On the ballot this Election Day in Ohio is Issue 1, a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution that would enshrine abortion as a fundamental right. Yesterday, Brittany Bernstein provided a useful rundown. Today, John McCormack highlights popular governor Mike DeWine’s closing message against the amendment. “It would enshrine in our Constitution the right to have an abortion up until birth, any time during the pregnancy,” DeWine said. “Second thing it would do is threaten a law we had on the books for many years requiring parental consent if we’re dealing with a minor.”

As John notes, claims that the amendment, if passed, would still permit meaningful restrictions on abortion after viability are misleading: A gigantic exception for “health” would keep abortion legal through all nine months of pregnancy. As I wrote last month, “‘Health’ has long been used in court cases not only in its literal sense but preceded by any number of adjectives that turn it into a figure of speech — financial, social, economic, familial, or psychological health.” That means late-term abortions of the sort the pro-abortion side doesn’t like to talk about would be permitted.

This is hardly the only likely outcome to result from Issue 1’s passage. The vague language is designed as a battering ram to be used against all of the state’s existing regulations of abortion, including the currently tied-up-in-the-courts heartbeat bill and the 24-hour waiting period, as well as parental-notification and -consent laws, as Governor DeWine noted. Michael New noted last week that courts have struck down these laws in other states “where state constitutions offer far less protection to legal abortion than what Issue 1 is proposing.” A leading pro-abortion activist, moreover, has targeted these laws.

But it would not stop there. Rachel Citak, president of Cincinnati Right to Life, said that virtually anything that regulates abortion “can be regarded as something that discriminates, that penalizes, burdens, or prohibits” the procedure and therefore would be threatened by Issue 1’s passage. A likely endpoint, Cleveland Right to Life executive director Kate Makra said, is that “the salon at which a woman gets her nails done would be more regulated.”

Issue 1 passage would also pave the way for taxpayer-funded abortion. The language of the amendment is, again, vague enough, in this case about the meaning of “burden,” that one’s inability to pay for an abortion could qualify. It would then become a public responsibility to overcome this burden, as happened in Alaska after abortion became a fundamental right there. The legal precedent for this would become salient in the event of Issue 1’s passage in Ohio. Carrie Campbell Severino and Frank Scaturro explain why here.

Other distressing outcomes become possible in the event of Issue 1’s passage as well. “Buffer zones” around abortion clinics that would prevent prayer groups from congregating near them. An end to the state’s protections for medical workers with religious objections to performing an abortion. The destruction of parental-notification and -consent laws not just for minors seeking abortions but also minors seeking so-called gender-affirming care, as the amendment includes language about “reproductive decisions.” Impunity for a rapist who coerces an abortion. It would amount to an abortion regime out of step not just with Ohio, but even more extreme than that of Roe v. Wade.

So ignore the well-funded (with out-of-state money) pro-abortion “yes” side on Issue 1. It has resorted to deceptions about miscarriage care (unaffected by Ohio’s current regulations), the alleged consistency of the amendment with Catholic teaching (the Catholic Church strongly opposes the amendment), and more to achieve its desired outcome. Don’t rely only on the amendment’s vague language, which is intended as a prelude to further action. As the editors of National Review stated, “the proposed amendment is extreme in ways the average voter would not know simply from reading the text.” Consult instead the truths offered by the pro-life side, which rightly opposes Issue 1 because it’s too extreme for Ohio. And vote no.