COLUMBUS — Ohioans will vote this November to decide if abortion rights should be part of the state constitution but before they hit the polls, some advocates and voters are trying to get the language on the ballot rewritten.
Advocates told our News Partners at WCPO in Cincinnati that the language voters will see when they vote isn’t what they petitioned for.
>> Former Trotwood-Madison football player returns to his roots to inspire the next generation
“They’re trying to affect the result by changing people’s understanding of what’s happening here and that’s wrong,” State Representative Elliot Forhan (D-South Euclid) said.
Abortion rights group, Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, and five voters filed a lawsuit last week against the GOP-led Ohio Ballot Board. As CBS News reported, the lawsuit asks the Ohio Supreme Court to adopt the full text of the amendment as the ballot language, or “adopt ballot language that properly and lawfully describes the Amendment, correcting the numerous defects in the existing language.”
Forhan said the majority on the Ohio Ballot Board is trying to pull “nonsense.”
Republicans on the ballot board responded to the lawsuit, denying that their language is “incomplete, inaccurate, and misleading.”
The original version states, “Everyone 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.”
The GOP version of the amendment states to “establish in the Constitution of the State of Ohio an individual right to one’s own reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion.”
>> ‘He was my future;’ Girlfriend of man killed in road rage shooting in Sidney speaks out
The original version explains that abortion may be prohibited after fetal viability, but WCPO reports that the new version says it would allow abortions at “any stage of pregnancy, regardless of viability.”
The original version also used the medical term “fetus,” but it was changed to “unborn child.”
“The revised code has the phrase ‘unborn child’ in it. They have absolute justification. I think the court will uphold that - to use the term ‘unborn child,’” Mike Gonidakis, Ohio Right to Life, said.
The GOP also said that they don’t legally have to use the language from the petition.
The court will likely hear this case later this month, WCPO reports.