The NPR Politics Podcast - Abortion Is On Ohio Ballots — What You Need To Know

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

Voters will decide whether to codify reproductive rights in the state's constitution this Election Day, continuing a trend of state referenda on abortion access after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. Ohio's current abortion ban, prohibiting the procedure after six weeks, is currently on hold due to a legal injunction. This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political correspondent Sarah McCammon, and Ohio Statehouse News Bureau political reporter Jo Ingles.The podcast is edited by Casey Morell. It is produced by Jeongyoon Han. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org. Hey, this is Jordan in Evansville, Indiana, where I work as an OFAC sanctions compliance analyst for a mid-sized bank, but today I just finished the first draft of my first fantasy novel. Congratulations. This podcast was recorded at 1 12 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Monday, November 6th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I'll still be reviewing Wires to Russia and thinking about wizards and dragons. All right, here's the show.

That is so fun. Congratulations. It takes a lot of work to finish a whole manuscript. And I have no idea what kind of compliance he's doing, but he's probably keeping us safe. So thank you for that, too. Keeping something in line. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the presidential campaign. And today we are heading to Ohio, virtually at least. Joe Ingalls is on the line with us. Hey, Joe. Hello. Hello, hello. Joe covers politics for the Ohio Statehouse News Bureau, and we are so glad to have you here with us because tomorrow is Election Day. And in Ohio, abortion is very much on the ballot. So, Jo, let's start with this. Tell us about Issue 1.

What is it and what would it do? Well, Issue 1 is a constitutional amendment. And if it's passed, it would enshrine abortion and reproductive rights into Ohio's Constitution. It would also make unconstitutional an abortion law that is on the books but not actually being enforced right now because of court action. That law basically prohibits any abortions at about six weeks when fetal cardiac activity can be detected. And like I said, it's on the books, but it's not being enforced right now because the Ohio Supreme Court is considering it. If issue one fails, that law could go back into place. If issue one passes, that law would not be constitutional anymore. And I want to get into how this came

to be on the ballot. And this is sort of an off year. So why now? Well, you know, there have been decades of abortion restrictions and limitations that have been passed by the General Assembly and have been put in place by Republican governors, mostly Democrats. They're upset because, you know, they don't have any numbers in the legislature to be able to affect this. So now this constitutional amendment is a chance for voters to weigh in. And voters in Ohio are much more moderate in a lot of ways than the Ohio legislature. Yeah, Sarah, I guess we should just explain that a lot of these laws that were passed were pretty academic until the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in with the Dobbs decision and pretty much opened the floodgates and allowed states all over the country to put strict abortion restrictions into place. Right. I mean, this was all brought to a head by the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision last year, June of 2022, of course,

which, as you say, allowed for states like Ohio to pass abortion restrictions. The law that Joe was just talking about that is on hold right now did take effect for more than two months in Ohio after the U.S. Supreme Court released that decision. And we saw, of course, states all over the country implement abortion restrictions, abortion bans. And so now we're seeing this issue, again, come to a head in a lot of states. We saw that last year, and we're seeing it again now. And as we can talk about, we may in the future see voters looking for the opportunity or being given the opportunity to weigh in directly at the ballot box, as we'll have in Ohio this week. Jo, I just want to go over something technical with you, because a few months ago, we were also

talking about Issue 1, and it was a different Issue 1 in Ohio. So can Republicans put a thing on the August ballot. It was a proposed constitutional amendment. And if it had passed, it would require any future constitutional amendment, including this one in November, to get a 60 percent threshold in order to pass. Now, that was because the polling continually shows that about 56, 57, 58 percent, somewhere in there, percent of Ohioans actually favor some abortion rights. You know, one thing that I thought was interesting when I was in Ohio a few weeks ago reporting on this issue was there's some concern that all of this is creating confusion in voters' minds because, as one voter put it to me, a voter who supports abortion rights, she said, I was asked to vote no in August and vote yes now. And, you know, she said, I'm just confused. And

this was a college student who said she's a new voter trying to kind of figure this all out. Some of the advocates I talked to there in Ohio said, you know, they're concerned that voters might be confused about what this all means. So, Sarah, you alluded to this, but we have seen now abortion on the ballot in several places since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade. Kansas, Kentucky, these are places that are largely Republican states and ultimately voted to support abortion rights. Ohio is another, at this point, very Republican state. But this that in every case, in all six states last year where abortion-related questions were on the ballot in one form or another, voters signaled support for abortion rights. Now, some of those states that you mentioned, Kansas and Kentucky, for example, and without getting overly technical, voters were basically asked whether or not to put something in their state constitutions that would have made it

easier to restrict abortion in the future. So they were pushing back against essentially efforts to restrict abortion. In this case, in Ohio, voters are being asked to pass a proactive measure that would actually protect abortion rights. So that's a little bit different. I think the other big thing that's different is we're more than a year now post the Dobbs decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. And so the question in a lot of people's minds is how long will this issue continue to have salience? And how much will voters continue to be energized by the abortion issue the way they appeared to be a year ago? We are going to take a quick break and we'll have more in a moment.

