Millions spent on new ads in Ohio ballot measure fight

A prominent anti-abortion group in Ohio launched a new $5.5 million ad campaign Tuesday urging voters in the state to pass a ballot measure that would make it harder for abortion-rights supporters to amend the state constitution in November.

The Aug. 8 ballot measure — known as Issue 1 — will ask voters to decide whether to raise the threshold of support required for future state constitutional amendments to 60%. Currently, just a majority is needed.

The new campaign by the group working to pass the August measure, called Protect Women Ohio, includes a $4.5 million expenditure on two new 30-second television ads, as well as $1 million on statewide radio and digital ads. All of the ads began running Tuesday and will run through the Aug. 8 election.

The ads continue a strategy by the group to tie the Aug. 8 measure, as well as a November ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, to parental rights restrictions. The approach has also leaned heavily into attacks on groups, like the ACLU of Ohio, which Protect Women Ohio alleges is advocating to restrict parental rights.

One of the television ads features an “Ohio mom” named April Hunter claiming that passing the measure would “make it harder for a lot of these radical groups to come into our state and make changes to our constitution.”

“Some of those changes that they’re proposing take away parental rights, take away parents’ ability to be informed and to make decisions for their children,” Hunter says in the ad.

The other television ad features another “Ohio mom,” Dr. Vivina Napier, who says that the “groups that oppose Issue 1 brag on social media about abolishing parental rights.”

“By voting 'yes' on Issue 1, you’ll be voting to protect Ohio from these outside interest groups pushing radical political agendas,” Napier says in the ad.

Officials with the group behind the ads, Protect Women Ohio, argue that the proposed November amendment is intentionally worded to be interpreted to allow minors to obtain abortion care and undergo gender-affirming surgery without parental consent or notification — and that passing the August measure would make passage of the November one more difficult.

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However, as NBC News reported last month, nonpartisan experts say the ads are inaccurate and misleading, and reproductive rights advocates argue that they are misdirection designed to distract voters from protecting abortion rights, an issue on which the public does not side with the anti-abortion movement.

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Protect Women Ohio’s ads and statements also argue that the presence of ACLU of Ohio in the pro-amendment coalition is evidence of a push beyond abortion rights. The civil rights group, which works on a wide variety of issues, including transgender rights, is one of eight founding partners that formed the Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom coalition that is behind the proposed November amendment.

Protect Women Ohio’s latest buy brings the group’s total paid media spending to support the Aug. 8 measure to $9 million, the group said. 

The group has also, so far, committed $25 million for ads to oppose the November ballot measure. Those ads, some of which began running in March, will run through the November election. 

On the other side, the main group working to defeat the August ballot measure, called “One Person One Vote” has allocated more than $1.1 million on ads over the last two months.

Officials with the reproductive rights coalition supporting the November amendment, meanwhile, have said they plan to spend at least $35 million through November.

While the August measure doesn’t explicitly mention abortion, reproductive rights groups maintain it’s designed to make it more difficult for voters to pass their own proposed amendment this November. 

If voters pass the threshold measure in August, then the proposed abortion rights amendment in November would need 60% support from voters to pass. If the August measure fails, the abortion amendment would need just a majority.

The proposed November measure would allow voters to decide whether to insert language in the Ohio Constitution that enshrines the right of every person “to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions,” including, “but not limited to,” decisions about contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s pregnancy, miscarriage care and abortion. It also specifies that the state shall not “burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against” those rights.