Ohio considers whether to make abortion a right again

Pro-choice activists have to weather a special election next month before matter is determined in November

Ohio voters will consider whether to restore abortion rights to women in the state when a ballot initiative comes up to vote in November. Next month, voters will decide what threshold that initiative will have to meet in order to pass. 

Recently, a coalition of pro-choice groups collected more than the required 413,000 valid signatures across at least 44 of the state’s 88 counties to have the amendment placed on the ballot, according to NBC News. Lauren Beene, executive director of Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, said it wasn’t hard to get people to sign the ballot and they had no issues getting volunteers. 

“Ohioans might not always know for sure how they feel about the issue of abortion, but they might know that they don't want politicians making laws about things that they don't understand, that can harm people,” Beene said. “And that's a pretty straightforward concept for people.” 

The thing that fascinates her is how anti-choice politicians who had been against special elections decided to use one in an attempt to make it harder for this initiative to pass. Last year, the state legislature voted to get rid of special elections altogether. 

Next month, they will have one on If voter whether to approve Issue 1, which would require future amendments to the Ohio Constitution to need a 60% affirmative vote to pass, rather than the simple majority vote of 50% plus one vote that’s been in place since 1912, according to The Associated Press.

“If the threshold stays at 50 percent, I think it's a slam dunk,” Beene said. 

Their polling indicates that as many as low-60 percent of Ohioans support the amendment. 

“If the threshold went up to 60%, it would be considerably harder,” Beene said.
“But we would find a way to get over that hurdle.” 

The amendment that voters will consider in November protects abortion access up to the point of viability when a fetus can survive outside the womb. That had historically been what was protected in the Roe v. Wade precedent. Some legal scholars have criticized the standards because the point of viability has moved earlier with medical advancements, thus making it a shifting point in which the state could regulate abortion. 

Beene said there was logic behind setting it at that and not at a 22-week mark. That’s typically when a lot of lung development happens. There hasn’t been that much of a shift in that. There’s also the possibility that a fetus at later development couldn’t be viable at all, and this proposed amendment would protect abortions in those circumstances as well. That means that if a fetus didn’t have a brain, then an abortion could be permitted. 

“Since it is really a situation by situation, pregnancy by pregnancy case, having a blanket number of weeks, from a medical perspective, doesn't really make sense,” Beene said. “So that's why we just went with this concept of viability.”

One thing feminist leaders and influential liberal media personalities can do is clarify that the amendment has nothing to do with gender-affirming care or parental notification. That doesn’t mean that activists in the state oppose it. But opponents of the ballot initiative are trying to obfuscate what the law does by combining it with other more controversial parts of political debate. The hope the anti side has is to make it harder to persuade people to support the measure by misleading them about what it really does. 

“Focusing on Ohio, both to help Ohio but to also help the other states would be very helpful,” Beene said.