Pro-abortion groups in Ohio submitted signatures on Wednesday to advance a proposed ballot amendment that would effectively outlaw any restrictions on abortion and other procedures that involve reproduction, including gender-transition surgeries, and would remove parental-consent and notification requirements for minors who receive the procedures.
The groups leading the effort, Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights and Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, were given until Wednesday to collect 413,000 valid signatures — which amounts to 10 percent of the total votes cast in the last governor’s race — across at least half of the state’s 88 counties.
The groups submitted more than 710,000 signatures to the state Capitol and the office of Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Wednesday, in an effort to account for any signatures that may be deemed invalid.
Ohio officials will now begin the process of validating the signatures. Signatures can be invalidated if they are duplicates, if the person wasn’t registered to vote at the address submitted, or if the person’s handwriting was illegible. LaRose must determine whether the effort has enough valid signatures to make the November ballot by July 25.
The amendment includes vague language about prohibiting any law that “directly or indirectly” would “burden” or “interfere” with “reproductive decisions.” Opponents of the measure argue it would also outlaw nearly any restrictions on abortion or other reproduction-related procedures, removing requirements for parental-consent and parental notification, as well as protections for people who undergo the procedures, including requirements that a qualified physician perform them.
Opponents warn the overly-broad use of the phrase “reproductive decisions” would mean the measure would very likely extend to gender-transition treatment. The proposal does not distinguish between minors and adults, either.
The amendment was written by the ACLU, which has spent years fighting to remove parental involvement from abortion and gender-transition procedures. The group says on its website that parental consent and notification laws restrict “teenagers’ access to abortion.” In 2016, the ACLU sided with Planned Parenthood in an Alaska lawsuit that aimed to overturn parental notification laws in the state. One year later, the ACLU argued that parental consent laws in Indiana created an “unconstitutional undue burden.” The group is currently campaigning for a constitutional amendment in Oregon that would allow children to get an abortion without parental knowledge.
ACLU of Ohio attorney Jessie Hill was straightforward with reporters about the Ohio proposal’s intent, saying it would “mean that laws that conflict with it cannot be enforced, should not be enforced,” including existing laws on parental consent.
Protect Women Ohio has been perhaps the most vocal opponent of the would-be ballot measure. The group has undertaken a multimillion-dollar campaign to defeat the proposed amendment.
“The ACLU’s extreme anti-parent amendment is so unpopular that they couldn’t even rely on grassroots support to collect signatures,” Protect Women Ohio press secretary Amy Natoce said in a statement. “The ACLU paid out-of-state signature collectors to lie to Ohioans about their dangerous amendment that will strip parents of their rights, permit minors to undergo sex change operations without their parents’ knowledge or consent, and allow painful abortion on demand through all nine months. The ACLU’s attempts to hijack Ohio’s constitution to further its own radical agenda would be pathetic if it wasn’t so dangerous.”
Natoce’s comments reference reports that Planned Parenthood was allegedly paying out-of-state workers to gather signatures in support of the amendment.
A paid signature collector from Michigan told state Representative Gary Click that the amendment would end Ohio’s parental notification and consent requirements and allow minors to have abortions without their parents’ knowledge.
Another signature collector admitted to collecting signatures from unregistered voters just to “get paid.”
An ad aired by Protect Women Ohio features an Ohio mom who says, “As a parent, I could be cut out of these decisions that my child is making and someone who is coercing them or is talking them into something could take my teenage daughter, she could get an abortion or get a procedure done and I don’t even know about it. That’s what’s scary.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement that the amendment is “dangerous for the women and children of Ohio.”
“It removes parents from some of their minor children’s most important health decisions such as parental notification before an abortion,” she added. “It would eliminate basic health and safety standards for women. And it would permit late term abortion after the baby can feel pain and even right up until birth.”
Lindsay Rerko, a Columbus-based family medicine practitioner, said in a statement that the “extreme amendment is not good for any of my patients.”
“Eliminating parental involvement in their minor children’s health decisions while allowing abortion up to birth when babies can feel pain will lead to worse health outcomes for everyone involved. The amendment is anti-women and anti-parent,” Rerko said.
However, if the pro-abortion groups succeed in getting the amendment on the ballot in November, the results of an August special election may impose another hurdle. The special election will ask voters to decide whether to raise the threshold of voter support required to pass constitutional amendments to 60 percent.
That change could be enough to thwart the group’s efforts: 59 percent of Ohioans said last year they would amend the state constitution to protect abortion access, according to a Baldwin Wallace University poll.