Originally published in Vox on August 8, 2023.
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On Tuesday, Ohio voters rejected a Republican proposal known as Issue 1 that would have made it harder for citizens to put issues on the ballot or for a constitutional amendment to pass in the state.

The decision has big implications for this fall’s election: In November, Ohio voters will decide on a constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights. And political analysts say the ramifications could extend into 2024 — when Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is up for reelection in Ohio and when Democrats hope to win big nationally by motivating voters on issues of protecting abortion rights and democracy.

The amendment would have raised the state’s threshold for passing constitutional amendments from a simple majority of votes, as has been the case for over 100 years, to 60 percent, which its GOP sponsors hoped would be too high a bar for abortion rights supporters to clear.

But the measure backfired, with analysts calling the election for the “no” side shortly after polls closed Tuesday night. Still, passage of the abortion rights amendment in November is no foregone conclusion; while polling so far bodes well for supporters, most citizen-led ballot measures in Ohio historically have failed.

Kelly Hall, the executive director of the progressive ballot measure group Fairness Project, hailed the victory as an “incredibly profound and inspiring day for our democracy.” She said her national organization looks forward “to an aggressive campaign in the coming months” to protect Ohio abortion rights in November.

Rhiannon Carnes, spokeswoman for Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, released a statement Tuesday night laying out the stakes for the future of abortion access following Issue 1’s defeat. “Ohioans know that if we don’t succeed,” she said, referring to the November referendum, “the government will have the power to ban abortion completely, even in cases of rape, incest, or when someone’s life is in danger.”

How Issue 1 lost

In November, voters in Ohio will weigh in on a proposed amendment for reproductive freedom that would restore the right to an abortion up to the point of fetal viability — or the point at which a fetus could survive outside the womb. The amendment would also permit abortions beyond that point in cases when “the pregnant patient’s treating physician” deems it necessary to protect their life or health.

Though abortion is currently legal in Ohio through 22 weeks of pregnancy, a state law barring abortion after 6 weeks, with no exceptions for rape, is currently tied up in the courts. Pro-choice Ohio doctors led the push for the abortion rights measure on the upcoming November ballot, stressing that their ability to provide proper medical care is at urgent stake.

Restricting abortion rights was the primary reason Republicans placed Issue 1 on the ballot for the August special election. GOP officials recognized they could make it harder for any constitutional amendment to pass in November by changing the rules in advance. A poll from June found nearly 60 percent of Ohioans support the idea of a proposed amendment for reproductive freedom, but nearly 60 percent would not be enough to pass under the parameters of Issue 1. And while abortion rights ballot measures won in red and purple states last year, they all received between 52 and 59 percent of votes, making a 60 percent threshold seem sufficiently insurmountable.

In addition to raising the threshold to 60 percent, Republicans also sought to make it harder to get initiatives on the ballot in the first place. This was necessary to earn the support of the powerful Ohio Chamber of Commerce, which wanted to limit the number of ballot campaigns it potentially had to help fund.

Just last year, Republican lawmakers had voted to repeal August special elections in Ohio, calling them low-turnout wastes of money.

For months Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose denied he had switched positions on August special elections because of abortion rights. But in June, video footage reported by News 5 Cleveland and the Ohio Capital Journal showed LaRose admitting abortion was motivating his stance. “Some people say this is all about abortion. Well, you know what?” he was recorded saying. “It’s 100 percent about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution — the left wants to jam it in there this coming November.” (LaRose announced last month that he is running for US Senate.)

While Republicans and anti-abortion groups claimed that making it harder to pass ballot measures was necessary to protect the integrity of Ohio’s constitution from interference by out-of-state groups, 82 percent of the funding for the pro-Issue 1 political action committee came from an Illinois-based Republican megadonor named Richard Uihlein.

Opponents, meanwhile, raised much more money to defeat Issue 1 — at least $14.8 million according to the latest filings. Opponents framed Issue 1 as a threat to average citizens, as it would have significantly raised the costs of the signature-gathering process by requiring organizers to canvass in all 88 counties. Considerable funds for the opposition campaign also came from outside Ohio, including a national progressive dark money group known as the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the California-based Tides Foundation, and the National Education Association.

The opposition campaign comprised not only reproductive rights supporters but also public school proponents who wanted to preserve a tool for addressing educational inequality, democracy activists who want to tackle redistricting, environmental groups that want to push for climate action, and workers’ rights advocates who want to push more labor reforms. A coalition known as One Fair Wage, for example, has been collecting signatures for a potential 2024 ballot measure to raise Ohio’s minimum wage, and union organizers joined forces with the anti-Issue 1 campaign to raise awareness about how all future progressive measures could be affected.

