Groups hoping to enshrine abortion rights in Ohio’s constitution garnered nearly double the number of signatures needed to place an amendment on the statewide ballot, aiming to signal broad broad support for an issue which still has the threat of needing a significantly larger margin of victory.

Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights said they delivered more than 700,000 petition signatures to the office of Republican Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose in downtown Columbus on Wednesday. LaRose will now work with local election commissions to determine that at least 413,446 are valid, which would put the proposal on the November 7 ballot.

“Today we are taking a huge step forward in the fight for access to abortion and reproductive freedom for all, to ensure Ohio residents and their families can make their own health care decisions without government interference, Lauren Blauvelt and Kellie Copeland of Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom, a coalition member, said in a statement.

At a press conference, Copeland said the 422 boxes delivered are “filled with hopes and love and dreams of freedom, bodily autonomy, health, to be able to say: we decide what happens to us.

The ballot measure calls for the establishment of a fundamental right to reproductive freedom with reasonable limits. In language similar to a constitutional amendment that Michigan voters approved in November, it would require restrictions imposed beyond the viability of a fetus outside the womb, which is usually around the 24th week of pregnancy and was the default under Roe vs. Wade, based on evidence of benefits to patient health and safety.

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The formidable opponent of the state

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abortion network has sworn to a tenacious and well-funded opposition campaign, which could push the price tag for the fight above $70 million.

Protect Women Ohio, the opposition campaign, downplayed the huge number of signatures submitted, saying they were collected with the help of paid signature collectors funded by part of the American Civil Liberties Union, which described it as anti-parenting. Abortion enemies believe the Ohio amendment has the potential to trump the state’s abortion-related parental consent law, though the attorneys who wrote it deny the claim.

“The ACLU’s attempts to hijack the Ohio Constitution to further their own radical agenda would be pathetic if they weren’t so dangerous,” campaign press secretary Amy Natoce said in a statement.

Two legal challenges have gone the way of proponents.

The first was an Ohio Supreme Court decision that allowed the measure to proceed as a single issue, rather than two questions that would have required twice as many signatures. Judges found that the proposed amendments, calling to protect the rights of individuals to make their own decisions on a continuum of reproductive care issues, contraception, fertility treatments, ongoing pregnancy, miscarriage care and abortion, met the standard applicable to the same general purpose.

In a second ruling, the court rejected the Republican

Attorney General Att. Gene.

Dave Yost’s request for judges to initiate a review of abortion rights under the Ohio Constitution, leaving these arguments to a lower court and keeping alive the purpose of the proposed amendment.

But the ruling that could have the biggest impact was in favor of abortion opponents. It allowed special elections to be held in August to raise the threshold for passing future amendments, including as early as November, from a simple majority of 50% plus one that has been in place since 1912 to a majority of 60%. Abortion rights amendments in other states usually passed with more than 55% but less than 60% of the vote.

The outcome of that August election could also affect a recreational marijuana issue for which supporters planned to submit signatures later Wednesday. The coalition to regulate marijuana like alcohol is seeking ballot access for its proposal to legalize marijuana for adult use after the Republican-controlled legislature failed to act on their initiated statute.

It appears alongside an Ohio abortion rights push prompted by last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court decision to rule Roe v. Wade and the nationwide right to abortion and instead leave it to states to decide for themselves.

In the first statewide test following that decision, Kansas voters convincingly defended the right to abortion last August. Meanwhile, in addition to Michigan, California, Kentucky, Montana and Vermont, four other states either enshrined the right to abortion or rejected constitutional restrictions on the procedure in November.