Abortion was a central topic of conversation in Ohio’s November election and in the special election a year ago this week.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose even said last summer that the special election on August 8, 2023 – which would raise the hurdle for passing constitutional amendments – would be “100 percent” about stopping the reproductive rights amendment passed last November.
Democrats and reproductive rights activists said Thursday the fight over abortion rights will continue as candidates in the 2024 election have differing views on what the future of abortion should look like in the state and country.
Ohio Minority Leader Allison Russo reiterated a message that Democrats and others have put forward since the anniversary of the Dobbs decisionthe 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that placed abortion rights in the hands of the states and overturned national legalization that had existed since the 1970s.
“It is clear that abortion rights will be on the ballot again in 2024,” Russo said Thursday at a press conference hosted by U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown’s campaign team.
Russo was joined by Cleveland gynecologist and obstetrician Dr. Maria Phillis, Reproductive Freedom For All campaign and advocacy officer Elizabeth Schoetz and Ohio resident Kaitlin Rizk, who spoke about her abortion five years ago.
“I was very lucky to have the freedom to make this decision myself,” Rizk said.
After the Dobbs ruling and Ohio’s attorney general rushed to free the six-week abortion ban from its legal entanglements and reinstate it, doctors like Phillis, who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, said they were “in a desperate position, trying to figure out what we could and could not offer our patients.”
She said doctors had referred patients to out-of-state facilities only to discover that the state where they were being housed had similar treatment bans in place.
“We watched physicians we were trying to recruit rethink their training and practice in our state, and our state already had large swathes of obstetric desert,” Phillis said.
With reproductive rights, including abortion, now part of Ohio’s constitution, Phillis said she has interviewed doctors who are “drawn to the state” because of the legal rights.
The women spoke on the anniversary of Issue 1, the ballot initiative introduced by legislative leaders last year, and supported by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRosewhich would have raised the hurdle required for passage of a ballot initiative such as the subsequent Issue 1, a constitutional amendment to enshrine reproductive rights in the Ohio Constitution.
“We have been faced with lies, deception and a flood of money spent against us, and yet that has not shaken the people of Ohio,” Russo said.
The first bill, introduced in August, was overwhelmingly rejected by 57% of voters in the special election. That is the same percentage that approved the constitutional amendment on reproductive rights in November 2023.
Opponents of the August effort, such as Russo, urged a vote against it because it would unnecessarily complicate passage of measures like the Reproductive Rights Amendment.
And they said it was intentionally planned that way, a claim LaRose verified when he said at a Lincoln Day dinner in May 2023 that the August measure was “100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our Constitution.”
But the passage of the reproductive rights amendment does not mean the fight is over in Ohio or elsewhere, said the women who spoke Thursday.
Russo and the other speakers are focusing on the U.S. Senate race in November, where Brown will face Bernie Moreno. The Democratic Party leader is, not surprisingly, backing the incumbent Brown, and abortion rights advocates are urging voters to go to the polls in November.
“The stakes couldn’t be higher in this November election,” Phillis said.
There are still concerns about a national abortion ban being floated at the federal level, although candidates including former President Donald Trump have rambled and publicly express their support.
Moreno rejected the idea of a national ban on abortion during a primary debatebut also brought up a 15-week abortion limit. Moreno was quoted as saying he was “100% pro-life, no exceptions” and was endorsed in June by the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Candidate Fund as part of a planned $92 million investment in election campaigns in Arizona, Georgia, Montana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, according to a published statement when the group supported Moreno.
Moreno is also endorsed by Ohio Right to Life, a leading member of the opposition campaign to the reproductive rights amendment, according to his website.
For his part, Sherrod Brown said in June that he would “always support a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions.”
Ohioans watch the races for the state Supreme Court view these elections as another opportunity to present legal challenges to the state over laws and regulations governing abortion, some of which are already the subject of litigation.
Lawsuits are currently pending in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, one of which seeks lift the six-week ban once and for all (the enforcement of which has been suspended while the case is being heard in court), and another attempting to 24-hour waiting period and mandatory minimum of two visits for abortion servicesboth of which are still codified in Ohio law.
Russo said the change in the law was a step in the right direction for the state, but did not mean the war was won.
“Even though these rights are enshrined in the Constitution, there is still language in the Ohio Revised Code that restricts abortion. So a lot of this will play out in our state courts and the state Supreme Court,” she said Thursday.
Even if the lawsuits are won in favor of the plaintiffs and the laws are repealed, the minority leader believes the Republican supermajority will continue to pass laws and actively oppose the wording of the amendment.
“Republicans are not stupid, they will not do anything before November,” Russo said. “But you can be sure there is a desire to continue the attacks and undermine what voters decided twice last year.”
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