Ohio moves closer to voting issue that would protect abortion rights

Ohio moved one step closer to becoming the next major test case in the nation’s battle over abortion after proponents of a measure that would ask voters to enshrine an abortion right in the state’s constitution. week said they had submitted more than enough signatures to put it on the November ballot.

Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights said Wednesday it had collected about 710,000 signatures in all 88 counties of the state over the past 12 weeks. Under state law, the coalition needed 413,466 to qualify for the vote. State election officials now have until July 25 to verify the signatures.

Abortion rights advocates are turning to voting rights measures in the wake of last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed abortion rights in the federal constitution for 50 years. They are betting on polls showing that public opinion is increasingly in favor of any right to abortion, opposing the outlawed and stricter laws that conservative states have enacted since the court’s ruling.

Voters in six states, including conservative states such as Kentucky and Kansas, voted in last year’s election to protect or enshrine the right to abortion, and abortion rights advocates in about 10 other states are considering similar plans.

But the November ballot measure isn’t the only one that will have major stakes in the future of abortion in Ohio. Republicans who oppose abortion rights — and who control the state’s General Assembly — have proposed another measure that would make it more difficult to pass ballot measures.

Republican leaders in the legislature placed a measure on the August primary ballot that would raise the threshold needed to pass a ballot measure to 60 percent, from a simple majority. While August elections typically have low voter turnout and favor those who sponsor the measures, Kansas Republicans who tried last August to remove abortion rights from the state’s constitution failed, killing an unexpectedly large number of residents of the state. Kansas turned out to reject it. However, Ohio’s August measure won’t specifically mention abortion, and it’s not clear whether abortion rights advocates will be able to push their supporters as effectively as their Kansas counterparts did last year.

An Ohio law passed in 2019 banned abortion after six weeks of pregnancy — before many women know they are pregnant — and that law took effect after Roe was overturned. A county court judge placed the ban pending trial, saying Ohio’s constitution provided a “fundamental right to abortion” in part because it gave women equal protection and benefits. That leaves abortion legal up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.

The ballot measure would amend the constitution to add “the right to reproductive freedom with protection for health and safety,” which in many ways resembles the protections established by Roe.

The amendment would establish a right to abortion but allow it to be banned after the fetus is viable outside the womb, usually around 23 or 24 weeks. It would allow laws restricting abortion before viability, so long as those laws use the “least restrictive means to promote the health of the individual in accordance with generally accepted and evidence-based standards of care.”