Ohio voters add abortion rights to state constitution
Ohio voters add abortion rights to state constitution
In a major victory for abortion-rights advocates, Issue 1 enshrines the right to the procedure into the constitution
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Issue 1 covers so much more than just Abortion.
From the ballot:
- Establish in the Constitution of the State of Ohio an individual right to one’s own reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion.
- Create legal protections for any person or entity that assists a person with receiving reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion.
- Prohibit the State from directly or indirectly burdening, penalizing, or prohibiting abortion before an unborn child is determined to be viable, unless the State demonstrates that it is using the least restrictive means.
- Grant a pregnant woman’s treating physician the authority to determine, on a case-by-case basis, whether an unborn child is viable.
- Only allow the State to prohibit an abortion after an unborn child is determined by a pregnant woman’s treating physician to be viable and only if the physician does not consider the abortion necessary to protect the pregnant woman’s life or health.
- Always allow an unborn child to be aborted at any stage of pregnancy, regardless of viability if, in the treating physician’s determination, the abortion is necessary to protect the pregnant woman’s life or health.
This is a Freedom of Speech type amendment that centers around a person's reproductive rights. In that this amendment prohibits the Ohio State government from passing any law that restricts a person's reproductive rights except in special cases under strict scrutiny. So this goes way pass just abortion. Additionally, it grants doctors benefit of the doubt protections that would have strict scrutiny bars for the State to overcome, an incredibly high evidentiary bar for the State to overcome.
To just say this protects abortion is really missing the forest for the tree. Yeah, it protects abortion but additionally it protects everything related to reproductive rights (contraception, IVF, etc) and sets a massive barrier for the State to later meddle. This is a massive win for not those seeking abortion but for everyone who cheers reproductive protection and Government non-intervention in such matters.
This is a Freedom of Speech type amendment that centers around a person's reproductive rights
Watch the Supreme Court challenge reproductive rights as free speech.
It doesn't say reproductive rights are free speech, it says they are as important as free speech.
Alito: “Were we not fucking clear enough the first time?”
It would be hard for the current Supreme Court to actually rule the protection of abortion rights since they leave it up to the states. Interestingly, Alito basically wrote in a slant that was very pro-state's rights to ban abortions specifically but it also does heavily imply to the point of being just shy of explicitly allowing the opposite but it must be what they meant or it doesn't make actual sense.
It would take a lot of logical gymnastics to essentially unwind and rewrite an opinion otherwise that doesn't go against their own majority opinion. Saying that, they did perform some Olympian gymnastics on not only Roe v. Wade but also Planned Parenthood v. Casey or in some instances, outright just say that they were plainly wrong.
They would essentially have to all but support a fundamentalist christo-fascist government (probably under the guise of what is in the best interest of the people, even against their own will) over even the Constitution itself and specifically the 10th Amendment and have a serious risk of impeachment unless he would opine that that it is the Congress' business to supersede that (Article VI), because that would also run counter to his written opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (that it is the state's prerogative to regulate abortion and not the federal government's), unless it was specific that he meant it all narrowed specifically to the 14 Amendment and further would run counter to his own weaker federal government stance.
It would be far more likely for the SC to find that a state and its people have the right to regulate abortion as they see fit if they were even to decide to hear such a case.
TLDR; it'd be extremely risky and difficult to essentially give the state's the right to regulate abortion but take away unless those laws are only to ban them.
Thanks for the breakdown. I had no idea what was at stake.
I'm sure conservatives will be absolutely thrilled to see the power of Big Government so strongly limited!
Right?