And we're back. And Joe, Ohio's governor, Mike DeWine, he's a Republican, has suggested that perhaps there could be concessions made or changes made to the state's abortion ban that's currently in place if issue one does not pass. This strikes me as sort of bargaining with the voters in a way. But is that a possible thing that the legislature would scale back the six-week ban? Well, issue one, if you look at it, it would get rid of this abortion law that's on the books. And again, that law only has one exception, and that's for the life of the mother. And the reason it's put on hold is the Hamilton County Court, a lot of doctors went to that court and said, wait a minute, it's got an exception for the life of the mother. But the way that this is being interpreted by doctors, it was causing

problems the way it was written. And the court said, yeah, you're right. It's vague. So this body is now considering this. DeWine is looking at all of the polling and hearing from a lot of Ohioans who were upset about that national story. I'm sure you probably heard it. There was a 10-year-old rape victim here in Columbus, and she had to go to Indiana when the law was in effect to get an abortion. That story made all kinds of news. A lot of people said, wait, wait, wait, there's no exception in this abortion law for rape and incest. We really want that. So DeWine is hearing that when he's out on the stump talking about this. And he said, you know what, if you decline this and throw it back, then we will come

back and look at putting exceptions for rape and incest into the law. So is the legislature on board with that? Not really. We're not hearing much from the legislature at all. In fact, the legislature actually has an all out ban that they've been looking at doing. We see a lot of people in the legislature, Republicans, who are talking about going even further. And a lot of the people who don't like law say that's already getting women before they even know they're pregnant in some cases. So it's a really big conundrum here. So DeWine in recent weeks has been talking about, you know, trying to make the law more acceptable to more Ohioans. The vast majority of Ohioans believe there should be an

exception for rape and incest. So what I have said is that if we are able to defeat this constitutional amendment, we need to go back and try to come up with something that the majority of Ohioans can, in fact, agree on. And Governor DeWine is trying to get in the middle of it to try to convince people to not pass this amendment, which he is very much against. But a lot of people see the amendment as the only way to keep politicians out of what they consider to be a personal decision. And Sarah, you reported extensively on these various ballot measures and points along the way where abortion was one way or another on the ballot. And you've also been talking to voters. So is there a clear signal?

Well, just for I think, a sense of where some especially middle of the road voters are on this, you know, I talked to Peggy Schmitz when I was in Ohio recently, she's a retired lawyer. She said she voted Republican most of her life, although she's been voting for Democrats more recently, because of some concerns she has about the direction of the party, she has some mixed feelings about abortion. I recently became a grandmother for the second time, and just being around my now four-month-old grandchild, you know, just the miracle of life. And can't look at that little face and think, oh my goodness, what if you had never had the opportunity to come into this world?

But she told me she heard about that 10-year-old girl and stories like that really bother her. So I want to broaden this out even further, because although Ohio is the state where the issue is literally on the ballot, you know, in Virginia, where Sarah, you and I live, many of these campaign ads are talking about abortion. The governor of the state early on in the campaign said that if he could get a Republican legislature, they would pass a 15 week abortion ban or limitation on abortion. Also, Kentucky. So like this is some significant data points in the next 24 to 48 hours. Right. You know, Virginia and Kentucky have these off-year elections. And as you said, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia

has said he would support a 15-week ban on most abortions. Control of the legislature is split right now. So if Republicans were able to take over, that could pave the way for a 15-week ban. Right now in Virginia, abortion is legal up to 26 weeks and six days. 15 weeks is quite a bit earlier. And what happens between those two stages of pregnancy is usually ultrasounds and tests that often can reveal severe fetal abnormalities. And so while a very small percentage of abortions happen in the late second or third trimester, that issue of later abortion has become a political lightning rod in recent years. And that's something that Youngkin has been saying he

would oppose by promoting an abortion ban after 15 weeks. In Kentucky, it's been an issue in the governor's race. You have a Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, running against a Republican attorney general, Daniel Cameron. Cameron has been an opponent of abortion rights. Beshear has for a long time been a supporter of abortion rights. So it's coming up in that race. Another state to watch is Pennsylvania, where Democrats are in control of the governor's office. But there's some concern that long term, if that were to change, that state might be ripe for abortion restrictions. So there, Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights groups have really been putting a lot of focus on a state Supreme Court race that they say could be pivotal.

All right. Well, we will be watching all of that. And we'll be back in your feeds with some results later this week. Joe Ingalls, politics reporter for the Ohio Statehouse News Bureau. Always wonderful to talk to you. Thanks for having me. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the presidential campaign. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.