The Gavel outside the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio, September 20, 2023, at 65 S. Front Street, Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original article.)
The Ohio Secretary of State’s Office released the names of March 19 primary candidates for the Supreme Court of Ohio. Candidates include some incumbents, one appointee going for an incumbent’s seat, and a few new faces.
The candidates that filed are:
Michael Donnelly – Donnelly has been a justice on the court since 2019. Before joining the court, he spent his legal career in Cuyahoga County as a judge for the court of common pleas, elected to the position in 2004, 2010 and 2016, according to a profile on the SCO website. He also served on the Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Court for the county after serving as an assistant county prosecutor.
Melody Stewart – Stewart has been on the court since 2018, after serving on the Eighth District Court of Appeals starting in 2006. She was assistant law director in Cleveland and East Cleveland, and has worked at Cleveland State University’s law school, the University of Toledo College of Law, Ursuline College and Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law.
Joseph Deters – Deters was appointed to the court by Gov. Mike DeWine in Jan. 2023 to fill the seat vacated when Justice Sharon Kennedy was elected as chief justice. Instead of running for the seat he currently occupies, Deters is running to replace Justice Melody Stewart on the court. Deters was previously the Hamilton County’s prosecutor and clerk of courts, and served as Ohio Treasurer in 1998 and 2002.
Lisa Forbes – Currently a judge for Ohio’s Eight District Court of Appeals, Forbes was elected to the position in 2020, after serving as a private litigator in Ohio.
Terri Jamison – Jamison and Forbes will face off this March, something the 10th District Court of Appeals judge is familiar, having run against Justice Pat Fischer in the 2022 general election. Jamison worked as an assistant public defender in the Franklin County Public Defender’s office before working in private practice. She moved on to the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas in 2021 and was elected to the court of appeals in 2020.
Dan Hawkins – Franklin County Court of Common Pleas judge Hawkins is running to fill the seat Deters hopes to vacate if he’s elected to take over Stewart’s seat. Hawkins was elected to the Franklin County court in 2019.
Megan Shanahan – Shanahan is currently a judge with the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas, hoping to unseat Justice Donnelly on the court. Shanahan was to the county court in 2011, after being appointed in 2015. She was re-elected to the bench in 2022.
Deters, Shanahan and Hawkins all have the endorsement of the Ohio Republican Party, who said in a statement the “makeup of the Ohio Supreme Court is at stake, and Ohioans stand ready to elect strong, conservative justices who will uphold the law as it is written.”
The Ohio Democratic Party has endorsed incumbents Stewart and Donnelly, along with Forbes, according to their website of candidates.
The supreme court races are currently on the partisan ballot, but another incumbent, Justice Jennifer Brunner, has sued to overturn the law allowing party affiliation to be included in supreme court justice races. Democratic Sen. Bill DeMora of Columbus also introduced Senate Bill 201 this month, hoping to reverse the law change made in 2021, saying it impacts a judge’s ability to be impartial.
SUSAN TEBBEN
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
In a recent letter to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Ohio is among the top states with children losing Medicaid coverage.
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra sent a letter to DeWine urging the state to “ensure that no child in your state who still meets eligibility criteria for Medicaid or (the Children’s Health Insurance Program) loses their health coverage” for any reason, including “red tape” or “other avoidable reasons” as COVID-19 enrollment provisions start to fade away.
The letter said Ohio’s Medicaid and CHIP — a program that gives health coverage to children whose families aren’t eligible for Medicaid — enrollment declined by more than 86,000 children as of Sept. 2023.
That represents a 6% drop since March of this year, and makes Ohio the fourth-highest in declines across the U.S. during that period, the U.S. Department of Medicaid found.
Texas was the highest with a decline of 524,909, followed by Florida with 366,633 and Georgia with 149,080.
Becerra said keeping Medicaid enrollment up is especially important for communities of color, with more than half of children in the U.S. on Medicaid or CHIP in Hispanic, Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaska Native communities, according to the U.S. Department of Medicaid.
“My department stands ready to do all that we can to help your state advance this goal, including by providing Ohio with the flexibility to pause procedural disenrollments for children while it adopts other strategies to ensure eligible children remain enrolled,” Becerra wrote.
Procedural disenrollments happen when program participants don’t complete the renewal process, which can happen because the state does not have correct contact information, or simply because the participant doesn’t meet the renewal timeline.
Those disenrollments had been halted in March 2020, but the halt ended on March 31 of this year.
According to a tracker by KFF — nonpartisan health policy researchers formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation — Ohio has seen more than 514,000 individuals disenrolled as of Dec. 13, 2023, and across the states KFF studied, 71% of disenrolled participants lost their coverage because of procedural disenrollment.
In Ohio, that number was slightly higher than the national amount, at 74%. Only 26% of those who lost coverage in Ohio were disenrolled because they were determined to be ineligible, according to KFF.
Nationally, the analysis showed four in 10 Medicaid disenrollments were children for the 21 states who released data by age group.
Becerra noted suggestions from HHS for Ohio to improve enrollment rates by allowing Medicaid managed care organizations to help with renewals, and giving an extra year for those who haven’t gone through the renewal process yet.
He also encouraged improvements to the auto-renewal process, and increased outreach efforts to places such as schools and community organizations.
The Ohio House Democratic Caucus was quick to jump on the letter’s contents, with state Rep. Dr. Beth Liston, D-Dublin, writing on behalf of the caucus to urge DeWine to continue the pause on procedural disenrollment for the next year, “while Medicaid works with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to adopt policies ensuring that children remain enrolled.”
