Abortion was technically not on the ballot in the Ohio special election. But the landslide defeat of a measure this fall that would have made it more difficult to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution was the latest indication that the issue remains a major force at the ballot box.

The election saw a record voter turnout for what is typically a sleepy August vote, and a new battle will begin in November, when Ohio will be the only state with reproductive rights on the ballot.

Tuesday’s results also give hope to Democrats and other abortion rights advocates, who say the issue could influence voters their way again in 2024, when it could affect races for president, congressional and state offices, and when places like the Arizona battlefield can ask abortion questions. also on their balls.

Democrats described this week’s victory in Ohio, a former battleground state that has shifted markedly to the right, as a major warning sign for the GOP.

The Republicans’ deeply unpopular war on women’s rights will cost them district after district, and we will remind voters every day until November of their toxic anti-abortion agenda, said

Aidan Johnson

a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The measure that Ohio voters rejected on Tuesday, known as Issue 1, would have required voting questions to be passed by 60% of the vote instead of a simple majority. With the count nearing completion, the vote against the measure was 57%, compared to 43% for a lead of nearly 430,000 votes.

Interest in the measure has been unusually high, with both parties spending millions and turnout by far the highest in Ohio for August elections, which historically have been mostly limited to local races. Turnout was even higher than the most recent out-of-year election in November, when voters decided two statewide ballot measures in 2017.

Opposition to the measure, which became a kind of proxy for November’s abortion vote, even spread to traditionally Republican areas. In early returns, support for the measure fell far short of former President Trump’s performance in the 2020 election in nearly every county.

The November ballot question will ask voters whether individuals should have the right to make their own reproductive health care decisions, including birth control, abortion, fertility treatments and miscarriage care.

Ohio’s GOP-led state government passed a ban on abortion in 2019 after activity was detected in the fetal cells that would form a heart about six weeks before many women know they’re pregnant. But the ban was not upheld due to the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, who granted a federal right to the proceedings.

Last year, when a new conservative majority on the Supreme Court overturned the nearly 50-year-old ruling and returned authority over the procedure to the states, Ohio’s ban went into effect briefly. But a state court has put the ban back on hold amid a challenge that it violates the state constitution.

During the time the ban was in effect, an Indiana doctor came forward to say she performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio, who could not legally have the procedure done in her home state. The report became a national focal point in the abortion rights debate and underlined the commitment in Ohio.

Ohio is one of about half of the U.S. states where citizens can bypass the legislature and put voting questions directly to voters, an option that reproductive rights advocates have increasingly used since Roe v. Wade fell.

After abortion rights advocates said they hoped to ask voters in November to enshrine the right in the state constitution, Ohio Republicans placed Issue 1 on Tuesday’s ballot. In addition to raising the threshold to pass a measure, signatures would have to be collected in all 88 Ohio counties, instead of the current 44.

The 60% threshold was no accident, abortion rights supporters say, and was aimed directly at circumventing Ohio’s abortion law. Since Roe vs. Wade was overturned, six states have held elections related to reproductive rights. In every election, including in conservative states like Kansas, voters have supported abortion rights.

In Kansas, 59% voted to keep abortion rights protections. In Michigan, 57% supported an amendment that would include protections in the state constitution. Last year, 59% of Ohio voters said abortion should be legal in general, according to AP VoteCast, a broad poll of the electorate.

Last month, a poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research indicated that the majority of American adults want abortion to be legal, at least during the early stages of pregnancy. The poll found that opinions on abortion remain complex, with most people saying abortion should be allowed in some circumstances but not in others.

Opponents of Ohio’s abortion issue ran ads claiming, experts falsely say, that the measure could rob parents of their ability to make decisions about their children’s health care or even be informed about it.

Amy Natoce

spokesperson for the anti-abortion campaign Protect Women Ohio called the ballot measure a dangerous anti-parent amendment.

Several legal experts have said there is no language in the amendment that supports the advertising claims.

Peter Reach

CEO of Ohio Right to Life, said he has been traveling around Ohio talking to people.

I’ve never seen the grassroots pro-life side so excited to start defending and protecting the pre-born, he said.

While November’s question relates strictly to Ohio, access to abortion there is critical to access for the entire Midwest, he said.

Alison Dreyth

director of strategic partnership for the abortion fund Midwest Access Coalition.

Nine Midwestern states—Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, Nebraska, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin—are classified as restrictive, highly restrictive, or restrictive by the Guttmacher Institute, a research and policy organization that supports legal access to abortion. considered very restrictive on abortion rights.

Ohio, in particular, has always been a destination state for the states around it, Dreith said. If we don’t protect access to abortion in Ohio, the options for people seeking care in the Midwest will continue to shrink.

Sri Thakkilapati

executive director of the Cleveland-based nonprofit abortion clinic Preterm, said the effect of the Ohio vote will reverberate across the country.

If we restrict access in one state, other states will have to shoulder that patient burden, she said. That leads to longer waiting times, more travel, higher costs for patients.”

Thakkilapati called the energy around abortion rights in last year’s midterm elections “exciting”. But she said the media attention has died down and people are quickly forgetting just how weak access to abortion is right now. Ohio’s special election and voting measure reminds us of what’s at stake,” she said.

Other states are watching this play out in Ohio, and it may give anti-abortion groups in other states another strategy to threaten abortion rights elsewhere, she said. And for the majority who want access to abortion in their country but see it threatened, the results in November could give them hope that the democratic process can bring them relief.

Kimberly Inez McGuire

the executive director of Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity, which targets people of color under the age of 30, says the results of elections related to reproductive rights show that support isn’t just coming from Democrats or cities and states that liberal bastions are considered.

There was this idea that we couldn’t win with abortion in red states, and that idea has been really crushed, along with the mythology that people in the South and Midwest won’t support abortion rights, McGuire said.

I think 2024 is going to be huge, she said. And I think in many ways Ohio is a proving ground for an early fight leading up to 2024.

Dreith said that since abortion hasn’t been on a big ballot since last year, Ohio’s vote this fall is a good reminder for the rest of the country.

Abortion is always on the ballot, if not literally… figuratively through the politicians we choose to serve us, she said. “It is also a reminder that this problem will not go away.

Associated Press writer Stephen Ohlemacher in Washington contributed to this report.