As Right Wing Watch reported last week, anti-choice Republican politicians in Ohio have put a democracy-limiting initiative on the ballot in August with the goal of stopping Ohio voters from passing a constitutional amendment protecting legal access to abortion.
In a desperate attempt to thwart the will of Ohio voters, who support access to legal abortion by a wide margin, anti-choice activists are trying to change the state constitution before voters can pass a constitutional amendment protecting legal access to abortion that will appear on the ballot later this year.
For over 100 years, the Ohio constitution has required a simple majority to amendment the document and in the wake of the Supreme Court's 2022 decision striking down Roe v Wade, reproductive rights advocates in Ohio gathered enough signatures to place an amendment protecting "the right to make reproductive health care decisions" on the ballot in November.
Fearing that this effort will easily pass, Republican legislators are hypocritically attempting to derail the plan by holding a special election in August on State Issue 1 that would require a 60 percent supermajority vote to amend the state’s constitution.
It is no small irony that proponents of Issue 1 argue that the current process for amending the state constitution is too easy given that Issue 1 itself requires a simple "majority yes vote ... for the amendment to pass." Terrified that voters will protect reproductive rights by passing a constitutional amendment via majority vote, anti-choice activists are seeking to commandeer the process by making the constitution harder to amend by passing a constitutional amendment via majority vote.
Right-wing anti-choice activist Janet Porter, who is based in Ohio, made it clear during a recent appearance on "Save The Nation," a daily program hosted by Christian nationalist Jason Rapert, that her activism on behalf of passing Issue 1 is all about protecting the anti-choice legislation she has helped enact in the state.
"In 1989, I worked to pass the Woman's Right To Know law. That's informed consent; it had a 24 hour waiting period," Porter said. "Then we passed a fetal homicide law. We passed parental consent. We passed the heartbeat law. [We passed] the nation's first ban on partial-birth abortion."
"If we don't protect those laws with this vote by raising the bar, that means come November—if they spend enough blood money, they confuse enough voters—they can undo and wipe out every pro-life law that we have ever passed," Porter warned. "Everything that I've ever done in my life in this state, it will be gone like that."
"This is what we're talking about," she declared. "Protecting every law we've passed."
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