“No child in Ohio should go without access to the care they need,” Liston wrote in a letter to DeWine. “Every Ohioans deserves to know that their family will have coverage when they need it most.”
DeWine’s spokesperson, Dan Tierney, verified to the OCJ that the HHS “has communicated with our administration and noted Ohio is farther ahead in redeterminations than other states, which means Ohio Medicaid is doing a better job complying with these directives than other states, which is something to be commended.”
Tierney also said with Medicaid/CHIP numbers, perspective is also needed.
“Ohio is our nation’s seventh largest state, so it is unsurprising that Ohio ranks where it does in this ranking of raw numbers,” he said.
SUSAN TEBBEN
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
Feeding America and Akron-Canton Regional Food Bank host Hungry to Help Lesson Plan for students at an Ohio elementary school in Fairlawn, Ohio. (Photo by Duane Prokop/Getty Images for Feeding America)
As Ohio food banks see record-breaking amounts of need, the state is also at risk of losing federal funding that could help residents get essential needs and boosts in employment.
After the most recent state budget passed with a plan to redesign the education and training piece of the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), food and employment advocates across the state watched as the program became a “compliance machine,” rather than a way to bring Ohioans out of poverty.
“The bottom line is that our current program that we’ve been running for many, many years in Ohio does not … meet the needs of employers, it does not increase employment, it does not increase wages,” Rachel Cahill, a visiting fellow with the Center for Community Solutions, said during a recent webinar by the Ohio Workforce Coalition.
The federally-funded SNAP program’s future in Ohio could also be at risk after negative evaluations from the US Department of Agriculture and federal agencies meant to “assess how well our staff employment training program is working or not working,” according to Hope Lane-Gavin, director of nutrition policy and programs with the Ohio Association of Food Banks.
“Ohio has continued to produce bad management evaluations … that determine we are not screening participants for exemptions adequately and we are not providing supportive services,” said Lane-Gavin, who also participated in the OWC webinar on SNAP benefits and local implementation.
Cahill said she is in a work group aimed at redesigning the state SNAP program. She mentioned a “written warning letter” that was sent to the state from the USDA saying federal funding for the next fiscal year may be in jeopardy if the state doesn’t bring their program into compliance.
“If we don’t get this right, if we don’t redesign this well, we are going to lose that federal funding, and we won’t be able to support the type of programs … that we have now,” Cahill said.
The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services’ SNAP Employment & Training Plan states a new policy was implemented by the state effective July 1, 2023, “to help ensure all requirements are being met prior to sanctioning an individual who is non-compliant with SNAP E&T.”
The document states the change was made as a result of notification from the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, which said “until Ohio is in full compliance with regulations affecting program access, the state must take steps immediately to ensure that SNAP E&T participants are not improperly sanctioned.”
The current Ohio program expands on work requirements that are already in place through the federal SNAP program’s regulations by including the state option of mandatory employment requirements for “able-bodied adults without dependents” or ABAWDS.
Under the federal program, while there are work requirements, there is also a three-month grace period allowing individuals to attempt to gain employment before they’re removed from the SNAP program.
With Ohio’s mandatory employment and training, that three-month grace period does not exist for ABAWDS, unless they’ve been a victim of domestic violence, according to Lane-Gavin.
“So, the federal time limit recognizes that individuals need access to food first before any meaningful attempts are made at identifying adequate and sustainable employment,” Lane-Gavin said.
Job training and barriers
For those programs who provide job training to SNAP-eligible Ohioans, the idea that someone is forced to participate doesn’t necessarily improve the chances of success.
At the Center for Employment Opportunities, an Ohio-based program working to help formerly incarcerated individuals re-enter the workforce, program leaders would rather work with those who commit voluntarily. That way, CEO knows those that come to their program are ready to improve their lives, rather than merely check a state-mandated box.
“Individuals are coming to CEO really motivated to work, but are facing barriers in connecting to the right opportunities,” Bacon said.
Bacon said studies of their program participants show about 80% of them are eligible for SNAP, and access to basic necessities as the formerly incarcerated come back out is needed as they navigate their new situation.
“We know that there’s a need, we know that people need both training and food security, and we’re seeing that play out in our program,” Bacon said.
While advocates are hoping for state reform, the opportunity for federal reform outside of the long-awaited farm bill, at least for one “unintended consequence” of the work requirements included in SNAP, could be on the horizon.
Federal legislation called the Training & Nutrition Stability Act, co-sponsored by Ohio Republican U.S. Rep. Max Miller, was touted by Bacon as a fix for a clause in SNAP eligibility that counts wages earned in job training toward benefit levels. Counting those wages could potentially reduce benefits or make a household ineligible, Bacon said.
The TNSA would exclude that income with regard to eligibility.
Locally, Lane-Gavin said the state needs to jump in to help county Job and Family Services agencies deal with the heavy implementation load that comes from the mandatory education and training requirements.
“Our county agencies are stretched thin … and SNAP employment and training is a compliance issue,” Lane-Gavin said. “It is just a paperwork machine.”
Part of the changes needed as part of the SNAP program in Ohio is a “paradigm shift” for county JFS offices that will not only allow them to stem the flow of paperwork, but also gain back the trust of program participants, who may have “animosity” because of the “punitive” nature of the current program, according to Cahill.
“If we really want to do meaningful recruitment and outreach for an employment and training program … we are going to have to do some rebuilding of trust with the community and that’s not going to happen overnight,” Cahill said.
