Vote YES on Ohio Issue 1 in November — Help Enshrine Reproductive Rights in Our Ohio Constitution

The vast majority of Americans have lived most, if not all, of our lives under the protections of Roe v. Wade. Since this historic case was overturned in 2022, our reproductive freedoms in this country have been in a constant state of flux.

This jarring reversal of literal decades of precedent has left damaging repercussions in its wake. Women all over the U.S. have faced total bans with few exceptions for rape and incest, criminalization, bounties, and traumatic life-threatening refusal of reproductive care.

Pregnancy-related morbidity rates have increased. Countless women have faced not only prosecution, but also sustained economic hardship due to unwanted pregnancies or having to travel to other states to get care. And mental health challenges among young women are at an all-time high.

Here in Ohio, anti-abortion groups and lawmakers have made extremely restrictive attempts since before the fall of Roe to overturn reproductive rights. In 2019, the Republican majority passed a six-week abortion ban, which was then blocked by a federal judge. (You know, six weeks, when many women don’t even know they’re pregnant yet. Six weeks, which is around the halfway point of an embryo before it is even considered a fetus and nowhere near viability. And, equally disturbing, this ban made no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from incest and rape.)

Then, shortly after Roe was overturned in 2022, AG Yost filed a motion to dissolve the injunction on what conservatives refer to as the “heartbeat bill” and this six-week ban was reinstated. (You know, Yost, the same person who has allowed our voting districts to be woefully gerrymandered in favor of Republicans for many years now. Yost, who has shot down bipartisan citizen-led initiatives for redistricting reform, efforts that are overwhelming supported by the majority of Ohioans.)

At the current moment, the six-week ban has been indefinitely blocked, on hold in our Ohio Supreme Court after pro-abortion rights groups sued under cited privacy infringement.

But, with self-proclaimed, anti-abortion Republicans leaders (like Yost, LaRose, and DeWine) in power and extreme religious groups continuously trying to beat down the door, it’s only a matter of time before they push through lasting legislation that would turn back the clock, leaving us no better off than the likes of Texas, Alabama, Florida, and Arkansas.

With this in mind and with a lack of federal protection on the books, we needed a way to solidify our rights and enshrine them in our Ohio Constitution, preventing future power grabs from the over-reaching, partisan right.

Hence, Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom (now Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights) was born. A coalition of reproductive health, rights, and justice organizations here in Ohio who have banded together across the state to ensure individuals, with the help of a medical professional, have control over their reproductive decisions, not the government. This became the basis of Issue 1, The Right to Reproductive Freedom and Protections for Health and Safety Amendment.

So many of us have volunteered our time and come together to make this amendment happen, collecting signatures to get our amendment placed on the November 2023 ballot and gathering support for Election Day. We needed at least 413,466 signatures by July to get on the ballot. We submitted over 700,000.

While this was going on, Republican lawmakers who had just voted to get rid of special elections back in 2021 (which LaRose referred to as a “win for Ohio taxpayers” and cited “chronically low voter turnout”) called for a special election in August of this year (proposed by LaRose) with their own Issue 1 initiative, attempting (and failing) to make it harder for citizen-led initiatives, such as our own, to be put on the ballot. Coincidence that this special election campaign ran concurrent with our efforts and seemed to be set up as an obstructive barrier mere months before our measure on the November ballot? I think not.

Our efforts have been battered on a nearly daily basis. The Ohio Ballot Board has continually made changes to the language of our amendment, using wording that not only violates our state constitution, but also provokes confusion to mislead Ohioans and incite a knee-jerk response from voters (specifically the wording in the summary that voters will see, which is nothing but warped propaganda that was infuriatingly written by the chairperson of the board who is none other than, you guessed it, LaRose). There has also been a disinformation campaign against us like you wouldn’t believe. I have been manning the OURR and ACLU of Ohio phone banks every week in the lead up to the November election, encouraging Ohioans to vote in favor of our amendment. You would be astonished to hear what some people have been led to believe about what our amendment will mean for Ohio. Truly insane and borderline, conspiracy theory-level nonsense. The stories I could tell.

So, what will Issue 1 actually do?

Glad you asked.

When passed, Issue 1 will protect and enshrine reproductive rights (contraception, abortion, fertility treatments, continuing one’s own pregnancy, and miscarriage care) in our Ohio Constitution. Abortion access will revert back to exactly what it was under Roe v. Wade, meaning abortion would be legal up until a fetus is viable outside of the womb around the end of the second trimester, with exceptions for a pregnancy deemed threatening to a patient’s life by a physician, rape, and incest. This amendment will also prohibit the Ohio government from criminalizing, penalizing, or discriminating against those seeking reproductive care or those helping others seek reproductive care (no prosecutions or bounties). Read the exact full text of our proposed amendment on the OURR website here.

Please support fundamental reproductive rights and vote YES in November. Make our fight count!

To those undecided or in the “no” camp, I highly recommend you read this piece I wrote a few year back about the importance of choice and reproductive freedom.

For those voting YES in support of our cause, you may be wondering what kind of action steps you can take between now and Election Day:

• Register to vote. And, if you are already registered to vote, but you have moved or changed your name since you last voted, be sure to update your registration status. Ohio’s voter registration deadline is next Tuesday (October 10th). Go here to make sure you are #VoteReady.
• Have a voting plan in place. Election Day is a month away (November 7th). If you are voting in-person, be sure to look up your polling location and bring a valid Ohio Driver’s License, Ohio ID, or current passport with you. If you can’t vote in-person on Election Day, you have the options of voting early or by mail starting on October 11th. If you are voting early, you have until November 4th to get to your Board of Elections with one of the forms of identification listed above. If you are voting by mail, go here to fill out, print, and mail the required request form to your Board of Elections. You have until seven days prior to Election Day to request an absentee ballot. Once you receive your ballot in the mail, you must complete and postmark it to your Board of Elections by the day before Election Day. If you aren’t able to return it by mail, you have until the polls close at 7:30pm on Election Day to get your ballot to your Board of Elections.
• Be sure to inform your friends and family. Debunk any misinformation you hear. And tell everyone you know how important it is to vote YES on Issue 1.

Get out the vote and help keep the government out of our reproductive decisions! #VoteYesOnIssue1