Together, the broad coalition worked to focus voters’ attention on the anti-democratic implications of Issue 1, which was aimed at stripping away not only the principle of majority rule on Ohio ballot measures, but also one of the last remaining ways voters can shape politics in the heavily gerrymandered state.

What this means for abortion rights

A USA Today/Suffolk University poll released in late July found that 58 percent of likely Ohio voters support the measure to codify abortion rights, including one-third of Republicans and 85 percent of independent women. Because Issue 1 failed, abortion rights supporters will only need to win a simple majority of votes — rather than 60 percent.

The outcome of Ohio’s abortion referendum will likely shape the political narrative headed into 2024, as it’s the only abortion rights battle voters will weigh in on this fall. Last election cycle, abortion rights won in all six states with ballot measures, but anti-abortion leaders also spun the midterms as good for them because Democrats failed to unseat incumbent governors and didn’t win enough seats in Congress to pass any federal legislation restoring abortion rights. Ohio’s results should help clarify where the energy really is.

Other abortion ballot measures are expected next year in states like Florida, South Dakota, and Arizona, and both opponents and supporters of abortion rights are bracing to spend tens of millions more dollars on such referendums than they did in 2022.

Ohio’s proposed amendment would affirm that “every 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.” Opponents claim the language is so broad that it would create a new right to gender-affirming surgery, and therefore invalidate the state’s current requirement for parental consent.

Opponents organizing under the banner of “Protect Women Ohio” have made the trans youth health care argument central to their strategy, spending over $5 million on TV and digital advertising this past spring. They are regularly referring to the measure as an “anti-parent” amendment.

Coalition leaders pushing for the abortion rights amendment say the focus on transgender health care is a desperate attempt to distract from the unpopularity of abortion bans, and that Ohio case law generally requires parental consent for youth medical care. Moreover, the amendment could only affect parental consent laws if someone were to successfully challenge the rules in court as unconstitutional, and given that Ohio’s state Supreme Court is controlled by Republicans, legal experts think a more sweeping interpretation of the abortion rights measure is unlikely.

What the Ohio results mean for democracy

The defeat of Issue 1 has implications not only for Ohio democracy but also for other states looking to push measures to restrict citizen ballot measure initiatives.

Supporters tried to claim that the restrictions they were pushing were because they truly deeply cared about Ohio democracy. Issue 1 proponents argued that efforts to change the state’s founding documents should be difficult, and that too much direct democracy could even undermine their system of representative government. “If a constitutional issue is significant enough to impact all 11.8 million Ohioans, then it should have to garner and demonstrate broad statewide backing for consideration,” said the heads of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, the Ohio Restaurant Association, and the National Federation of Independent Business in a joint statement in May.

However, the idea that Ohio voters can easily amend their state constitution is not true. In the last 111 years, only 19 citizen-led ballot measures have been approved, and 52 failed. What Issue 1 supporters were really objecting to is that there was a viable way to check anti-abortion lawmakers’ power at all.

As of late June, according to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a progressive group that supports state referendum campaigns, 14 states were considering a total of 50 pending measures that would raise new hurdles for ballot measures.

The defeat in Ohio is not the first time in recent memory that Republican lawmakers have failed in their efforts to restrict ballot measures. Last summer South Dakota voters rejected a bid by state GOP officials to raise the threshold for ballot measures to 60 percent — a bid that one Republican official admitted was designed to cripple a ballot measure for Medicaid expansion. (Medicaid expansion in South Dakota ultimately passed.) Arizona voters also rejected a measure last fall that would have allowed lawmakers to amend or repeal ballot initiatives approved by voters.

But Republicans have certainly been notching wins too. Lawmakers in both Florida and Arkansas recently raised the signature requirements for qualifying for the ballot, and last year Arizona voters did approve two measures that restricted citizen initiatives.

Originally published in Vox on July 27, 2023.
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When federal lawmakers expanded the child tax credit (CTC) in 2021 as part of President Joe Biden’s pandemic relief program, some 35 million parents across the US began receiving hundreds of dollars monthly.

With the expanded credit, nonworking and extremely poor families were eligible for the credit’s full value for the first time since its passage in 1997, and the federal government increased the value of the subsidy itself — up to $3,600 per child. Almost 3 million children were lifted out of poverty as a result, and families used the funds to help them afford gas, food, and school expenses.