SUSAN TEBBEN
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
The newest measure to change the Ohio Constitution and reform the redistricting process in Ohio has cleared its most recent hurdle: a typo.
The Ohio Ballot Board met Monday, quickly certifying a proposed constitutional amendment that would “replace the current politician-run redistricting process.” The board’s only role is to determine if an amendment follows the legal requirements that the measure only contain one amendment to the state’s constitution.
The certification came as no surprise, since the board had previously certified the amendment in October. This time around, the re-certification was needed after the creator of the proposed amendment, anti-gerrymandering group Citizens Not Politicians, noticed a typo in one of the deadlines mentioned in the amendment.
Attorney Don McTigue was present at Monday’s ballot board meeting, and said that nothing about the intent of the amendment changes with the correction of the error.
The amendment also went through multiple rounds of revisions, after Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost rejected the measure twice, saying amendment reviewers identified “omissions and misstatements” that the AG said would “mislead a potential signer as to the actual scope and effect of the proposed amendment.”
The amendment would replace the current redistricting process, also created through a constitutional amendment, and would eliminate the Ohio Redistricting Commission as it stands now, a seven-member panel made up of all elected officials, five from the GOP majority and two Democrats.
The commission would be replaced with a “citizen-led commission,” chosen by a bipartisan panel. If approved by the voters, the amendment would create the Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission, which would have 15 members, five matching the political party of the governor at the time, five from the party of the gubernatorial candidate who received the second-most votes in the most recent election, and five unaffiliated members.
The statehouse districts adopted in September by the current commission are being challenged in a case before the state’s highest court, but no decision has been made.
The ORC has been rife with chaos and uncertainty as well, as the last two years contained multiple line-up changes, arguments over deadlines and lack of action, and even a stumbled start to the most recent adoption process.
In the new amendment proposal, the citizen-led commission would have to create a redistricting plan with political party proportions that “correspond closely to statewide partisan preferences of the voters of Ohio,” and the commission has to state how the districts’ partisan divide was determined.
The group who wrote the measure defines “correspond closely” as no more than a 3-percentage-point difference between the redistricting plans and the statewide voter preferences, “unless arithmetically impossible.”
The Ohio Supreme Court holds the jurisdiction for all court challenges of redistricting plans in the amendment, just as it does in the current system. That system was criticized, however, for not creating enough of an enforcement mechanism. The state supreme court rejected seven different district maps, but did not hold commission members in contempt for missing deadlines.
The commission also did not receive any consequences for eschewing a proposal from court-ordered mapmakers, brought in on the taxpayers’ dime, and passing a map that was nearly identical to a previous, unconstitutional statehouse map.
In the new process, if approved by voters, “special masters” would be chosen to “review the record before the commission and hold a public hearing” if a court challenged is filed against a redistricting plan. Then, a report must be issued “as to whether the commission abused its discretion in its determination that the adopted plan complies with the partisan fairness criteria required by the amendment for a redistricting plan.”
Once the report from the special masters is released, objections to the report can be filed with the Ohio Supreme Court, who will ultimately rule on the maps.
The commission would have an appropriation from the Ohio General Assembly of $7 million for 2025 redistricting under the new measure, plus more for the bipartisan panel who chooses the commission.
The cost of the special masters would come from the Ohio Supreme Court’s budget, according to the amendment language.
Signature collection for the initiative can begin again, now that the state ballot board has re-approved the measure. According to Citizens Not Politicians, the group must collect 413,487 valid Ohio voter signatures by July 3, 2024, to qualify for the general election next year.
SUSAN TEBBEN
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
Members of the Jewish community have spoken out against abortion bans in Ohio, saying it infringes on their religious freedom. Photo by Morgan Trau, WEWS.
Religious variations abound in the state of Ohio, and some members of different churches are taking what they’ve learned in their lives and through decades of experience into the ballot box as they vote on Issue 1, the reproductive rights constitutional amendment.
For Catholics like Alexandra Belcher and Jennifer Perry, Issue 1 is a choice between the opinions of their religious leaders and their experiences with bodily autonomy.
For Perry, a physician assistant from Tiffin, growing up Catholic meant she believed in pro-life messages up until she voted in her first election.
“I voted Republican because that’s what the religious leaders said supported pro-life values,” Perry said.
Now that she works in medicine and has gone through multiple complicated pregnancies, Perry developed a perspective built on her experiences and not the values of far-away leaders.
“My view of what defines pro-life and what defines pro-choice has become just so much broader, and it’s not a black and white issue at all,” Perry told the OCJ.
With the “narrow” view that life begins at conception, Perry said she felt her belief system did “a disservice” to her in preparing for the future.
“We weren’t given both sides of the coin,” she said. “We weren’t given both perspectives.”
Struggling with infertility, and losing a “desperately wanted” child in a second-trimester miscarriage brought her new light on the struggles even individuals who want to become parents must go through.
“I desperately wanted that child, my husband desperately wanted that child, and I had to go through labor and delivery knowing that child wasn’t going to be ours,” Perry said. “To think that a mother … would have to go through that out-of-state, not with her family and friends or her chosen doctor, that’s just excruciating to me.”
Perry is still a practicing Catholic, and feels strongly that she and those like her should stay in the church and help bring those perspectives to fellow parishioners, in hopes of bringing change to the opinions of the religion.
The Catholic Conference of Ohio, which calls itself “the official voice of the Catholic Church in Ohio on matters of public policy,” has taken a strong opposing stance on Issue 1. The conference produced a letter signed by nine leaders in Ohio dioceses including Cincinnati, Cleveland, Toledo, Steubenville, Columbus, Youngstown, Canton and Parma.
