COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) \u2014 Abortion access is expected to play a central role in the 2024 elections. The preview comes next week, when Ohio voters decide whether to enshrine reproductive rights in their state Constitution.
The amendment is the only abortion question on any state\u2019s ballot this year, a spotlight that has generated intense attention from national groups and made Ohio a testing ground for fresh campaign messaging \u2014 some of it misleading. The amendment has drawn more than $60 million in combined spending so far.
Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, said Ohio offers a vital proving ground heading into next year\u2019s presidential election, when Democrats hope the abortion issue can energize supporters in contests up and down the ballot. Initiatives seeking to protect access could be on the ballot across the country, including in the presidential swing states of Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
\u201cWhen we\u2019re able to see how our messaging impacts independents and Republicans and persuades them that this fundamental freedom is important to protect in Ohio, that\u2019s going to be something that we can implement looking at 2024,\u201d she said.
The battleground on abortion shifted to the states last summer, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its Roe v. Wade decision, erasing federal abortion protections that had been in place for half a century. Since then, voters in six states \u2014 California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont \u2014 have either supported measures protecting abortion rights or rejected efforts aimed at eroding access.
Kelsey Pritchard, state public affairs director for the anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, said the outcomes in 2022 offered lessons that the anti-abortion movement has implemented in Ohio through more coalition-building and stronger messaging.
Abortion opponents, she said, \u201cwill apply those weapons and learning in other states going forward.\u201d
Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose advanced ballot language for the Ohio amendment that its supporters said was misleading, while GOP Attorney General Dave Yost took the unconventional step of producing his own \u201dlegal analysis\u201d of the amendment. Its supporters said those actions by top state officials could cost them votes.
But like the anti-abortion movement itself, Ohio\u2019s Republicans have not been in lockstep on the issue.
The GOP-led Ohio Senate has used its website to spread misleading claims about the amendment even as Gov. Mike DeWine has made the rounds of TV stations pledging that his party will pass a reasonable alternative if voters defeat the measure. For the first time in his 46-year political career, DeWine now says he would support exceptions for rape and incest in any future abortion legislation if the measure fails.
The governor has allied with the Ohio Catholic Conference, which is running a campaign through its churches to defeat the amendment, which is on the ballot as Issue 1. Protect Women Ohio, the campaign against it, also has generated support from some Black faith leaders.
Supporters have answered with an ad featuring the senior minister of First Congregational Church in Columbus, who called abortion a private matter and said \u201cgovernment needs to stay out of family decision-making.\u201d
The Ohio amendment would guarantee an individual\u2019s right \u201cto make and carry out one\u2019s own reproductive decisions.\u201d It expressly permits the state to regulate abortions after fetal viability, as determined by an attending physician, as long as any laws regulating the procedure after that point provide exceptions for the life and health of the woman.
Its supporters include Democrats in the state, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and a bipartisan coalition of labor, faith and community groups. They portray the measure \u2014 one of the most broadly worded so far \u2014 as a way to enshrine Roe-era abortion rights in a one-time bellwether state that has turned increasingly Republican and has passed some of the nation\u2019s toughest restrictions on the procedure.
That includes a law currently held up by legal challenges that bans most abortions after fetal cardiac activity is detected, before many women know they\u2019re pregnant. That law makes no exceptions for rape or incest.
\u201cThis is the most conservative state to date where we\u2019re pushing for proactive state constitutional amendments,\u201d said Carolyn Ehrlich, senior campaign strategist at the ACLU.
Opponents, including state Republicans, the Center for Christian Virtue and Ohio Right to Life, say the amendment provides too much access to abortion and does so too late into pregnancy. They question whether state lawmakers could pass any abortion restrictions at all that would pass constitutional muster if voters approve the amendment.
\u201cThis is more than just a pro-choice or pro-life statement,\u201d said Megan Wold, a former deputy Ohio solicitor general working with Protect Women Ohio. \u201cIt is an up or down vote, but it\u2019s an up or down vote on very particular language that\u2019s going to have a real impact on the way that Ohio can regulate abortion in the future.\u201d
Protect Women Ohio\u2019s interest in persuading independent and politically moderate voters is about the math, since public support for some form of abortion rights has remained well over the 50% mark in the U.S. for years. AP VoteCast polling last year found that 59% of Ohio voters say abortion should generally be legal.
Peter Range, executive director for Ohio Right to Life, said strong turnout and enthusiasm at the March for Life held at the Ohio Statehouse last month gave him \u201cgreat hope\u201d for victory on Tuesday.
He said Issue 1 goes too far in limiting the state \u201cand I think once most Ohioans realize that, they\u2019re going to reject it.\u201d
The Issue 1 campaign, Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, is working to appeal to voters across party lines with a message focused on bodily autonomy and freedom from government intervention.
Kimberly Inez McGuire, executive director of URGE and a member of the coalition supporting the amendment, said messaging similar to Ohio\u2019s was effective across party lines in deeply Republican Kansas, which surprised the nation when it became the first state to protect the right to an abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe.
\u201cI think there\u2019s a very progressive value in being able to maintain our liberty, maintain our freedom, have the government not tell us what to do with our bodies,\u201d she said.
McGuire said supporters of abortion rights also were energized by an August special election in which the GOP-led state Legislature advanced a proposal that would have set a 60% supermajority requirement for passing future constitutional amendments. The measure failed badly, and she said it soured many voters on trusting their elected representatives.
Turnout in the election that concludes Tuesday is expected to be robust, building on the enthusiasm from the summer, organizers say. Local election officials anticipate 40% to 50% of registered voters will participate, according to the Ohio Association of Election Officials. That\u2019s higher than a typical off-year November election and up from the 39% turnout in August.
\u201cOhio voters really know what\u2019s at stake here, because they\u2019ve seen the incredible lengths that the Ohio government will go to to interfere in people\u2019s lives,\u201d McGuire said. \u201cThe August election laid bare the strategy of the anti-abortion movement \u2014 which is that they understand that the people oppose abortion bans, and so it is now their strategy to put a stranglehold on democracy to try to thwart democratic efforts to support abortion access.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n