COLUMBUS — This November, Ohio voters will have the opportunity to decide if they have a constitutional right to have an abortion.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced Tuesday that the ballot measure aimed at amending the Ohio Constitution to legalize and protect reproductive healthcare, including abortion, had enough signatures to make the November ballot, our news partners at WCPO in Cincinnati reported.
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Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights submitted over 700,000 signatures in favor of adding the proposal to the ballot. Nearly 496,000 were deemed to be valid, which was more than the 413,446 needed to do so, the Associated Press reported.
The amendment says that “every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care and abortion.”
If passed, it would prohibit the state from “directly or indirectly, burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere” with anyone trying to exercise that right.
The amendment also states that abortion “may be prohibited after fetal viability.”
The amendment will now be forwarded to the Ohio Ballot Board to draft the language for the general election ballot.
Another proposed ballot measure for the November election involved a proposal to legalize marijuana. That measure doesn’t have enough signatures.
Tom Haren, spokesperson for the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol (CRMLA), said more than 222,000 Ohioans signed the petition to regulate marijuana like alcohol.
“It looks like we came up a little short in this first phase, but now we have 10 days to find just 679 voters to sign a supplemental petition,” Haren said in a statement sent to News Center 7 Tuesday.