Last year, the Republican Supreme Court overturned the longstanding Roe v. Wade precedent, allowing Republican states to state banning abortion. But that isn't turning out how the Republicans planned: voters in Kansas and Kentucky have already rejected state constitutional bans, while Ohio voters have just added abortion rights to their state constitution:
Ohio voters have added the right to access abortion care to the state's constitution, NBC News projects — another major political victory for abortion-rights advocates in the nearly 17 months since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.(They also voted to legalise marijuana, so they're ahead of Aotearoa on that...)The passage of the Issue 1 ballot measure inserts language in the state constitution guaranteeing every person in Ohio the right “to one’s own reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion,” and barring the state from “burdening, penalizing or prohibiting” those rights — though it specifies that abortion will remain prohibited after the point a doctor judges a fetus would most likely survive birth, with exceptions to protect the woman’s life or health.
Somehow I don't think this was what Republicans had in mind when they said they wanted states - or voters - to decide. And it bodes well both for further referenda, and for overturning Republican political majorities.