“The Church must not be silent and cannot remain on the sidelines when confronted with such a clear threat to human life,” the letter from Feb. 28 stated.
COLUMBUS, OH — MAY 14, 2022: Hundreds gather at a rally to support abortion rights less than two weeks after a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion showed a likely reversal of Roe v. Wade, May 14, 2022, at the Ohio Statehouse, Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for the Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original article.)
For Cleveland-area pharmacist Alexandra Belcher, she has no problem ignoring the opinions the church has on abortion, but remains open to talking with her friends and fellow parishioners about the nuances of reproductive health.
“The more I grew up, the more I realized this can not be up to somebody else,” Belcher told the OCJ.
Belcher went to Catholic school for 12 years, and is still a practicing Catholic, but nothing could have prepared her for her ectopic pregnancy, an unviable pregnancy that can be life-threatening for the pregnant person.
“In my medical chart, the resolution is coded as an abortion,” she said.
But that resolution involved medication that was administered in a hospital, so Belcher could be monitored by a doctor.
“The awful thing about those drugs is that they take you into labor and delivery,” she said. “So all you can hear is crying babies, the song they play (when a baby is born), and I sat there for hours while they made sure everything was going well with my medication.”
Even after leaving the hospital, Belcher suffered “excruciating” pain, so much so that when she went into labor in her next pregnancy, she was surprised to find how much less severe the pain of childbirth was for her.
“Nobody is going into a decision to have an abortion joyfully, whatever has happened to get them to the point of an abortion,” Belcher said. “It’s still not a joyful decision.”
Members of other religions, including faith leaders, are thinking about Issue 1 with a focus on the freedom to decide rather than the wrath of a higher power.
Rev. Timothy Ahrens showed his support for Issue 1 in an ad by Ohioans United For Reproductive Rights.
“As a pastor I’ve counseled families on the most important personal decisions, even abortion,” he said in the 30-second ad. “Abortion is a private family decision. Government needs to stay out of family decision making.”
Ahrens is the senior minister of the First Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ in downtown Columbus, a role he has served in since 2000. He has been a pastor for nearly 40 years.
“The laws of Ohio right now hurt my mother, my sister, my sister-in-law, my wife, my daughters, my daughter-in-laws and my granddaughters,” Ahrens said. “I feel very strongly that the government needs to get out of trying to manage people’s lives in relation to reproductive freedom.”
Ahrens acknowledged that other Christians denominations disagree with his stance on abortion.
“Those who stand against abortion do so based on biblical, foundational thoughts,” Ahrens. “I don’t look at what they’re saying as groundless.”
He mentioned Psalm 139 as a passage that mentions God “knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
“It never says I knew you at the moment of conception,” Ahrens said. “This has a range of perspectives, if we really sat down and boiled it down to the moment of conception.”
While it’s clear what most religious denominations think abortion, it’s ultimately up to the individual members of a congregation to cast their ballot on Issue 1.
“It comes down to how closely people who are part of religious congregations are listening to the cues that they are being given,” said Kim Conger, University of Cincinnati’s director of the masters of public administration, who studies how religious advocacy groups impact politics.
“There seems to be more variation across different parishes about how strongly a priest is pushing on the idea of not just that abortion is a sin, but voting for issue 1 would be a sin,” Conger said.
The idea of one religion stepping up to tell individuals what they should believe about reproductive health doesn’t sit well with Belcher or Perry, and as medical professionals, they don’t agree with the state getting involved either.
“The reasoning is not because it’s in the best interest, or because there is evidence-based medicine, the reasoning is this magical belief that this group of cells is a person who has rights,” Belcher said.
For Perry, the reproductive debate comes down to American roots in religious freedom and the necessity for separation of church and state.
“Because we allow for so many different expressions of religion, or at least we’re supposed to, if that starts to crumble, I feel like the fabric or the foundation of what America was build on starts to crumble,” Perry said.
Watching battles with insurance companies and socio-economic issues for patients having necessary medical treatment, Perry also sees much bigger issues the state could be addressing instead.
“It’s very hard to be in health care right now, and this is another huge burden you’re placing on these providers,” she said.
Having faced these moral and professional questions, Perry and Belcher both hope for a future for their children where medical decisions are made between a patient and a medical provider, without the intervention of either the government or their chosen religion.
“I think that when it comes down to it, if I’m ever faced with the pearly gates, the God that I believe in will understand,” Belcher said.
MEGAN HENRY
Megan Henry is a reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal and has spent the past five years reporting in Ohio on various topics including education, healthcare, business and crime. She previously worked at The Columbus Dispatch, part of the USA Today Network.
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series looking at the language of Ohio Issue 1 and the reproductive rights it would impact. The full language of the amendment can be found here.
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The topic of parental rights does not appear in Ohio Issue 1 on the ballot Nov. 7.
There is no mention of denying any rights to parents in the process of enshrining reproductive rights like abortion, contraception, miscarriage care and infertility treatment into the Ohio Constitution.
“I don’t think Issue 1 would affect parent’s rights at all,” said Tracy Thomas, the Seiberling Chair for Constitutional Law and director of the University of Akron’s Center for Constitutional Law.
Having studied reproductive rights cases in Ohio and nationwide, including the Dobbs case that overturned Roe v. Wade, Thomas said historically, “parental rights have consistently been retained.”
