Ohio voters defeat GOP anti-abortion agenda in resounding pro-choice victory

Ohio voters have approved Issue 1, a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to abortion and other forms of reproductive healthcare, according to ABC News. The amendment will go into effect in 30 days.

The outcome continues a winning streak for state-level pro-choice advocates, making Ohio the seventh state to protect abortion access following the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturning of abortion rights nationwide.

Related:

State Rep. Gary Click is leading the charge against trans rights in Ohio & we all need to fight back

If he isn’t opposed, he’ll continue emboldening far-right actors, hate groups, and anti-trans politicians nationwide.

The Ohio measure was also closely watched as an indication of whether abortion might motivate pro-choice voters to the polls in next year’s presidential elections, especially as state Republicans used disinformation, voter purging, and fear-mongering in an attempt to defeat Issue 1.

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The victory spells trouble for Republicans leading into the 2024 national elections as the party continues to push for further restrictions on abortion, to the apparent disapproval of voters — even in a swing state like Ohio.

Issue 1 will allow state residents to “make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to” decisions about abortion, contraception, fertility treatment, miscarriage care, and continuing pregnancy. The amendment will also allow the state to restrict abortion after fetal viability — the point at which a baby can live outside of its parent’s body — except when it’s “necessary to protect the pregnant patient’s life or health.”

Currently, Ohio allows abortions up to 22 weeks (roughly five months). However, in April 2019, the state’s Republican legislature passed a law banning abortion after doctors detect a fetal heartbeat, something that occurs after four weeks of pregnancy, before most people even realize they’re pregnant. The law makes no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. A court issued a temporary injunction against the law while considering a lawsuit against it.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R), who signed the 2019 bill, didn’t mention any of this in his political ad opposing Issue 1. Instead, his wife — who appeared alongside him in the ad — lied and said Issue 1 would “allow an abortion at any time during a pregnancy.”

To further discourage voters, DeWine said he would press the legislators to add rape and incest exceptions to his fetal heartbeat law. But even he acknowledged that, if legislators refused to do so, voters would have to wait until an upcoming election to possibly legalize the exceptions on the ballot.

State anti-abortion advocates also pulled several tricks to try and thwart Issue 1. Foremost, they introduced an August ballot measure that would’ve increased the threshold needed to pass a ballot initiative from a simple majority to 60%. State voters defeated that attempt by a margin of 57%. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose admitted that the measure was “100%” an attempt to prevent Issue 1 from passing.

Next, LaRose (R) drafted ballot text for Issue 1 that replaced the word “fetus” with “unborn child” and repeated the false claim about the amendment allowing “an unborn child to be aborted at any stage of pregnancy, regardless of viability.”

State Rep. Elliot Forhan (D), slammed the text, stating, “Extremists led by Frank LaRose ignored medical experts and legal experts by approving ballot language that is blatantly misleading and purposefully inaccurate solely for their own personal and political gain.”

The Republican-led state Supreme Court, where DeWine’s son serves as a judge, allowed LaRose’s text to stand despite outcry from pro-choice groups about its dishonesty.

Then, in late September, LaRose’s office canceled the registrations of nearly 27,000 inactive voters, making them ineligible to vote. His office didn’t announce its voter purge, even though it had done so in the past, and news about it didn’t become widespread until after the voter registration period had ended in early October. His office justified the secret purge as necessary for “ensuring the integrity and accuracy of Ohio’s elections.”

LaRose’s actions were undoubtedly driven by the fact that he is currently running in a Republican primary to become the state’s next U.S. senator.

Anti-abortion advocates also resorted to transphobia to defeat the measure. An ad released in July by the group Protect Women Ohio dishonestly suggested that the measure’s supporters saw it as a way “to encourage sex changes and cut parents out of life-changing decisions.”

Another Protect Women Ohio ad dishonestly claimed that the law would “abolish parental consent” and allow rapists to force their child-aged victims to get abortions. However, Issue 1 doesn’t have any impact on the state’s parental consent laws for minors seeking abortions.

Similarly, transphobic state Rep. Gary Click (R) lied about a 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio, claiming that her rapist had driven her out of state to have an abortion. If passed, Issue 1 would allow the same thing to happen in Ohio, Click claimed, adding, “It empowers trafficking and predators … [and] should be called the Predator Protection Act.”

X, formerly Twitter, added a note to Click’s dishonest tweet, factually informing readers that the child’s mother actually drove her out of state to have the abortion.

I fear that well-intentioned pro-choice people do not realize just how far this amendment goes and how radical it is. They will discover too late that it doesn't just allow abortion but it empowers trafficking and predators with language that eliminates any type of so-called…

— Rep Gary Click (@clickforohio) October 29, 2023

The Republican-led state Senate also created a blog against Issue 1 entitled, “On the Record” in which state Senators Kristina Roegner (R) and Michele Reynolds (R) both wrote posts falsely claiming that it would allow “the dismemberment of fully conscious children” and the “gruesome late-term abortions of fully conscious babies,” respectively.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, six other states have voted to protect abortion access: California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, and Vermont. Democrats believe that Republican threats to abortion access, including promises of a federal abortion ban, may encourage reproductive rights advocates to vote in the 2024 presidential elections, helping defeat lower-level anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion Republican candidates in the process.