Abortion rights are on a winning streak at the ballot box. Ohio could test that.

Abortion rights have won on the ballot in red states before, but here's how Ohio's Issue 1 measure is different.

Grace Panetta
October 10, 2023

COLUMBUS, Ohio — On a cloudy recent Friday morning, thousands of protestors descended on the Ohio statehouse for the March for Life, many holding signs with sayings like, “Ohio is Pro-Life” and “Vote No on Issue 1.” That measure, Issue 1, would guarantee a constitutional right to an abortion and other reproductive health care.

All eyes were on Ohio, said Jeanne Mancini, president of the national anti-abortion March for Life. They were at a “cultural crossroads, she said, and Ohioians would be judged on their vote on November 7.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2023/10/ohio-issue-1-abortion-ballot-measure-november/

Democrats in Ohio say they’ll need a new recipe for a second huge abortion rights win

Advocates were surprised by the results of a vote that could have made it harder to protect access to abortion — but they're not letting that make them overconfident.

Sept. 16, 2023
By Megan Lebowitz

BURTON, OHIO — Abortion rights activists shocked themselves and the Ohio political world when they resoundingly defeated an August proposal that would have made it more difficult to enshrine abortion protections in the state’s constitution.

The next test comes on Nov. 7, when voters will decide whether to adopt a constitutional amendment to preserve access to abortion in a state that has veered increasingly to the right since 2016.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/democrats-ohio-abortion-second-win-rcna103897

USA – You Cannot Hear These 13 Women’s Stories and Believe the Anti-Abortion Narrative

May 22, 2023
By Michelle Goldberg

It’s increasingly clear that it’s not safe to be pregnant in states with total abortion bans. Since the end of Roe v. Wade, there has been a barrage of gutting stories about women in prohibition states denied care for miscarriages or forced to continue nonviable pregnancies.

Though some in the anti-abortion movement publicly justify this sort of treatment, others have responded with a combination of denial, deflection and conspiracy theorizing. Some activists have blamed the pro-choice movement for spooking doctors into not intervening when pregnancies go horribly wrong. “Abortion advocates are spreading the dangerous lie that lifesaving care is not or may not be permitted in these states, leading to provider confusion and poor outcomes for women,” said a report by the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/opinion/abortion-law-texas-lawsuit.html

Her miscarriage left her bleeding profusely. An Ohio ER sent her home to wait

November 15, 2022
Selena Simmons-Duffin
8-Minute Listen with Transcript

Christina Zielke and her husband were excited when she got pregnant in July. It was her first pregnancy at age 33 – everything was new. But during the ultrasound at her initial prenatal appointment in Washington D.C., there was no heartbeat. Bloodwork taken a few days apart showed her pregnancy hormone levels were dropping.

A doctor from her Ob-Gyn's office called her to confirm that the pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage. They laid out her options: Take medication to make the pregnancy tissue come out faster, have a dilation and curettage or D&C procedure to remove the pregnancy tissue from her uterus, or wait for it to come out on its own.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/15/1135882310/miscarriage-hemorrhage-abortion-law-ohio

USA – How anti-abortion advocates are pushing local bans, city by small city

Across Ohio, tactics pioneered in Texas are being deployed in disruptive city council meetings

Audra Jane Heidrichs
Tue 23 Nov 2021

In May of this year, six city council members in Lebanon, Ohio, a city located just north of Cincinnati, voted on an ordinance that would effectively outlaw abortion for the 21,000 people that call it home.

As in countless council meetings in small cities across the country where mask mandates, teaching about race in schools and access to reproductive healthcare have become politically charged in America’s current climate, the night unfolded in a series of near-Shakespearean acts.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/23/anti-abortion-local-bans-ohio

Texas created a blueprint for abortion restrictions. Republican-controlled states may follow suit.

How other states may follow Texas’s restrictive abortion law

By Meryl Kornfield, Caroline Anders and Audra Heinrichs - Washington
Post
September 3, 2021

Republican officials in more than a half-dozen states across the country moved
this week to replicate Texas’s restrictive abortion ban after the Supreme Court
declined to step in and stop the law from taking effect.

GOP officials in at least seven states, including Arkansas, Florida, South
Carolina and South Dakota, have suggested they may review or amend their
states’ laws to mirror Texas’s legislation, which effectively bans abortions
after six weeks. Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Ohio and more are expected to
follow, after a year abortion activists have deemed “the worst legislative year
ever for U.S. abortion rights.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/09/03/texas-abortion-ban-states/

USA – At least 10 states divert federal welfare funding to anti-abortion clinics

Millions in aid intended to go to the neediest families is being used to finance clinics trying to dissuade women from having abortions

Jessica Glenza
Fri 4 Jun 2021

At least 10 US states have siphoned millions of dollars from federal block grants, meant to provide aid to their neediest families, to pay for the operations of ideological anti-abortion clinics.

These overwhelmingly Republican-led states used money from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (Tanf), better known as welfare or direct cash aid, to fund the activities of anti-abortion clinics associated with the evangelical right. The clinics work to dissuade women from obtaining abortions.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/04/states-divert-federal-welfare-funding-anti-abortion-clinics

The looming battle over abortion in the US

By Pratiksha Ghildial, BBC News, Ohio
May 27, 2021

Pro-choice activists say that state lawmakers across the country are trying to restrict abortion at a pace not seen in decades. So what will this mean for a decades-long fight over the issue in America?

On a Friday night, Julie gets ready to go out with her partner while her two boys curl up on the sofa to watch a Disney movie with their babysitter.
It is a typical happy family scene, one that Julie probably never envisaged when, aged just 19, she was raped and took the decision to have an abortion.

PlannContinued: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57208053

USA – Access to medication abortions via telehealth varies by state and here’s why

By: Chloe Nordquist
Apr 23, 2021

Telehealth is becoming a bigger part of our lives. Those visits are also being used for abortions, but the rules vary from state to state, and even federally.

“Back in March of last year in 2020, at the
height of the pandemic, I found out I was pregnant in the state of Ohio,”
Larada Lee explained.

Continued: https://www.newschannel5.com/news/national/access-to-medication-abortions-via-telehealth-varies-by-state-and-heres-why

Ohio bill orders doctors to ‘reimplant ectopic pregnancy’ or face ‘abortion murder’ charges

Ohio bill orders doctors to ‘reimplant ectopic pregnancy’ or face 'abortion murder' charges
Ohio introduces one of the most extreme bills to date for a procedure that does not exist in medical science

Jessica Glenza
Fri 29 Nov 2019

A bill to ban abortion introduced in the Ohio state legislature requires doctors to “reimplant an ectopic pregnancy” into a woman’s uterus – a procedure that does not exist in medical science – or face charges of “abortion murder”.

This is the second time practising obstetricians and gynecologists have tried to tell the Ohio legislators that the idea is currently medically impossible.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/29/ohio-extreme-abortion-bill-reimplant-ectopic-pregnancy