“I would expect that those (rights) can all stay consistent,” Thomas told the Capital Journal.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost also acknowledged that previous abortion rights court cases have upheld parental consent in a legal analysis of Issue 1 he released in early October.
Yost went on to say “the amendment does not specifically address parental consent.”
But, Yost argued, that consent “would certainly be challenged on the basis that Issue 1 gives abortion rights to any pregnant ‘individual,’ not just to a ‘woman.’”
The term “individual” is currently used 36 times in the Ohio Constitution, including in the definition of “health care system,” the eligibility of officeholders, and clauses on temporary housing and corporate property.
Only one use of the word “individual” is connected to a gender specifier: the constitutional language on marriage status “only one man and one woman” can be in a marriage “valid or recognized by this state,” and “relationships of unmarried individuals” can not hold the same legal status.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — OCTOBER 06: Sister Amor of the Bridgettine Sisters of Columbus holds a sign on High Street during the Ohio March for Life against November’s Issue 1 reproductive rights amendment, October 6, 2023, outside the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original article.)
Still, Religious lobbies and anti-abortion rights groups that oppose the amendment have used that message as one of their primary arguments against the measure since the effort to get it on the ballot began.
In a new ad for the Issue 1 opposition group Protect Women Ohio, a coalition including Ohio Right to Life and other anti-abortion rights groups, Gov. Mike DeWine and First Lady Fran DeWine feature as leaders against the measure.
Fran DeWine is shown in the ad saying Issue 1 “would deny parents the right to be involved when their daughter is making the most important decision of her life.”
Gov. DeWine admits in the ad that Ohioans “are divided on the issue of abortion,” but calls Issue 1 “not right for Ohio.”
The Catholic Conference of Ohio pointed to the first line of the proposed amendment and the word “individual,” saying the use of the word would allow anyone under age 18 to “have an abortion, or make any reproductive decision without their parents’ consent or notification.”
State Sen. Kristina Roegner, R-Hudson, the sponsor of the six-week abortion ban law that is currently on hold as court cases determine its fate, co-sponsored a resolution in the Ohio Senate on Oct. 11 officially standing against Issue 1.
In opposing Issue 1, she said the measure was “extreme, nefarious” and would “harm women and take away parental rights.”
The resolution passed with the GOP majority unanimously approving it. The seven Democratic senators all voted against the measure.
The resolution itself proclaims “parents are the ultimate arbiter of what is best for their children.”
In one paragraph of the resolution, sponsors Roegner and state Sen. Michele Reynolds, R-Canal Winchester, write that Issue 1 “will eliminate many, if not all, state laws regarding abortion,” including “parental notification requirements.”
In the next paragraph, the resolution states Issue 1 “may” eliminate parental rights.
Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, pushed back against the resolution by bringing up a decade-old legal process present in Ohio called “judicial bypass.”
Judicial bypass, as it stands now, has been around since 2012 in the state, after then-Gov. John Kasich signed a law that prohibits forcing a minor to have an abortion, but leaves in place a legal way for minors to petition juvenile court to bypass parental consent.
The Ohio Supreme Court explained the process in Rule 23 of a 2015 amendment to its “rules of superintendence,” an internal operations document for all Ohio courts.
The legal method uses the court system to allow underage individuals to make decisions for themselves where parental consent would typically be necessary, such as in cases of abuse.
“If the court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the minor is sufficiently mature and well enough informed to decide intelligently whether to have an abortion, the court shall grant the petition and permit the minor to consent to the abortion,” the law states.
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series looking at the language of Ohio Issue 1 and the reproductive rights it would impact. The full language of the amendment can be found here.
When Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, the physicians at Ohio Reproductive Medicine took to their website, hoping to reassure patients that their care would still be available.
“It is truly hard to fathom that in 2022, our reproductive freedom, a fundamental human right, is now at risk,” the statement on the website read.
Though the Columbus business said it strongly opposed the overturning of Roe as a whole, the focus of their statement was on those undergoing or considering fertility treatments.
“We ardently stand alongside our current and past patients — as well as anyone who wishes to build a family in the future with the help of fertility treatments,” according to the statement.
The effects that repealing nationwide abortion access would have on fertility treatments like in-vitro fertilization (IVF) weren’t clearly spelled out by the U.S. Supreme Court in its Dobbs decision, but physicians have worried about what various bans mean when it comes to fertilized embryos and the definition of the start of life.
A hard-fought battle
Infertility can happen for 10% to 15% of couples, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, and CDC data found 1 in 5 women in the U.S. couldn’t get pregnant after a year of trying.
For those who have insurance and/or can afford fertility treatments, the process is long, arduous, and often involves disappointment along the way if an implanted embryo fails to turn into a pregnancy, or becomes a medical complication.
Ohioans have expressed worry that they won’t be able to utilize fertility treatments in the same way if abortion is banned in the state, whether that be at six-weeks under current law (though that law is held up in court and not currently being enforced), or if other regulations fall into place keeping physicians from treating life-threatening ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages, which are considered “spontaneous abortions” by the medical community.
After the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court overturning nationwide abortion rights, the fears regarding fertility treatments came closer to home, as state Rep. Gary Click, R-Vickery, introduced a bill that would have considered the start of “personhood” to be the moment of conception.
That, physicians said, could include fertilized embryos sitting in cryogenic chambers at their facilities.
The “life begins at conception” message has been used by anti-abortion groups nationwide for many years, though the medical community does not universally agree on the beginning of life, or if there’s one certain point when cardiac activity begins in a fetus.
