassed by calling abortion murder than we actually are about abortion being murder,” Marbach told The Sentinel, a recently launched right-leaning online outlet. “It is complete lunacy and I pray that this situation helps to point that out.”

Since her firing, Marbach has criticized the campaign to defeat the November abortion-rights amendment from the sidelines, faulting it for not referencing the issue more directly. In a column for The Blaze, a right-leaning outlet, Marbach criticized the campaign’s official name itself, Protect Women Ohio, which she described as “cowardice” and an example of being fearful of speaking the truth about abortion.

Polling, meanwhile, has suggested that upwards of 59% of Ohioans support the November constitutional amendment, or at least some form of legal protection for abortion. While its full legal impact is unclear, the abortion amendment would nullify the state’s “Heartbeat” law, signed by Gov. Mike DeWine in January 2019, that bans abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy, one of the strictest standards in the country. The law temporarily went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 202, but has been on hold for more than a year due to a legal challenge.

Reeling from voters’ rejection of State Issue 1 earlier this month, a vote that had major implications for the vote in November, some abortion opponents have publicly debated whether the movement needs to adopt more moderate political aims in light of their latest electoral defeat.

This helps explain why the campaign to defeat the November amendment has tried to redirect debate over the amendment to pull in non-abortion related issues, like tying it to progressive views on gender, an argument independent legal experts have described as a stretch.

And by parting ways with an outspoken, off-message spokesperson while trying to do damage control through an after-the-fact press release, it shows Ohio Right to Life is sensitive to public opinion against the backdrop of an important election.

Andrew Tobias covers state politics and government for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer