Supporters of Ohio Issue 1 cheer as results come in at a watch party hosted by Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights on November 7, 2023 in Columbus, Ohio.
Andrew Spear | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Ohio voters have added the best to access abortion care to the state’s constitution, NBC News projects — one other major political victory for abortion-rights advocates in the nearly 17 months for the reason that Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.
The passage of the Issue 1 ballot measure inserts language in the state constitution guaranteeing all and sundry in Ohio the best “to 1’s own reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion,” and barring the state from “burdening, penalizing or prohibiting” those rights — though it specifies that abortion will remain prohibited after the purpose a physician judges a fetus would almost certainly survive birth, with exceptions to guard the girl’s life or health.
Approval of the ballot measure marks one more victory for abortion-rights advocates, this time in a state that Donald Trump twice carried by 8-point margins. For the reason that Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the national right to abortion access in its June 2022 Dobbs decision, ballot measures backing abortion rights have won in every election to this point, even in conservative states, including Kentucky and Kansas — and in an August special election in Ohio that served as a proxy battle ahead of November’s constitutional amendment fight.
Tuesday’s final result further demonstrates that abortion could remain a major liability for Republicans in elections. As in Ohio, polling has shown that voters across the country broadly favor abortion protections — a proven fact that Democrats leveraged last 12 months to maintain control of the U.S. Senate, fend off a red wave in the House and win several governorships. Next 12 months, it’s prone to be central to President Joe Biden’s campaign for re-election.
In Ohio, passage of the amendment will effectively counteract the state’s “heartbeat bill,” which took effect immediately after the Dobbs decision and banned most abortions — with exceptions for the health of the pregnant woman and ectopic pregnancies — but stays temporarily blocked by a state judge.
That case is before the state Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in September.
Groups on each side of the abortion fight spent thousands and thousands in the run-up to an August election in Ohio — one other ballot measure campaign, that one over whether to make it harder to amend the state constitution in the longer term, including raising the edge for achievement to 60% as an alternative of a straightforward majority. It lost in August. Its resounding defeat was a transparent win for reproductive rights advocates in Ohio, and in some ways it paved the best way for the success of the measure approved Tuesday.
Following that campaign, reproductive rights groups began far outspending anti-abortion groups in the fight over the November measure.
Since Aug. 9, groups supporting the November Issue 1 measure spent $23.7 million on promoting, in comparison with $10.7 million the anti-abortion groups spent against the amendment, based on AdImpact, a firm that tracks political ad spending.