But when Democrats failed later to approve an extension of this program — it carried a price tag of $100 billion per year and Sen. Joe Manchin wanted to see a work requirement reinstated — the federal CTC returned back to its pre-Covid form, with a maximum of $2,000 per child for working families only. Economists at Columbia University estimated that making the expanded federal credit permanent would have resulted in a more than 10 times return on investment, measured in terms of increased future tax revenue and less future spending on health care, criminal justice, foster care, and other welfare programs.

While gridlock and partisanship hobbled Congress from expanding this consequential cash-assistance program, state governments have since used the success of the federal experiment to push forward their own versions of the subsidy. All told, since the expanded federal CTC expired, 11 states have passed or expanded their own child tax credits available to families earning $0, or what policy wonks refer to as “refundable.” The subsidies range from up to $180 per child (in Massachusetts) to $1,750 per child (in Minnesota).

The new child tax credits have passed in states that currently hold Democratic majorities, but the policies have been markedly less polarized on the state level compared to Congress. An analysis of the new laws from the Jain Family Institute, a progressive think tank, found that, on average, 40 percent of Republican state senators and 30 percent of Republican state representatives have voted in favor of fully refundable child tax credits. In Montana, it was the state’s Republican governor, Greg Gianforte, who proposed a new $1,200 child tax credit for every kid under age 6, and it was Democrats there who helped sink the idea’s passage.

All of these legislative wins bode well for families — especially because the odds of expanding a child credit once it’s established are relatively high. Of the 11 states with refundable child tax credits, six have already raised their benefit amount or broadened eligibility, per the Jain Institute. Plus, even modest child tax credits have been shown to make real differences: One study found quarterly cash payments of just $150 to low-income families led to increased household savings, fewer late fees on bills, and more spending on health and education.

Perhaps most importantly, this state trend is encouraging because in our byzantine, kludgy tax system — replete with exemptions, deductions, work requirements, and nonrefundable credits — refundable child tax credits have the potential to be one of the most inclusive and progressive social assistance programs for parents and kids. Unlike the other benefit options, refundable child tax credits offer cash that can be spent on a range of needs, and they can benefit even families with no earned income.

How the new state child tax credits vary

When policymakers consider passing or refining a child tax credit, they have to make a number of design trade-offs, weighing the financial and administrative implications of each choice. Will the credit apply to all children or just younger children? Will it be a large credit or a smaller credit? Will the benefits phase out quickly or slowly? Will eligible families receive the benefits annually? Quarterly? Monthly? What do they need to do to claim it?

Some states, like New Jersey, require beneficiaries to fill out just a quarter page of additional questions on their tax filing to get the new cash assistance. By contrast, in Colorado, beneficiaries have to fill out three additional pages of paperwork, which could deter some from applying for or receiving the aid.

States have also taken different approaches to funding new child tax credits. One financing path is through consolidating existing benefits into a more simplified child credit, which is the approach Massachusetts and Minnesota embraced. In Massachusetts, prior to 2021, the state offered a tax deduction for children under 12, but since deductions only help families with tax liability, the lowest-income families were excluded. Now Massachusetts lawmakers have replaced that with a refundable tax credit so that all families can benefit. In Minnesota, lawmakers combined an existing earned income tax credit (EITC) into one new child tax credit, making it the largest state CTC thus far in the country.

Another approach is financing state child credits through state revenues from economic growth, rather than new taxes. New Mexico, for example, authorized a new child tax credit this way, using new revenue from the oil and gas industries (though as the Jain Institute warns, oil and gas revenues can be volatile and could create budgetary strain during a recession). A third path for financing is through new progressive tax increases, which is how Colorado first advanced its child tax credit, though ultimately it relied on increased revenue instead.

How state CTCs could be improved further

While these new policies are significant, advocates say there are ways the child tax credits could be improved upon.

If more states were to create or expand child tax credits, one option is phasing out existing benefits that are currently geared toward high-income earners. According to Jack Landry, a researcher at the Jain Institute, Minnesota’s CTC would have been far more expensive — possibly prohibitively so — if it hadn’t been paired with EITC consolidation. “A lot of other states have these earned income tax credits so that’s a possible path forward for them too,” he told Vox.

States can also work to ensure their policies are as inclusive as possible for families where parents or children may not be American citizens. Most states already allow parents with individual taxpayer identification numbers (ITINs) to receive the benefit, but ITINs themselves are not always easy for families to obtain, and states can design other ways to verify residency for child aid.

