On the anniversary of Constitutional Power Issue 1, Ohio leader and advocates say the fight continues • Ohio Capital Journal

Ohio Minority Leader Allison Russo stuck to a message that Democrats and others have raised Since the anniversary of the Dobbs decisionthe 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that put abortion rights in the hands of the states, undoing nationwide legalization that had been in place since the 1970s.

“It’s clear that abortion rights will be back on the ballot in 2024,” Russo said at a news conference Thursday hosted by U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown’s campaign.

Russo was joined by Cleveland obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Maria Phillis, Reproductive Freedom For All campaigns and advocacy director Elizabeth Schoetz, and Ohio resident Kaitlin Rizk, who spoke about the abortion she had five years ago.

“I was very lucky to have the freedom to make that decision for myself,” Rizk said.

After Dobbs’ decision became known and Ohio’s attorney general rushed to untangle the six-week abortion ban and put it back into effect, doctors like Phillis, who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, said they were “left scrambling, trying to figure out what we could and couldn’t offer our patients.”

She said doctors were referring patients to out-of-state facilities, only to have the patients return when the state they went to had similar bans on care.

“We saw the physicians we were trying to recruit reconsider their training and practice in our state, and we already had swathes of maternity care deserts in our state,” Phillis said.

Now that reproductive rights, including abortion, are part of the Ohio Constitution, Phillis said she has interviewed doctors who “are drawn to the state” because of the rights entrenched in the law.

The women spoke on the anniversary of the first Issue 1, the referendum initiative introduced last year by legislative and electoral leaders. championed by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRosewhich would have raised the threshold needed to pass a ballot initiative like Proposition 1 that followed, the constitutional amendment to enshrine reproductive rights in the Ohio Constitution.

“We faced lies, deceit and an avalanche of money spent against us, and yet it didn’t move Ohioans,” Russo said.

Proposition 1 was overwhelmingly rejected by 57% of voters in the special election, the same percentage that would approve the November 2023 constitutional amendment on reproductive rights.

Opponents of the August initiative, like Russo, urged a no vote because it would make measures like the reproductive rights amendment unnecessarily harder to pass.

And, they said, it was planned that way on purpose, a claim LaRose verified when he said the August measure was “100% aimed at keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution” at a Lincoln Day dinner in May 2023.

But the passage of the reproductive rights amendment doesn’t mean the fight is over in Ohio or elsewhere, according to the women who spoke Thursday.

Russo and the other speakers have their sights set on the U.S. Senate race pitting Brown against Bernie Moreno in November, with the Democratic front-runner’s support predictably behind incumbent Brown, and those who support abortion rights urging voters to head to the polls in November.

“The stakes of this November election could not be higher,” Phillis said.