At a rally one year ago to support anti-abortion causes, state Rep. Jena Powell, R-Arcanum, spoke of ways to “abolish abortion” in the state, making the claim that the “science is crystal clear” that “life begins at conception.”
Powell urged support for the “personhood” bill.
“The shackles are no longer holding us back as state legislators, and we can and we must be a voice for the unborn child in Ohio,” Powell said at the time.
The cost of access
Fertility treatments and the freezing of embryos has become a common practice, but that doesn’t mean it’s available to everyone, because it’s a costly endeavor with complicated insurance regulations.
The Center for Reproductive Rights says barriers to access include “limited information, restrictive laws and policies, stigma, high costs and more.”
“Issues surrounding assisted reproduction implicate core human rights — including the rights to health, sexual and reproductive health, decision making about reproductive life (such as if and when to have children), benefit from scientific progress, equality and non-discrimination and informed consent,” the center said in a statement.
The center’s research on infertility and IVF access in the United States showed that in 2020, clinical infertility impacted about 12% of women ages 15-44, but only 24% of people in the U.S. seeking care for infertility could access it.
“The limited number of private insurance markets and public programs covering infertility services, combined with high out-of-pocket expenses, result in significant economic barriers to needed infertility treatment,” the CRR stated in the report.
Self-pay packages at the University Hospitals Fertility Center in Northeast Ohio, for example, price IVF, including lab work and one embryo transfer at $12,775.
An egg donor package runs $14,030 for self-pay patients, and a surrogate (also called a “gestational carrier”) is priced at more than $15,000.
Ohio law mandates that private health insurance cover basic services, including “medically necessary” services that could fall under fertility treatment. The Ohio Revised Code includes “infertility services” under “preventative health care services.”
Though this could include the diagnosis of infertility and treatment of reproductive system problems, other services involved in the process may not be included.
“Many procedures fall into a gray zone, including IVF, which leaves much interpretation and denial of claims,” according to Ohio Reproductive Medicine.
In 2021, Ohio added “reproductive health services” into the Ohio Administrative Code, allowing Medicaid-eligible individuals access to “pregnancy prevention services,” including “contraceptive management,” pregnancy testing and “fertility awareness.”
What is not covered under Medicaid is infertility treatment, including IVF, “assisted reproductive technologies,” artificial insemination, or surgery to “promote or restore fertility.”
Ohio is not alone in keeping Medicaid recipients out of the fertility treatment landscape, as very few states nationally extend those services through Medicaid.
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series looking at the language of Ohio Issue 1 and the reproductive rights it would impact. The full language of the amendment can be found here.
In the Nov. 7 general election, Ohioans will decide whether or not to approve Issue 1, a constitutional amendment for reproductive rights.
While the language of the amendment focuses primarily on abortion, it also lists other rights that would be cemented into the state constitution, including miscarriage care, fertility treatments, contraception, and the right to continue one’s own pregnancy. Today we will look at how and why the proposed amendment seeks to protect access to contraception.
The use of contraception is not illegal in Ohio, and though it’s commonly called “birth control,” the medications are also used for other conditions, like ovarian cysts, polycystic ovary syndrome and endometriosis symptoms.
Push to ‘reconsider’ contraception case
Contraception has long been a target of debate, with fears of further regulations increasing after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas brought up Griswold v. Connecticut during his concurrence to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the 2022 decision that overturned the half-century of abortion legalization given in Roe v. Wade.
The ruling in Griswold overturned a Connecticut law from the 1800s that banned the use of “any drug, medical device or other instrument in furthering contraception,” particularly in marriages. The question at the heart of the Griswold case: “Does the Constitution protect the right to marital privacy against state restrictions on a couple’s ability to be counseled in the use of contraceptives?”
The court found that the right to privacy held in the Bill of Rights prohibited states from banning contraception for married couples.
However, in agreeing with the Dobbs decision, Thomas said the nation’s highest court should also “reconsider” cases such as Griswold, with new reflection on the 14th Amendment.
“After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated,” Thomas wrote in his 2022 concurrence.
A congressional effort that was put forth in July 2022 to codify birth control access passed the U.S. House. The effort had unanimous Democratic support, but only had the support of one Ohio GOP representative, former Rep. Anthony Gonzalez.
There is federal law that requires health insurance coverage for prescription female contraceptives, but federal law also allows for a refusal clause “that allows churches, associations of churches, religiously affiliated elementary and secondary schools and, potentially, some religious charities and universities to refuse,” according to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute.
The institute’s analysis also showed that, as of September 2023, Ohio’s only state-level regulation is an insurance coverage requirement for extended supplies of contraception.
“The state’s law allows pharmacists to dispense the full amount of a prescription at one time, including contraception, but there is no requirement that health insurance plans cover the cost of accessing a year’s worth of contraceptives at one time,” the Guttmacher research stated.
Medicaid recipients are allowed access to “pregnancy prevention services” under the Ohio Administrative Code, including “contraceptive management,” along with “fertility awareness, natural family planning (the use of fertility awareness to track ovulation), and risk factor reduction,” according to the code.
In an August debate on the previous Issue 1, Secretary of State Frank LaRose joined Ohio Right to Life leader Mike Gonidakis in calling claims that contraception regulations could be on the table in the state “fear-mongering,” saying “no reasonable person is talking about banning the use of contraceptives.”
Researchers and advocacy groups say abstinence-only education and anti-abortion politics have already had their impact in the state, and the need to keep contraception at the forefront continues.
