Ohio reproductive rights groups submit 700,000 signatures for abortion ballot measure

Abortion rights advocates in Ohio have successfully gathered enough signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November that would guarantee a right to abortion care in the state.

A coalition of abortion rights groups, including Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom and Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, gathered more than 700,000 signatures from 44 of the state’s 88 counties in favor of placing the amendment, consisting of a new section of the Constitution to be called “The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety,” on the ballot. The groups dropped off boxes of the petitions at the secretary of state’s office on Wednesday. The groups were only required to submit 413,00 signatures.

Elections officials must verify the signatures on the petitions by July 20. Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican with a history of voting against abortion care, will give the final approval of the signatures by July 25.

Kellie Copeland, the executive director of Pro-Choice Ohio, said during a press conference that the boxes “are filled with hope and love and dreams of bodily autonomy, of health, of being able to say, ‘We decide what happens to us.’”

The proposed measure would ensure “Every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion,” the petition reads.

Additionally, the amendment would make it illegal for the state to “directly or indirectly burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against either an individual’s voluntary exercise of this right or a person or entity that assists an individual exercising this right, unless the State demonstrates that it is using the least restrictive means to advance the individual’s health in accordance with widely accepted and evidence-based standards of care.”

However, the proposed amendment will face a significant challenge.

In January, Ohio H.B. 458 went into effect, eliminating August Special Elections, but in May, House Republicans passed a resolution 62-37 to hold a special election on amending the state constitution. The date for the election was set for Aug. 8.

Set by the Ohio General Assembly, the special election will ask voters to decide on State Issue 1, which would raise the threshold for approving constitutional amendments to 60% from a simple majority of 50% plus 1, the current requirement that has been in place since 1912. If the voters approve State Issue 1, the abortion measure will have to be approved by 60% of votes cast to be adopted in November.

According to a video from Scanner Media reported by News 5 in Cleveland on May 22, LaRose said that Issue 1 is “100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our Constitution.”

A vote for Issue 1 would also mean that petitions proposing constitutional amendments would need to be signed “by at least 5% of the electors in each of Ohio’s 88 counties, rather than in 44 counties.”

Abortion is currently legal in Ohio up to 22 weeks of pregnancy, but after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization last year that overturned Roe v. Wade, a restrictive ban was triggered, making the procedure illegal once fetal cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks’ gestation, before many people know that they’re pregnant.

On Oct. 7, 2022, Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Christian Jenkins issued a preliminary injunction blocking the state’s abortion ban. The state appealed the injunction, but the First District Court of Appeals denied the state’s appeal in December.

In March, a dark money anti-abortion group called Protect Women Ohio launched a $5 million advertising campaign against the proposed amendment, NBC 4 in Columbus reported.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.