Ohio voters reject Republican proposal to weaken democracy and deny women reproductive freedom

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Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.

Republicans waging war on democracy and on reproductive freedom lost an important battle Tuesday when Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure that would have made it harder to amend the state constitution.

The big winners in the special election were all people who believe in the democratic principle of majority rule, along with Ohio women who want and deserve the freedom to make their own personal reproductive decisions.

The Republican ballot question was designed to make it harder for a state constitutional amendment guaranteeing reproductive rights, including abortion, to be approved when it will be on the statewide ballot in November. 

The amendment to be voted on in November states that “every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion.”

Reproductive rights are important for all women but hold special importance for Black women, who must struggle against systemic racism as well as the sexism all women face, and who are disproportionately low-income.

According to a 2020 federal survey of abortions in 29 states and the District of Columbia, Black women (who make up nearly 14% of the female population) had 39% of abortions. White women had 33%, Hispanic women had 21%, and women of other races and ethnicities had 7%.  

For the past 111 years, Ohio voters have been able to amend their state constitution with a simple majority vote. This is the essence of democracy — one person, one vote and the majority rules.

But Republicans, who control both the Ohio Legislature and the governorship, put a question on Tuesday’s ballot asking voters if they wanted to dramatically raise the threshold for approval of constitutional amendments from a simple majority in elections to a 60% supermajority.

Reproductive rights supporters collected enough signatures to put the amendment on the ballot after the Ohio Legislature and Republican Gov. Mike DeWine enacted a law banning abortions, without exceptions for rape and incest, once heart activity is detected in an embryo — typically six weeks after conception. Many women don’t even know they are pregnant at this early stage.

Ohio’s six-week abortion ban took effect in June 2022, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision that had extended reproductive rights nationwide.

However, the six-week abortion ban was overturned by a county judge in Ohio in September 2022 in response to a lawsuit. The Ohio Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case and will determine if the six-week abortion ban should go back into effect. But if the state Constitution is amended to guarantee reproductive rights, the six-week abortion ban would have to be thrown out as unconstitutional.

A USA Today poll published in July found that 58% of Ohio voters supported the reproductive rights constitutional amendment, while 32% opposed it, with the remaining 10% expressing no opinion. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4% points. This makes it very likely that the reproductive rights amendment will win a simple majority of the vote in November but questionable whether it will win the approval of at least 60% of voters.

While many Republican candidates and elected officials have embraced extreme anti-reproductive rights policies, voters around the country have supported reproductive rights in elections. Voters in all six states — California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont — where reproductive rights were on the ballot in 2022 voted in favor of protecting the right of women to an abortion.

However, none of the measures approved in the six states received over 60% of the vote. That means if those states had required the same supermajorities that were proposed in Ohio, reproductive rights would have been defeated in all six.

Every state but Delaware requires constitutional amendments to be approved by voters, but only three — New Hampshire, Florida and Colorado — require supermajorities of voters to approve amendments.

Vice President Kamala Harris has been among the most prominent leaders fighting for reproductive freedom, speaking about the issue around the country and calling out extremists for their dangerous and deeply unpopular efforts to take away a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her own body. Harris has called for national legislation protecting reproductive rights.

It’s sad that reproductive rights even have to come to a vote. The Supreme Court correctly ruled in the Roe case in 1973 that women have a constitutional right to control their reproduction. In the same way, court rulings and legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by presidents have recognized the rights of Black people, the LGBTQ community, people with disabilities and other marginalized groups.

It’s a safe bet that if white voters in the South had been asked before the civil rights era if they wanted to extend voting rights to Black Americans, end segregation in schools and businesses, and end discrimination in the workplace and elsewhere against Black folks, a majority of whites would have voted against these measures.

But some rights are so fundamental under the Constitution as amended that they should not need to be put to a vote. The right of women to the full range of reproductive health care is one of those rights, just as is the right of Black Americans to equality under the law.

We can’t undo the U.S. Supreme Court decision taking away women’s reproductive rights. So we are forced to fight the battle for female equality state by state. Fortunately, Ohio voters have made clear that they will not allow a minority of the electorate to weaken democracy and deprive women of their rights. 

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Donna Brazile is a veteran political strategist, Senior Advisor at Purple Strategies, New York Times bestselling author, Chair of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, and sought-after Emmy- and Peabody-award-winning media contributor to such outlets as ABC News, USA Today and TheGrio. She previously served as interim Chair of the Democratic National Committee and of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute. Donna was the first Black American to serve as the manager of a major-party presidential campaign, running the campaign of Vice President Al Gore in 2000. She serves as an adjunct professor in the Women and Gender Studies Department at Georgetown University and served as the King Endowed Chair in Public Policy at Howard University and as a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School. She has lectured at nearly 250 colleges and universities on diversity, equity and inclusion; women in leadership; and restoring civility in American politics.

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