Another way to improve the effectiveness of state CTCs is by expanding their uptake among those who are already eligible — whether through awareness campaigns to potential beneficiaries or through administrative tax reforms that make claiming the aid easier. In terms of awareness campaigns, the Jain Institute suggests using data from other welfare programs like SNAP and Medicaid to alert parents of their eligibility for new state programs. To distribute the funds more easily, states could also create simplified web portals for applicants, or even just send the money out to eligible families automatically. (The expanded federal CTC was sent automatically to eligible families who had previously filed their taxes or who had signed up to receive an IRS stimulus check.)

The flurry of bipartisan progress on state-level refundable child tax credits is a silver lining to the federal government’s failure to expand its generous pandemic-era credit. Even in Washington, DC, though, advocates and federal lawmakers are once again turning their attention to improving the federal CTC, in part because of looming Trump-era tax cuts set to expire at the end of 2025. That tax deal negotiated in 2017 included an expansion to the federal CTC to make it more generous, and without further federal action, the already shrunken child tax credit could diminish further to pre-2017 levels.

The House Problem Solvers Caucus, a centrist group of 32 Republicans and 32 Democrats, recently signaled its interest in negotiating a new deal on the credit, though little enthusiasm exists for reviving the expanded CTC wholesale, and Republicans remain staunchly committed to the idea of work requirements. Senators, too, have recently voiced interest in working together on the federal credit. “I think we will find far more areas of agreement and learn from each other,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) during a subcommittee hearing this month.

Originally published in Vox in July 12, 2023.
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Last election cycle, abortion rights won in all six states with abortion ballot measures, including in red states like Kentucky and Montana that otherwise elected Republican lawmakers.

Now, this fall and in next year’s election, national liberal groups are planning to invest more heavily in ballot measure campaigns, seeing them as vehicles both to protect access to abortion care and to amplify their broader political message that abortion bans are out of step with voters.

Advocates in at least 10 states are considering ballot measure campaigns over the next two years to codify abortion rights. In some states — including Florida, South Dakota, Ohio, Arizona, and Missouri — the measures could help restore rights that have already been lost. In other states, such as Nevada, Maryland, Colorado, and New York, voters could enshrine existing state protections.

Anti-abortion activists, in turn, have vowed to spend millions more dollars to defeat them.

The results last year were “a wake-up call that taught us we have a ton of work to do,” Kelsey Pritchard, the state public affairs director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told Politico in March. “We’re going to be really engaged on these ballot measures that are often very radical and go far beyond what Roe ever did.”

Some abortion rights activists do hope to codify protections beyond what Roe v. Wade guaranteed — sparking internal debates among reproductive rights advocates about tactical ballot measure language.

Most of these measures would be on the ballot in 2024. The exception is Ohio, where reproductive rights advocates are organizing for a new constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights during the upcoming election this November.

As campaigns to get abortion on the ballot begin, fights are also brewing about ballot measures themselves, which provide voters with opportunities to weigh in directly on state policy changes.

In some states, citizens can collect petition signatures to get measures on the ballot; in others, lawmakers have to first approve the proposals. The recent success of abortion rights measures has catalyzed efforts by Republican lawmakers to restrict these voter initiatives. As of late June, according to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a progressive group that supports state referendum campaigns, 14 states are considering a total of 50 pending measures that raise new hurdles for ballot measures.

Republican lawmakers in Arkansas, for example, recently passed new requirements for ballot measures to have signatures of support from 50 counties, rather than just 15. (Three years ago, Arkansas voters had rejected a similar requirement.) Republican lawmakers in other states are seeking to raise the number of votes needed for a ballot measure to pass.

GOP elected officials say they want to protect the integrity of the ballot initiative process, which they argue is too easily influenced by out-of-state interests.

But abortion rights advocates see a direct response to their past victories. In Kentucky, Kansas, Michigan, and Montana in 2022, between 52 and 59 percent of voters cast their ballots in support of reproductive rights. If their referendum thresholds had been 60 percent, as some states now propose, all those initiatives would have failed.

While Republicans mostly deny their proposed changes to ballot initiatives are motivated by opposition to abortion rights, some of their less guarded remarks and contradictory behavior have suggested otherwise.

The fight over abortion rights and access to the ballot is playing out right now in Ohio. Advocates are organizing there for a new constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights, and last week filed more than 700,000 signatures to place it on the upcoming November ballot. They’ll need 413,487 valid signatures to qualify.

