Turns out, controlling women’s bodies isn’t as popular as conservatives may have thought as they spent decades trying to ban and even criminalize abortion. In a rather sneaky strategic move, Ohio Republicans are amending language to an upcoming ballot initiative. Voters already showed up once this summer to make sure Republicans couldn’t sneak this amendment through but the Ohio GOP is not taking the hint.
According to reporting from The New Republic, the amendment’s summary, much of which came from their Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, will make some duplicitous adjustments. To be clear, the full text of the amendment will not change. But the summary, which is what voters will see on the ballot, is being changed to try and sway people at the polls via confusion and emotional manipulation.
The proposed new summary changes the word “fetus” to “unborn child.” Obviously, “unborn child” is a scientifically inaccurate but often successfully manipulative term. It also changes “pregnant person” instead of “pregnant woman.” I do not get this, as Republicans have joined TERFs in the ridiculous you can’t even say the word woman anymore whining campaign. Maybe they are appealing to more open-minded people in some weird way? They also changed the word “decision” to “medical treatment.” It also changes scientific language about “viability” to say the amendment would “always allow an unborn child to be aborted at any stage of pregnancy.”
This clearly invokes the “late-term abortion” (not an actual thing) fearmongering that conservatives are constantly pushing as hard as they can as if A) later abortions make up about 90% of all abortions performed and B) they’re not medically necessary to often save the life and/or the physical and emotional wellbeing of a pregnant person.
So will this summary actually work? Some in Ohio think that this would be successful in swaying voters. One co-chair of Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, Lauren Blauvelt, said that the summary is propaganda. She is still confident in the amendment’s ability to pass in November, codifying key abortion rights protections but the group is also suing over Republicans’ attempts to mislead voters and asking the state Supreme Court to stop them.
It’s not only left-wing advocates who are concerned since, as we’ve seen at the ballot time and again, protecting abortion access is a nonpartisan issue. A Republican Ballot Board Member, Senator Theresa Garavone, said that the true nature of the amendment its “hidden behind overly broad language.”
Republicans know that their policies aren’t actually good or popular so instead, they’ve become masters of manipulative messaging. In this case, a poll released in July by USA Today found that 58 percent of people in Ohio support codifying abortion rights while 32 percent oppose it. Yes, polls are polls and not definite arbiters of fact. But a special election in early August could foreshadow what is to come in November. Ohio voters already rejected a sneaky proposal that would have increased the margin needed to pass a state constitutional amendment. Why? Republicans were concerned about the abortion amendment that would appear in November, enshrining these rights into the state constitution. So in typical GOP fashion, they sought to change the rules before it was too late. This proposal, called Issue 1, helped drive turnout in the Ohio special election.
With a lot of funding, the pro-Issue 1 campaign sought to deceive voters. Do we see a pattern? They circulated a fake newspaper entitled “The Buckeye Reporter,” which labeled opponents as communists. Very unique! The messaging is strategic and of course, Republicans do not care if it is true or even makes sense.
The proponents of Issue 1 also released a bizarre video that attacked more than just abortion rights. In it, the group Protect Women Ohio said that opposing Issue 1 is equivalent to supporting “sex changes” for kids. I mean, this is not what Issue 1 is about at all. But did it matter? Nope. As we see with this current summary language, confusing people and stirring up confusion and fear is often the point, so why not lump in some weird anti-trans sentiments with their abortion attacks? The GOP may be evil but they certainly are strategic! Hopefully, the pro-choice side will still prevail in November’s election in Ohio.
(via The New Republic, featured image: Emily Elconin/Getty Images)
