In Ohio, civic bridges over cultural divides

Since the U.S. Supreme Court rescinded constitutional protection of abortion a year ago, every state ballot measure affirming the right of women to make their own reproductive decisions has passed. Those states now include Ohio. Voters there rejected a proposal last night intended to make it harder to enshrine social issues like abortion in the state’s constitution.

One consequence of the court’s decision to return the question of abortion rights to “the people and their elected representatives” is now becoming more apparent. The voting trend on ballot initiatives, consistent across red and blue states, shows that one of the most polarizing cultural issues in American society is now uniting Americans in defense of democracy.

“Ohio is stronger when we can all lend our voices and we all have an equal chance to participate in the work of our state’s democracy,” said former Republican Gov. John Kasich, one member of a bipartisan group of past Ohio governors and attorneys general who opposed the ballot measure.

Kansas was the first to signal this trend. Two months after the court’s reversal, which came in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, voters rejected a proposal that would have denied a right to abortion in the state’s constitution. Tens of thousands of Republicans joined in voting no. Since then, other states such as Kentucky and Michigan have done the same.

By linking reproductive rights with democratic concerns, citizen-led ballot initiatives are creating openings for empathy and humility, acknowledging the inherent dignity and rights of all individuals. In Kansas, for example, “the people that we talked to really didn’t see abortion as a partisan or political issue,” Ashley All, communications director for Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, told Kansas Reflector after the state’s abortion vote. “They saw it as incredibly complex and deeply personal, and so we intentionally approached it in a nonpartisan way.”

Proponents of the Ohio proposal admitted their motives were tactical. The measure would have raised the threshold for changing the state constitution from 50% plus one vote to 60%. Had it passed, it would have made it harder to approve a proposed amendment upholding a state right to abortion in a referendum this November.

The state’s Republican election officials admitted hoping that an August ballot would draw low voter turnout. They were wrong. Nearly 650,000 cast early ballots, more than in recent primary elections. In the end, 57% of voters rejected the proposal. A July USA Today Network/Suffolk University poll found that 41% of Republicans opposed the measure.

The debate over reproductive rights is far from settled, of course. Since Dobbs, more than a dozen states have imposed severe restrictions on abortion. In Ohio, Republican lawmakers promise new legislation to curb the procedure. But the arc of the issue bends in a different direction. At least 10 states are poised to put citizen-backed measures protecting abortion rights on their ballots in 2024.

“The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations, upon it,” wrote the late Justice Antonin Scalia about a 1992 court decision upholding constitutional protection of abortion, “are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.”

He was partly right. Placed in the care of ordinary citizens, the divides over reproductive rights are finding new bridges. That progress involves listening even more than persuading.