On November 7, voters in Ohio will decide the future of abortion rights in the Buckeye State, a potential preview of how the issue will play out in 2024, while voters across the country decide on everything from cannabis legalization to foreign influence in elections.

The marquee ballot initiative in 2023 is in Ohio, where voters will weigh a state constitutional amendment that would establish a constitutional right to “make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions.”

If passed, the amendment would limit the state’s ability to restrict reproductive health care access and abortion access before fetal viability, a measure similar to the protections afforded by Roe v. Wade before that decision was overturned last year. 

In addition to protecting abortion, the amendment also would protect an individual’s right to make decisions about fertility treatments, miscarriage care, and contraception. 

Abortion is currently legal in Ohio up to 21 weeks. However, state lawmakers would be able to restrict abortion access in the state. Lawmakers there passed a six-week abortion ban in 2019. While the law was initially blocked by a federal judge, it went into effect in 2022 when Roe was overturned.

A state-level judge then indefinitely blocked the law from going into effect, a status quo that has been in effect for more than a year and a half. If the amendment fails at the polls, the six-week ban could go back into effect, pending a court ruling.

Ohioans had been asked to consider a rules change for constitutional amendments earlier this year by Republicans in the state legislature. Legislators passed a bill recommending changing the threshold to pass state constitutional amendments to 60 percent from 50 percent. The bill needed to be approved by voters to take effect, and it failed in an August special election.

In the state, Ohio Right to Live and other anti-abortion rights groups have tried to frame the ballot measure as “extreme” and as being pushed by out-of-state interests.

“This extreme anti-life, anti-parent amendment from the ACLU provides no protections for the preborn through all nine months of pregnancy,” Ohio Right to Life’s chief executive, Peter Range, said of the amendment.

On the other side, proponents of abortion rights have pointed to the six-week abortion ban passed by the state government as evidence that legislators will move to restrict reproductive rights if the ballot measure fails.

“The anti-choice people are trying to pretend the six-week ban doesn’t exist and our governor didn’t sign it into law,” the Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights head, Lauren Beene, told the Washington Post, adding, “we’ll go back into that medical crisis period we all saw in 2022.”

Ohioans will also decide on legalizing cannabis in the state. A recent survey of state legislators by Gongwer Werth found 63 percent of Democratic legislators and 52 percent of Republican legislators expect it to pass.

A Baldwin Wallace University Community Research Institute survey also found that cannabis legalization had the support of 66 percent of Ohio Democrats, 57 percent of Ohio independents, and 50 percent of Ohio Republicans.

Governor DeWine, however, has staked out a position in opposition to cannabis legalization. “I don’t think the little bit of money that this will generate to the state of Ohio is worth the damage to the people of Ohio,” Mr. DeWine told Spectrum News 1. 

In other elections around the country, voters in five states will consider a total of 41 ballot measures ranging from changes to tax policies in Texas to the creation of a power company in Maine that would be managed by an elected board.

Maine residents will also be asked to consider a measure to further restrict the ability of foreign nationals and entities owned by foreign nationals to give to political campaigns.

The Maine measure would ban foreign nationals from making contributions to ballot measure campaigns, a law that seven states have already adopted. It would also ban businesses or other entities that are owned by foreign nationals from making political contributions.