Ohio’s Supreme Court late Tuesday ruled that much of the GOP-controlled state ballot board’s language to describe a November question about abortion is accurate, dealing a blow to the abortion rights groups that challenged the board’s description.

The sharply divided court said only one element of the description is misleading and must be rewritten. The justices ruled that all other elements that were challenged, including the substitution of “unborn child” for “fetus,” can remain.

In November, Ohioans will vote on a citizen-initiated amendment that would create a constitutional right to reproductive freedom in the state, which would protect decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing a pregnancy, miscarriage care and abortion up to the point of fetal viability.

The Ohio Ballot Board is tasked with writing the actual words of statewide ballot measures. The wording is supposed to be fair and nonpartisan, without attempts to mislead or deceive voters.

Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, the coalition supporting the amendment, sued the board after it adopted wording drafted by the Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose that the coalition said was “a naked attempt to prejudice voters against the Amendment.”

LaRose, who is running in the GOP primary to challenge Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) next year, has publicly opposed the amendment.

But the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the phrase “unborn child” solicits the board’s “ethical judgment or personal view.”

  • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I don’t think it is AS big an “if” as normal. The vote in August was essentially the dry-run for making abortion legal as a constitutional amendment in Ohio, and its one by a large margin.