COLUMBUS — Groups hoping to enshrine abortion rights in Ohio’s constitution have delivered nearly double the number of signatures needed to place an amendment on the fall statewide ballot.
Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights said they dropped off more than 700,000 petition signatures on Wednesday to Republican Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office in downtown Columbus.
LaRose now will work with local election boards to determine by July 25 that at least 413,446 are valid, which would get the proposal onto the Nov. 7 ballot. If there are not enough valid signatures, sponsors will have an additional 10 days to gather more signatures.
Group members called their submission “a huge step forward in the fight for abortion access and reproductive freedom for all.”
“This is a historic day for Ohio and for reproductive freedom. We cannot thank our volunteers enough for this herculean grassroots effort to ensure patients and doctors, not government extremists, are in control of making private medical decisions,” group spokespersons Lauren Blauvelt and Kellie Copeland said in a statement.
Abortion opponents downplayed the number of signatures submitted, saying they were collected with help from paid gatherers.
“The ACLU’s extreme anti-parent amendment is so unpopular that it couldn’t even rely on grassroots support to collect signatures. The ACLU paid out-of-state signature collectors to lie to Ohioans about its dangerous amendment that will strip parents of their rights, permit minors to undergo sex change operations without their parents’ knowledge or consent and allow painful abortion on demand through all nine months,” Protect Women Ohio press secretary Amy Natoce said.
The American Civil Liberties is one of the organizations making up the Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom coalition.
An issue on the ballot for an August special election seeks to raise the threshold for passing future amendments — including as soon as November — from a 50%-plus-one simple majority that has been in place since 1912 to a 60% majority. Abortion rights amendments in other states have tended to pass with more than 55% but less than 60% of the vote.