Voters in Ohio successfully thwarted a Republican attempt to make it harder to pass a November pro-choice ballot measure.
On Tuesday, Ohioans voted to defeat Issue 1, a ballot initiative to raise the threshold for altering the state constitution from a simple statewide majority vote to 60%. Although a simple majority has been the standard in Ohio for over 100 years, anti-choice Republicans in the state called for a special election to raise the vote threshold in a preemptive attempt to block the abortion-rights constitutional amendment that will be in front of voters in November’s general election.
Despite many Republican claims that the special election was about protecting Ohio from out-of-state special interests, it was ultimately a proxy fight over abortion rights.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, an outspoken anti-choice leader, was one of several Republicans who attempted to hide the real intent of Issue 1. He told the Washington Examiner last month that Issue 1 has “never been exclusively about abortion.” But as feminist writer Jessica Valenti pointed out, LaRose said earlier in the summer that Issue 1 “is 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”
The outcome, which makes it easier to pass the pro-choice constitutional amendment later this year, is a huge win for abortion-rights advocates in Ohio.
If it passes, the November amendment will effectively invalidate any bans tied up in court that would seek to restrict abortion before fetal viability, which is around 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy. These include a six-week abortion ban that briefly went into effect after Roe v. Wade fell in June 2022, but that was blocked in court while awaiting an Ohio Supreme Court ruling. Currently, abortion is legal through 22 weeks of pregnancy in Ohio.
The special election is also an important reminder that whenever the public has been given the opportunity to directly vote on abortion rights, it has continually protected access — in both red and blue states. A year ago, Kansans overwhelmingly voted to keep abortion protections in their state constitution in the first big vote on abortion since Roe fell. And last fall, voters protected abortion access in the five states where it was on the ballot — including in Michigan, Kentucky and Montana.