It’s not yet clear how many votes the referendum will need to pass. State Republican lawmakers, who voted last year to repeal August special elections as low-turnout wastes of money, recently authorized one anyway: This August, Ohio voters will determine whether to raise the vote threshold for passing future constitutional changes from a simple majority, as has been the case for 100 years, to 60 percent.

For months, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose denied he had switched positions on August special elections because of abortion rights. In June, though, video footage reported by News 5 Cleveland and the Ohio Capital Journal showed LaRose admitting abortion was motivating his stance. “Some people say this is all about abortion. Well, you know what?” he was recorded saying. “It’s 100 percent about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution — the left wants to jam it in there this coming November.”

Ohio Republican state Senate President Matt Huffman separately went so far as to say that holding a $20 million August special election would be worth it “if we save 30,000 lives as a result.” (There were 21,813 abortions performed in Ohio in 2021.)

Anti-abortion groups are casting Ohio’s abortion rights amendment as about parents’ rights and youth transgender health care instead

Ohio’s is the only abortion rights referendum battle expected this year, which means the messaging and campaign tactics for and against reproductive rights are being closely watched by leaders nationwide.

Since polling continues to suggest the proposed amendment for reproductive freedom has popular support — a poll last month found nearly 60 percent of Ohioans support the idea — opponents have been working to change the subject to health care for transgender youth, something they hope voters will find more politically objectionable.

Ohio’s proposed amendment would affirm that “every 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.” Opponents claim the language is so broad that it would create a new right to gender-affirming surgery, and therefore invalidate the state’s current requirement for parental consent.

Opponents organizing under the banner of “Protect Women Ohio” have made the trans youth health care argument central to their strategy, spending over $5 million on TV and digital advertising this past spring. They are regularly referring to the measure as an “anti-parent” amendment.

Jonathan Entin, a constitutional law professor at Case Western University, said it’s a “bogus” and “dishonest” interpretation of the amendment, noting that many things can have bearing on one’s ability to reproduce. “If you drink too much alcohol, if you ingest certain drugs, if you drive too fast — all of those things could have shorter or longer term implications for your ability to reproduce,” Entin told News 5 Cleveland. “That doesn’t mean that speed limits and drug laws and alcohol regulations are somehow going to be affected by this amendment if it’s adopted.”

Other experts say it could only affect parental consent laws if someone were to successfully challenge the rules as unconstitutional, though opponents allege that is the long-term goal of the ACLU. The civil liberties group has long opposed parental consent laws, and an ACLU Ohio lawyer in February said existing laws that conflict with a constitutional amendment “should not be enforced.” Andrew Everett, an ACLU spokesperson, told Vox they “currently have no plans to challenge parental consent laws in Ohio.”

Coalition leaders pushing for the abortion rights amendment say the focus on transgender issues is a desperate attempt to distract from the unpopularity of abortion bans, and that Ohio case law generally requires parental consent for youth medical care.

Nationwide, activists organizing for other abortion rights measures are preparing for similar opposition campaigns.

In May, activists in Florida launched a new campaign to place a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights on the ballot in 2024. To preempt some of the attacks being deployed in Ohio, activists kept their proposed wording more narrowly tailored to abortion, and explicitly say that their proposed amendment “does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

In Arizona, where activists are considering launching a constitutional ballot campaign to protect abortion rights in 2024, leaders are strategizing on how to word their proposal in light of the kinds of attacks being fired elsewhere. “We expect all those tactics in Ohio and other states to be exported here,” said Susan Shapiro, the director of Indivisible Northern Arizona.

Abortion rights leaders are debating whether to codify Roe v. Wade standards or push beyond them

The major ballot campaigns that have launched so far are mostly seeking to restore the rights that existed under Roe v. Wade, where women could end pregnancies up to 24 weeks, or the point at which a fetus could survive outside the womb — known as the “viability standard.”

More than 90 percent of US abortions occur within the first 13 weeks of a pregnancy, and those occurring later are typically due to a fetal complication, a life-threatening risk to the pregnant person, or an inability to pay. The ballot measures so far have generally sought to preserve exceptions for abortion beyond viability if a doctor recommends it.

In Florida, for example, activists are collecting signatures for an amendment that would ban restrictions on abortion “before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” In Ohio, the amendment says “abortion may be prohibited after fetal viability” except in cases when “the pregnant patient’s treating physician” deems it necessary to protect their life or health.

