Ohio voters on Tuesday approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing access to abortion and other forms of reproductive health care, the latest victory for abortion rights supporters since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.
Ohio became the seventh state where voters decided to protect abortion access after the historic ruling and was the only state to consider a statewide question on abortion rights this year.
The outcome of the intense off-year election could be a bellwether for 2024, when Democrats hope the issue will energize their voters and help President Joe Biden keep the White House. Voters in Arizona, Missouri and elsewhere are expected to vote on similar protections next year.
Heather Williams, interim chairwoman of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which works to elect Democrats to state legislatures, said the vote for abortion rights was a “huge victory.”
“Ohio’s resounding support for this constitutional amendment reaffirms Democratic priorities and sends a strong message to the state Republican Party that reproductive rights are non-negotiable,” he said in a statement.
Ohio’s constitutional amendment, on the ballot as Issue 1, included some of the most protective language for abortion access of any state ballot initiative since the Supreme Court ruling. Opponents had argued that the amendment would threaten parental rights, allow unrestricted gender surgeries for minors and revive “partial-birth” abortions, which are banned at the federal level.
Public polls show that about two-thirds of Americans say abortion should generally be legal in the early stages of pregnancy, a sentiment that has been underscored in both Democratic and deeply Republican states since judges struck down Roe in June 2022.
Before the Ohio vote, state initiatives in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont had affirmed abortion access or rejected attempts to undermine the right.
Voter turnout in favor of Ohio’s constitutional amendment, including early voting, was strong for an off-year election.
Passage of Issue 1 will all but undo a 2019 state law passed by Republicans that bans most abortions after fetal heart activity is detected, with no exceptions for rape and incest. That law, currently on hold due to court challenges, is one of about two dozen abortion restrictions that the Ohio Legislature has passed in recent years.
Number 1 specifically stated an individual’s right to “make and carry out his or her own reproductive decisions,” including birth control, fertility treatments, miscarriage, and abortion.
It allowed the state to regulate the procedure after fetal viability, as long as exceptions were made for cases in which a doctor determined that the woman’s “life or health” was at risk. Viability was defined as the point at which the fetus had “a significant chance of survival” outside the womb, with reasonable interventions.
Anti-abortion groups, with the help of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, tried a variety of messages to try to defeat the amendment, focusing primarily on the idea that the proposal was too extreme for the state. His supporters’ campaign focused on the message of keeping the government out of families’ private affairs.
The latest vote came after a special election in August called by the Republican-controlled Legislature that was intended to make it more difficult to pass future constitutional changes by raising the threshold of a simple majority vote to 60%. That proposal was aimed in part at undermining the abortion rights measure decided on Tuesday.
Voters overwhelmingly defeated that special ballot question, setting the stage for the high-stakes campaign on abortion in the fall.
