Legal counsel and representatives of both groups drafted the amendment language and summary and then collected thousands of signatures of Ohio voters in less than two days, saying they exceeded the 1,000 required by state law.
“Ohioans are perilously close to losing access to safe, legal, comprehensive reproductive medical care,” said Dr. Lauren Beene, executive director of Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights. “As we saw first-hand when Ohio’s abortion ban went into effect last year, withholding that care puts people’s lives and health at risk. This common sense amendment ensures that physicians will be able to provide the care our patients need and deserve free from government interference.”
The proposed amendment provides that “[e]very 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.”
The proposed amendment also says the state cannot, “directly or indirectly, burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against” either the individual exercising this right or the person the entity assisting the individual exercising this right. Exceptions to this include if the state demonstrates it is using the “least restrictive means” to advance the individual’s health.
The proposed amendment allows for abortion to be prohibited “after fetal viability” unless the pregnant patient’s treating physician determines an abortion to be necessary to protect the pregnant patient’s life or health. “Fetal viability” is also defined as “the point in a pregnancy when, in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient’s treating physician, the fetus has a significant likelihood of survival outside the uterus with reasonable measures.”
Ohio Right to Life responded to the filing from Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights and Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom, calling the language of the proposed amendment “vague.”
“The language of this ballot initiative is extremely vague, making it even more dangerous than we originally believed it would be,” said Elizabeth Marbach, Ohio Right to Life’s Director of Communications. “Make no mistake, the abortion lobby is attempting to impose on Ohioans late-term abortion, paid for by taxpayers. They believe that they can rewrite our state constitution to eliminate all protections for the unborn, including abortions after the point at which babies feel pain—endangering the health and wellbeing of both women and children.”
Dr. Marcela Azevedo, president of Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, said fetal viability was “not a black and white number” and meant to be determined on a case-by-case basis under this proposed amendment.
Groups promoting this proposed amendment will need to secure over 400,000 signatures to have the initiative placed on the November ballot, which Beene estimated will cost between $2 million to $6 million to do. The campaign promoting the initiative to voters is expected to cost $20 million and 30 million, and Beene said they expect funding to come from both inside and outside Ohio.
“It’s a significant amount of money,” Beene said. “I think it’s going to be a combination of everybody.” The first campaign filing the group had included 600 donors with 90% of them coming from within Ohio.
By getting this on the November ballot, Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights and Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom expect they will not be impacted by the super majority bill, also called the Ohio Constitution Protection Amendment (House Joint Resolution 1), which would raise the threshold for citizen-led constitutional amendments to 60% approval from voters.
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