And in South Dakota, a state that has a long track record of winning progressive ballot measures, a group of activists who formerly led a winning campaign to expand Medicaid are now looking to pass a referendum that would ban restrictions on abortion during the first trimester, and allow regulation beyond that in consultation with the medical judgment of the pregnant patient’s physician. They are calling their campaign an effort to “restore Roe.”

But some advocates say it’s not worth investing time, money, and energy into codifying the viability framework that existed under Roe v. Wade, given that the exceptions to abortion often proved too difficult for women to use in practice. Many activists see an opportunity to fight for stronger protection now that the overturn of Roe has wiped the slate clean, similar to what activists passed on the ballot in Vermont last fall, which added language about reproductive autonomy to the state’s constitution, and made no mention of viability or restrictions at stages of pregnancy.

These tensions are evident in Missouri, a state that bans nearly all abortions. Activists have filed 11 versions of a proposed initiative petition to codify abortion rights in the state’s constitution. All versions would permit restrictions after fetal viability, or 24 weeks of gestation. (Some also make clear the state can enact parental consent laws for minors; others make no mention of that.) The precise version advocates might rally behind is not yet clear, but back in March, Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri withdrew its support due to the proposals’ language around viability.

The Planned Parenthood affiliate argued in a memo that viability “is not a medical construct and has no relevance to clinical care. It is a political construct set under Roe v. Wade. We now know that the viability standard tried and failed to balance state and personal interests, and it did not work.” Pamela Merritt, the Missouri-based executive director of Medical Students for Choice, likewise told Politico in April her group would never advocate for a viability limit. “It’s a legacy of Roe that we don’t need to resurrect,” she said.

Colleen McNicholas, the chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, told Vox they believe people deserve abortion access “locally where they are,” but that “we can not forget that the Roe framework did leave so many people behind.” On whether they would support a constitutional ballot measure if one emerged from the 11 proposed, McNichols said the group will “continue to stay engaged and will reassess our engagement every step of the way.”

Supporters of using the viability standard say advocates need to be practical about politics. According to Pew, just 22 percent of adults say abortion should be legal after the fetus can survive outside the womb, though most say there should be exceptions if the pregnant person’s life is in danger or the baby would be born with severe disabilities.

The ambivalence over these questions has led to muted support from national organizations for the ballot campaign in South Dakota — a red state with a real shot at overturning its abortion ban. A poll last year found 65 percent of South Dakotans thought their state’s restrictions on abortion were too strong, and that the question should be decided at the ballot box. In the last decade activists have won voter referendums on campaign finance, payday lending, medical and recreational marijuana, and most recently, Medicaid expansion.

Planned Parenthood North Central States, which represents Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and South Dakota, has also not issued any public statements on the campaign, and did not return requests for comment.

Some pro-choice states are looking to ballot measures to strengthen abortion rights further

Following on the heels of Michigan, Vermont, and California in 2022, more blue and purple states are considering ballot measures as ways to both protect existing abortion rights and expand them further.

Maryland lawmakers have already voted to put abortion rights on their 2024 general election ballot, in a constitutional amendment that affirms every person has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom, including the ability to decide to prevent, continue, or end one’s own pregnancy. A poll from last year found 78 percent of Maryland voters supported the idea of a state constitutional amendment protecting abortion.

New York lawmakers also plan to put before voters an amendment to the state’s equal protection amendment that would bar discrimination based on “pregnancy outcomes” or “gender expression.” While they could put it on the upcoming November ballot, lawmakers are holding it until 2024 to boost its chances.

Nevada is a third state that is likely to place an amendment on the ballot to protect abortion rights, though not until 2026. A majority vote is required by the Nevada legislature in two successive legislative sessions, and a proposed abortion rights measure received its first round of approval this past spring. The next time lawmakers could vote on it would be in 2025. An April Nevada Independent poll found 62 percent of respondents said they’d support adding the right to obtain an abortion to the state’s constitution.

Whether Colorado activists will pursue an abortion rights ballot measure remains an open question, though leaders have been exploring the idea for the last nine months. “A decision has not been made about pursuing it,” Olivia Cappello, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told Vox. In 2020 Colorado voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have banned abortion after 22 weeks, and last year Colorado lawmakers enacted the Reproductive Health Equity Act, a statutory right to abortion.

Meanwhile, anti-abortion activists in Colorado are eyeing the ballot box once again for their own ends. Last month, the Colorado Life Initiative filed an amendment for 2024 that would define a “living child” as “any living human being during any developmental stage.” The proposal adds that anyone who intentionally causes the death of a “living child” would be held to “equal penalties” as those for “causing the death of any other living child.”