Voters in Ohio voted Tuesday to approve a ballot initiative that places a right to an abortion into the state’s constitution.
Pro-life advocates say the measure will effectively make abortion legal at any point in pregnancy. The initiative brought in millions in spending with more than $18 million being spent in favor of the pro-abortion initiative, with just $7 million being spent in opposition since August 9, according to NBC News.
“Our hearts are broken tonight not because we lost an election, but because Ohio families, women and children will bear the brunt of this vote. When Michigan voters passed a similar amendment last year, they were sold the lie that parental rights would be unaffected, that late-term abortion would remain illegal, and that women’s health and safety standers would not be touched. But just last week, the Michigan legislature voted to repeal penalties for partial-birth abortions, to eliminate health and safety protections at abortion facilities, and they called parental consent laws ‘unconstitutional.’ They even vowed to come for informed consent laws and 24-hour waiting periods next. We know the same barbaric attacks on parents and children are now coming home to Ohio,” Protect Women Ohio said in a statement posted to X.
Other pro-life organizations also released statements on the vote. “Big Abortion won, while women, parents, and babies lost. Women lost common-sense protections. Parents have lost the ability to be involved in a key, and dangerous, component of their child’s medical and emotional health. And babies have been denied their bodily autonomy to grow as God intended. The work of pregnancy help will now be the only thing that can help women from the entrapment of the abortion profiteers,” said Jor-El Godsey, the president of pro-life organization Heartbeat International.
The effort to put abortion into the state constitution was backed by the Ohio Democratic Party, the ACLU of Ohio, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, and Ohio Women’s Alliance. Martin Haskell, a proponent of partial-birth abortion, gave $100,000 to Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, a political action committee that opposed a Republican-backed measure that would have made it more difficult to amend the state constitution and has advocated for passage of Issue 1.
Prominent Ohio Republicans, like Governor Mike DeWine and Senator J.D. Vance, spoke out against enshrining abortion into the state’s constitution, calling the measure extreme.
“Today is Election Day in Ohio. Vote NO on Issue 1! There’s been a lot of lies out there from the Yes campaign. People do in fact abort healthy late term pregnancies. Issue 1 doesn’t make it illegal to have a miscarriage. Think for yourself and vote no!” Vance posted to X on Tuesday.
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The initiative was also opposed by more than 100 black faith leaders who urged Ohioans to vote to protect life. In a previous interview with The Daily Wire, Pastor Jeff Haygood, of Living Word Church in Columbus, said that the vote would be a watershed moment for Ohio.
“This issue is going to be a watershed moment for the state of Ohio one way or another. I hope it is a moment that Ohioans rise to the occasion, take a stand for life, and move forward accordingly. If it’s not, we create a culture of death,” he said.
Previously, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, has said that, if passed, Issue 1 would effectively legalize all abortion in the state.
“[T]he Amendment would give greater protection to abortion to be free from regulation than at any time in Ohio’s history,” analysis from Yost said. “That new test includes definitions and other terms that likewise make it harder for any law covering ‘reproductive decisions’ to survive.”