Julie Carr Smyth/AP Photo
Signs for and against a proposed constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights in Ohio stand in front of the Greene County Board of Elections in Xenia, Ohio, October 11, 2023, the first day of in-person voting.
One distinctive feature of the Ohio abortion debate is that doctors and other reproductive rights–minded health care professionals have emerged as a potent coalition, steering public opinion from the moment that the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.
Last year, 1,000 physicians in the state threw down an unambiguous challenge, “A Message to Our Patients on the Loss of Reproductive Rights,” which outlined their objections to political excesses like Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and Ohio’s “heartbeat bill,” and listed some of the key reasons—chemotherapy, unviable pregnancies, rape—that lead women to undergo an abortion. Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights (OPRR), the group behind the campaign that had been originally spearheaded by two outraged doctors, also hammered home the “sanctity and privacy of the patient-physician relationship” and labeled the assault on women’s medical freedom of choice and criminalizing doctors “un-American.” Across the country, other statewide, doctor-led organizations have sprung up to protect reproductive rights.
OPRR helped launch the citizen-backed reproductive rights constitutional amendment (known as “Issue 1”) that appeared on the general-election ballot. It is one of only two issues up for statewide consideration this year in Ohio, vastly eclipsing what otherwise might be the main event, a ballot initiative legalizing recreational marijuana.
The pathway to the ballot has been long and complicated, punctuated by a six-week trigger ban that has been blocked by the courts twice. The biggest confrontations erupted over how the wording of the proposed amendment would appear on the general-election ballot. This high-profile struggle between abortion supporters and opponents over the politicized language, and the efforts by Ohio media outlets to introduce important context, is a master class in the misinformation campaigns that have been unleashed in conservative states.
In August, the five-member Ohio Ballot Board, which has a Republican majority, decided that instead of using the actual text of the proposed amendment, it would provide a summary, a not-so-unusual move in these kinds of elections. The first paragraph of the official summary on the secretary of state’s website begins, “The proposed amendment would: Establish in the Constitution of the State of Ohio an individual right to one’s own reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion.”
The actual text of the proposed amendment, which is not on the ballot, provides examples of reproductive care that the summary omits, namely “including but not limited to contraception [access]; fertility treatment; continuing one’s own pregnancy; miscarriage care; and abortion,” which abortion rights supporters wanted included to show the other reproductive health matters that deserved constitutional protections. In particular, they sought the inclusion of contraception access, which some lawmakers have identified as a possible next target of state reproductive prohibitions.
What is more unusual is that the ballot summary uses charged phrases like “unborn child” instead of medical terms like “fetus.” It uses the term “viability” but fails to explain it, even though the full text of the amendment does provide a definition for “fetal viability.” The Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights coalition (the physicians’ group is a member) argued in its lawsuit seeking to correct these and other major mischaracterizations in a summary that was “irrevocably flawed.” The Ohio Supreme Court, which has a Republican majority of elected justices, agreed to one small technical change. But the justices let other disputed elements stand.
For the November ballot, anti-abortion groups have also conflated parental rights with abortion by claiming that the bill “erases” parental rights.
Media outlets like Signal Cleveland, a local community site, doubled down on explainers with interactive features contrasting the current summary language with issues raised by the coalition, while others like the Ohio Capital Journal launched a series specifically devoted to the amendment’s language and the rights it would affect.
The main architect of this semantic mayhem is Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose. He also played a major role in the failed August 8 amendment campaign that would have required 60 percent of voters to pass a constitutional amendment instead of an absolute majority. That August election had also featured a tussle over wordsmithing between the Supreme Court, the state ballot board that LaRose chairs, and abortion rights groups. (State lawmakers even went ahead with the election despite the fact that they had complained that August elections were expensive, low-turnout undertakings and had actually banned them months earlier.) Voters obliterated that amendment proposal, and LaRose probably clouded his own prospects of facing Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in next year’s Senate election.
Though Ohio has in the past been a presidential battleground, Republicans control the state. There have been 25 Republican trifectas since 1992. But the far-right Republicans in the legislature may have miscalculated the mood of the electorate. Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, noted in a statement provided to the Prospect that the general election “will once again show that Republicans are extremely out of touch on the issue of abortion even with their own base of voters.” Bipartisan groups of state officials, including former governors and state attorneys general, came out against the August proposal.
The election was seen by some voters as a power grab by state lawmakers, who have tilted further right than the electorate. “Even people who may have considered themselves, or may still consider themselves pro-life, saw what the state legislature was doing,” says Anne Whitesell, a Miami University of Ohio assistant professor of political science. “And that was a step too far.”
The furor over abortion, plus the added indignity of unbanning allegedly low-turnout August elections for patently partisan reasons, boosted turnout to 40 percent, a record for an August election. “A lot of people went out and voted because they were just annoyed that the legislature had done this,” Whitesell adds.
For the November ballot, anti-abortion groups have also conflated parental rights with abortion by claiming that the bill “erases” parental rights, not only on abortion but on “irreversible” gender reassignment surgery. There is no mention of parental rights or gender issues in the amendment, and it would make no changes to current laws in either area. Law professor Tracy Thomas, director of the Center for Constitutional Law at the University of Akron, told ABC News, “It is a straw argument, a false argument that they’re setting up.”
Under Ohio law, a minor must have the written consent of a parent, guardian, or custodian. A minor can proceed with an abortion “if the court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the minor is sufficiently mature and well enough informed to decide intelligently whether to have an abortion, the court shall grant the petition and permit the minor to consent to the abortion.”
Meanwhile, another mostly unrelated factor is the rest of the ballot this November, which has drawn little attention. The only other statewide issue is the legalization of recreational marijuana. Estimates on revenues from a 10 percent excise tax range from $276 million to $403 million five years after legalization.
Whitesell expects that there would be some “crossover” between voters who support legalization and reproductive rights. Young people are one group where some crossover would certainly be expected. But earlier this year, Gov. Mike DeWine signed a photo ID requirement into law. Previously, students could show a letter from their university attesting to residency. Now they must present an unexpired Ohio driver’s license (which effectively means giving up home-state residency, which can affect other college-related matters like financial aid if a student pursues that option) or other state-issued ID, U.S. passport, veterans, or other U.S. military ID to vote in person or vote by mail.
That change was widely understood to be expressly designed to suppress the student vote, particularly among out-of-state students who under state law can vote in the communities where they live. In the 2022 midterms, the overall Ohio youth vote (ages 18 to 29) was nearly 22 percent. But in 2020, Ohio youth turnout was about 50 percent, raising the question of whether the one-two combo of abortion and cannabis legalization will motivate this critical segment of voters.
