COLUMBUS, Ohio— Ohioans who want to see abortion rights enshrined in the state constitution soon will be able to sign petitions to put the question on the November ballot after a proposed amendment cleared another procedural step Monday.
The bipartisan Ohio Ballot Board unanimously voted Monday that the proposed amendment contains only a single subject. Under Ohio law, a proposed amendment cannot contain more than one constitutional amendment.
That means that the abortion-rights supporters backing the measure can now start to gather the required 412,591 signatures from registered voters in at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties by a July 5 deadline.
The proposal, called the Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety, would grant every individual the right to make and carry out their own reproductive decisions, including for contraception, fertility treatment, continuing a pregnancy, miscarriage care and abortion.
If the proposed amendment is approved, the state would not be allowed to directly or indirectly burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with or discriminate against any person’s ability to exercise these rights. However, abortion could be prohibited after fetal viability, which is about 21 to 24 weeks into a pregnancy.
The proposed amendment would be added to Article 1, Section 22 of the state constitution.
A coalition is backing the constitutional amendment proposal. It includes a bipartisan group of physicians and their supporters, as well as long-standing abortion rights advocates such as Planned Parenthood, which has served the state for 100 years, and clinics such as Pre-Term Cleveland.
The groups plan to collect a minimum of 700,000 signatures, according to a release from the Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights and Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom.
Dr. Amy Burkett, an Akron-area OB/GYN with Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, said in an interview that organizers have already started training volunteers to collect signatures. “We’re going to start doing stuff as soon as we can – probably, you know, this week (or) maybe even this afternoon,” Burkett said.
The Republicans on the Ohio Ballot Board, including Secretary of State Frank LaRose and state Sen. Theresa Gavarone of the Toledo area, emphasized that Monday’s vote wasn’t about the merits of the abortion proposal but about the narrow question of whether the proposal should be broken up into separate ballot questions or not.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, took a similar position recently when he certified a petition summary for the proposed amendment, saying at the time that he was bound by law and duty to certify it as long as it met legal requirements.
Gavarone said Monday that while she was “horrified at the thought of this amendment” putting “the right to kill babies” in the state constitution, she voted yes. “The issue before us is procedural-only, whether this is one question or more,” she said.