Approval to recognize abortion as a constitutional right in the state of Ohio A brake on progress against rights in the United States

Voters of Ohio Approved The Republican-controlled state’s constitution enshrines abortion rightsA landslide victory for President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party a year before the presidential election, according to US press projections.

With the decision of voters in Ohio, the state has become the seventh state to reject restrictions on abortion by ballot, as the Supreme Court overturned the historic Roe v. Overturned the Wade ruling, which effectively ended voluntary termination of pregnancy at the federal level. June 2022.

signal that The importance of this issue For the 2024 campaign, In the neighboring conservative state of Kentucky, Democratic governor Andy Beshear won re-election after making abortion rights one of his battlehorses.According to the same media.

In Ohio, a “yes” vote to attach an amendment to the state constitution affirming the right to “make and exercise one’s own reproductive decisions” received 55% of the vote, according to a newspaper estimate. The New York Times.

The news was greeted with an outpouring of joy at a pro-abortion rights coalition rally in Columbus, the capital of this Republican-controlled Midwestern state. “I don’t have words to express what I feel,” Summer McClain, 27, who has fought tirelessly in recent months, told AFP.

The anti-abortion coalition Protect Women Ohio said on behalf of its members that it was “heartbroken” by the decisions.

To the surprise of Republicans last year, Ohio joins a group of progressive and conservative states that voted in favor of abortion rights last year.

The measure protects any person or organization that helps a patient obtain reproductive medical treatment and stipulates that the state cannot “directly or indirectly impose, penalize or prohibit abortion.”

“Trumpists have lost”

Polling is closely followed across the country because it allows us to take the temperature among voters a year before a presidential election.

President Biden, a candidate for re-election but faring poorly in the polls compared to his predecessor Donald Trump, was quick to celebrate the results and took the opportunity to emphasize donations to his campaign. “Across the country tonight, Democrats have won, Trumpists have lost. Voters choose. No polls. Now, let’s all win next year together,” he wrote on the X Network.

In the summer of 2022, since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the federal right to terminate a pregnancy, left the issue of abortion rights to the states.

Many have restricted or banned it, while others have strengthened it.

The issue has strongly mobilized Americans. Even some who don’t identify as progressives view the bans enacted by some states as too extreme.

In Ohio, a right-wing effort to complicate adoption of the system and referendums (with abortion in its sights) failed in August.

Last summer, defenders of abortion rights managed to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures to vote on a constitutional amendment that would include that right.

Both sides campaigned hard in this state with millions of dollars in spending and ubiquitous television ads.

heartbeat

After the Supreme Court judgment, Ohio passed a law to prevent abortions — even in cases of rape or sex — once a heartbeat is detected in the womb, at six weeks into pregnancy, when many still don’t know they’re pregnant.

The law has been temporarily suspended amid a legal battle. Currently, abortion is legal in that state up to 22 weeks.

Shortly after the law took effect, a 10-year-old girl who became pregnant after being raped had to travel to neighboring Indiana for an abortion, sparking nationwide protests.

The amendment approved on Tuesday would give women the “right to make and exercise their own decisions” about abortion, contraception, fertility treatments and self-abortion care.

In June 2022, the Supreme Court handed down the historic Roe vs. Since overturning the Wade decision, which protected women’s abortion rights at the federal level, nearly half of the nation’s states have enacted laws restricting or outright banning abortion. Abortion.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, twenty-one states ban abortions after 18 weeks, and some restrict them even earlier, forcing thousands of women to travel to other states to obtain abortions and particularly affecting underprivileged women. Income, Immigrants, and African-Americans.

Along with the reproductive health measure, Ohioans also voted to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, becoming the 24th state to decriminalize the substance.