The 2023 Ohio reproductive rights initiative, officially titled "The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety", and listed on the ballot as Issue 1, is a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment that will appear on the ballot on November 7, 2023. If a for vote passes, the initiative would codify reproductive rights in the Ohio Constitution, including contraception, fertility treatment, whether to continue one's own pregnancy, and miscarriage care. It would restore Roe v. Wade-era access in Ohio, protecting "the right to abortion up to the point of fetal viability" while permitting restrictions after.
In 2019, the Ohio legislature passed a near-total ban on abortion, without exceptions for the health of the mother, rape, incest, or minors. This current statute became briefly active after Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. During the time it was in place, multiple children fled the state for abortions after being raped. One of these cases involved a ten-year-old girl from Columbus, Ohio who traveled to Indiana to get the procedure, generating nationwide attention and becoming a central issue in the campaign. A state court put the ban on hold while a challenge alleging it violates the Ohio Constitution is heard. In late August 2023, former President Donald Trump condemned six-week abortion bans, including Ohio's, as going "too far" and a "terrible thing and terrible mistake". The referendum is widely seen as determining whether Ohio's statute will remain in place; several members of the "against" campaign called for bans on forms of birth control that prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg and in vitro fertilization if the referendum fails.
The "yes" campaign has drawn support from Ohio medical organizations, doctors, economists, trade unions, editorial boards, reproductive rights groups, and several religious organizations. They have argued that a "yes" vote would further what they see as limited government, protect bodily autonomy and religious liberty, while preventing interference with patient-physician privacy. It has run as an ideological big-tent, with "the main force behind the ballot initiative" being physicians. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecology, alongside other professional associations of doctors, has campaigned for Issue 1.
The "no" campaign has mainly drawn support from fundamentalist Protestants. In August 2023, the campaign suffered controversy after Ohio Right To Life's communications director Lizzie Marbach, an evangelical and self-described Christian nationalist, called for restrictions or bans on birth control, statements that the Veneration of Mary in Catholicism is "idolatry", and implied that non-Christians would go to hell. Marbach also controversially described the "against" campaign as a way to enact fundamentalist Protestant supremacy in law. Former Vice President Mike Pence is expected to campaign against the measure.
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Be it Resolved by the People of the State of Ohio that Article I of the Ohio Constitution is amended to add the following Section:
Article I, Section 22. The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety
A. 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
B. The State shall not, directly or indirectly, burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against either:
An individual’s voluntary exercise of this right or
A person or entity that assists an individual exercising this right
unless the State demonstrates that it is using the least restrictive means to advance the individual’s health in accordance with widely accepted and evidence-based standards of care.
However, abortion may be prohibited after fetal viability. But in no case may such an abortion be prohibited if in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient’s treating physician it is necessary to protect the pregnant patient’s life or health.
C. As used in this Section:
“Fetal viability” means “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. This is determined on a case-by-case basis.” “State” includes any governmental entity and any political subdivision.
D. This Section is self-executing.