Even in his analysis of Issue 1, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost spoke of access to contraception (and other rights listed in the proposed amendment), saying those topics “are harder to assess because Ohio does not have specific statutes addressing minors’ access to these medical treatments or products.”
When Roe v. Wade — the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that legalized abortion nationwide — was overturned in 2022, Ohio groups immediately feared the already inconsistent sex education standards in the state would take a hit as well.
State law requires Ohio schools to emphasize abstinence, but does not require them to include lessons on consent, sexual orientation, or gender identity, according to a review by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).
In fact, Ohio House GOP members introduced a bill in 2022 that would ban the use of sexual orientation and gender identity as a topic in Ohio schools. State Rep. Mike Loychik, R-Bazetta, the bill’s co-sponsor, said at the time that the bill would “ensure that sexual orientation and gender ideology are not taught in kindergarten through third grade.”
But bills like House Bill 616 could also “impact age-appropriate sex education,” according to SEICUS, which said those and other policies pushing abstinence-only or no education at all to certain ages can result in district-by-district decisions on sex education.
“Local control over sex education presents unique challenges that have resulted in glaring disparities in the quality of sex education that students receive,” SEICUS said in an Ohio analysis.
The March 2023 research used CDC data from the 2019-2020 school year that showed only 38.3% of Ohio’s schools required a course on methods of contraception other than condoms in grades 6, 7 or 8, whereas 82.5% taught high schoolers about methods other than condoms.
According to the CDC data, only 37% of Ohio schools grades 6 through 12 require more than one health education course.
The impact of a lack of standardized sex education could have longterm effects, advocates suggest, particularly in the area of unintended pregnancies.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services encourages the use of contraception in its “Healthy People 2030” objective, to help with pregnancy planning and prevention of unintended pregnancies.
“Nearly half of pregnancies in the United States are unintended, and unintended pregnancy is linked to many negative outcomes for both women and infants,” the federal agency stated on its Healthy People 2030 website.
Though they acknowledge that teen pregnancy has gone down in the U.S., they cite data that shows “close to 200,000 babies are born to teen mothers every year in the United States.”
“Adolescents are at especially high risk for unintended pregnancy,” HHS stated.
This article clarifies the vote of Ohio’s U.S. Representatives on the federal birth control bill.
SUSAN TEBBEN
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
A report from an Ohio think tank examined the new budget changes and private school voucher impacts on public schools over the last year.
Research from Policy Matters Ohio said divestments from public schools at the state level “hurt public school students everywhere – especially those in rural counties.”
Furthering study of the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on education, Policy Matters’ Tanisha Pruitt and Cassie Mohr said those pandemic effects combined with “Ohio’s legacy of inadequate, inequitable funding” have “weakened the role school plays as a foundational public institution.”
Ohio was ranked 21st in a U.S. News & World Report on K-12 education and 46th in an EdWeek ranking of equitable distribution of education funding, both of which were cited as part of the 2023 report.
“Ohio’s students deserve a world-class education, including safe and well-resourced schools that are staffed by teachers who are well trained and fairly paid,” Pruitt and Mohr wrote.
The new report also confirmed what advocates have repeatedly noted over the years that the public school funding model has been debated — that the vast majority of Ohio students are enrolled in public schools.
Of the nearly 2 million students enrolled in K-12 education in Ohio, 88.6% are in public schools, and 8.8% are in private schools, while 2.7% are home-schooled.
Private school vouchers saw a significant change in Ohio’s most recent two-year budget this summer, when legislators opened the state-paid subsidies to 450% of the federal poverty level, nearly universal eligibility.
But also included in the budget was another phase-in of the Fair School Funding Plan, a six-year effort to dive into the real cost of funding public school students, and fund the schools on an individual basis based on their needs.
“When fully implemented, the six-year FSFP will correct the over-reliance on local property taxes, eliminate funding caps on districts, and base funding on per-pupil cost estimates that more accurately reflect what it takes to educate a diverse student population,” the report stated.
Policy Matters’ report focused largely on public schools, where they found a student population that is “somewhat more racially diverse than the state overall” with a makeup that is 16.4% Black versus the 13.3% population in the state overall, and serving a large population of more than 800,000 who are considered economically disadvantaged.
Pruitt and Mohr remained skeptical of the ultimate success of the FSFP, however, as legislators have “only incrementally moved funding through the formula.”
“If legislators follow through on their promise to fully realize the FSFP by 2026, they will be helping every public school in the state to be equitably funded, and helping ensure that we live in a state where every child has what they need to succeed in school and after graduation,” the report stated.
Senate President Matt Huffman has commented in the past that he wouldn’t support funding more than two years at a time, to avoid saddling future General Assemblies with budget items with which they may not agree.
Teachers
Source: Policy Matters Ohio
The constraints of COVID had their effect on teachers as well, but even outside of the pandemic education methods, educators still face pressures, according to the 2023 report.
“Teachers recently have experienced a rash of targeted political campaigns to stoke division by denying the identities of trans and nonbinary students, as well as censoring what teachers are allowed to teach in the classroom,” Pruitt and Mohr wrote.
Beyond that, compensation levels have not kept up over the years, with the Ohio Department of Education showing an average annual salary of $69,130 for an Ohio teacher in the 2022-2023 school year. That amounts to a decrease of more than 6% from the 2018-2019 school year, according to the new Policy Matters research.
“These factors contribute to one of the most significant problems facing Ohio schools today: too many have too few teachers to give our kids the education they deserve,” according to Pruitt and Mohr.
