Ohio’s Abortion Ban

It’s little mystery why Ohio Republicans snuck a late initiative onto the ballot, just months after the GOP-dominated Legislature passed a law banning August referenda at the local level, on the reasonable grounds that voter participation rates are lower during the dog days of summer. In 2019, the heavily gerrymandered Legislature passed a deeply unpopular bill prohibiting abortions after six weeks of pregnancy — before many women know they are pregnant — without exceptions for rape or incest. The law is currently on hold, pending judicial review. In response, reproductive rights advocates secured enough petition signatures to put a referendum before the voters this November; if it passes, abortion rights will be enshrined in the Constitution, beyond the Legislature’s ability to meddle.


Given current polling, Republicans are expected to lose the November vote, so they’re trying to change the rules mid-game. The gambit is so transparent that even two former GOP governors, Robert Taft and John Kasich, have come out in opposition.

The struggle over popular governance is an old one. As is the case today, many state legislatures in the early 20th century had grown unrepresentative, through a combination of malapportionment and gerrymandering. During the Progressive Era, states like Ohio adopted new political instruments, including popular referenda and ballot initiatives, to circumvent legislatures that no longer reflected the will of the voters.

What’s at stake in today’s vote is not just abortion rights, but whether Ohio will turn its back on a hard-won legacy dating back over a century.

Though dynamics in every state were different, powerful corporate interests increasingly controlled the economy during the early 20th century. Between 1897 and 1903 the number of “tight combinations,” or mega-holding corporations, grew from just seven to over 300, and these 300 corporations controlled 40 percent of all manufacturing in the United States.

In a nation where state legislatures still elected United States senators, and where in many states, legislatures were not apportioned strictly by population, but rather, by town or county, corporate interests held considerable sway over government at all levels. They funded well-oiled machines that controlled the levers of government and easily exploited the electorate’s limited ability to affect the practical outcome of elections. Unsurprisingly, those who governed were increasingly removed from a rising population of urban workers, many of them non-Protestant immigrants who clamored for better public services, regulation of public utilities — like railroads, power and street cars — and new worker and consumer safety protections.

While legislatures tended to be undemocratically apportioned, voters could often elect mayors and governors who favored progressive reforms. Such reforms included “home rule” charters, which freed cities from oversight by corrupt state legislatures, as well as new provisions such as ballot initiatives and referenda, which allowed a state’s voters to govern themselves directly, without legislative oversight. In 1896, the National Direct Legislation League met in St. Louis and selected 56 delegates from 37 states who would lead the charge for these innovative electoral reforms. California, under progressive Governor Hiram Johnson, and Wisconsin, under the progressive Governor Robert LaFollette, were early trailblazers in direct democracy. But Ohio was not far behind.