The state has also seen a dip in newly licensed teachers as well, with more than 9,000 teachers leaving their jobs in 2021, but only 5,388 earning a new license.
“Recruitment declines can be attributed to low pay, poor working conditions and other economic factors,” researchers found. New teachers are paid less, and face mounting student loans on top of a salary that is often less than fellow graduates in other professions, they said.
But licensure was addressed in the budget, with a clause allowing substitutes to have one-year temporary substitute teaching license which could increase the number of subs, and some members of the military could obtain a “military educator license.”
“While these changes have the potential to boost our educators workforce, they weaken teacher training requirements, which could negatively affect the quality of classroom education, especially in high-poverty schools that already grapple with recruiting and retaining highly qualified educators,” Policy Matters researchers argued.
The state needs to improve the recruitment methods, according to the report. It could use models like the one pursued by Cincinnati Public Schools superintendent Iranetta Wright, who pledged to recruit more teachers who matched the demographics of her school, but also keep teachers from being saddled with debt by increasing funding for grant programs and teacher residency programs.
State testing
For the teachers who are in schools, state testing can be a significant part of the school year, and despite their best efforts, inequities can shine through in even the standardized assessments for subjects like math and reading.
A 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed fourth and eighth graders in the state “were not statistically different from the national average,” according to Pruitt and Mohr, and Ohio was ranked 21st in a U.S. News & World Report ranking on pre-K-12 education.
“However, these statewide metrics can mask a high degree of variability among districts, schools and student populations, with predictable disparities,” Policy Matters stated in their 2023 report.
Disparities among English Language Arts and math scores, for example, don’t have a single cause, researchers found, but “inequities in school funding track closely with gaps in academic achievement.”
Source: Policy Matters Ohio
An analysis of test scores and categories from the Ohio Department of Education showed disparities among student races, but also showed a universal trend that economically disadvantaged students “are more likely to live in school districts with concentrations of poverty – including in rural and Appalachian counties – where property-value-based school funding shortchanges them,” the researchers found.
In terms of kindergarten readiness, COVID had a negative impact, and in the 2022-23 school year, Ohio’s kindergarten-bound students showed the lowest rate of readiness since 2014, when the state began using a Kindergarten Readiness Assessment.
“A dropoff in kindergarten readiness was likely inevitable after COVID; Ohio needs to make significant investments in early childhood education to begin recovery,” Pruitt and Mohr said in their analysis.
The researchers criticized legislative priorities like restructuring the Ohio Department of Education, something that is now being fought over in court. But other curricular level efforts, like one to change the social studies lessons in schools and another that would bar teachers from teaching “any oral or written instruction, presentation, image or description of sexual concepts or gender ideology,” don’t fall under improvements, according to Pruitt and Mohr’s analysis.
The recommendations they do hope will be implemented include the full implementation of the Fair School Funding Plan, elimination of the private school vouchers at universal eligibility levels, better pay for teachers and the creation of a “pathway to becoming an educator” that helps recruit teachers of diverse backgrounds.
“More funding should be dedicated to attracting new educators, especially from underrepresented populations, while ensuring the teachers coming out of these programs are fully qualified and prepared to give our kids the best education possible,” the researchers concluded.
SUSAN TEBBEN
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
The Ohio Redistricting Commission will meet on Wednesday for the first time since May 2022 to discuss Ohio Statehouse voting districts.
After well over a year of inaction, and five different Ohio Supreme Court rejections, the commission comes back to work with heavy criticism of previous maps, and a mixed amount of optimism among anti-gerrymandering advocates that things will change.
“Even though activists from across the state wrote letters, attended, called (senators and representatives) … we know that those calls to do something different largely fell on deaf ears,” said Petee Talley, head of the Ohio Coalition on Black Civic Participation, of previous efforts to comment on district maps.
Court cases out of states like Alabama and Florida showed courts on all levels, including the U.S. Supreme Court, did not agree that racial demographics should be shoved to the side when debating voting districts.
Groups like Talley’s OCBCP, the NAACP of Ohio and the Ohio Organizing Collaborative said in a recent press call they were happy to see the rulings after Ohio mapmakers admitted they were instructed by legislative leaders not to include demographic data in Statehouse maps.
“We are hopeful that we have a vote in the next drawing in what these districts look like so that we can get the representation that we need,” Talley said on the call.
But in expressing doubts about the process considering the elected officials on the redistricting commission, Tom Roberts, a former state senator and the current president of the NAACP’s Ohio chapter, cited Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s recent letter expressing the need for maps to be passed by the end of September in order to be used in the November 2024 general election.
“This just tells me that they have no interest in drawing fair maps, they have no interest in doing the right thing,” Roberts said.
The former elected official said he’s “not optimistic” that the ORC will do “any more than they did the last time.”
The only way to get to fair maps, Roberts said, is to remove elected leaders from the commission and make it a citizen-run body. That concept has been brought up in the form of a proposed constitutional amendment for the ballot in 2024 attempting to revise the redistricting process yet again by replacing the politicians on the Ohio Resdistricting Commission with an Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission.
The amendment had a set back as language for the proposal was rejected by the Ohio Attorney General’s office, but amendment advocates have since resubmitted language for reconsideration.
The idea of changing the way legislative and congressional maps are drawn was put to legislators in a recent Gongwer-Werth poll, where 100% of Democratic legislators polled said changes should be made, and 71% of Republican participants disagreed. Only 18% of the GOP legislators surveyed said there should be changes, with 12% undecided.
Of 51 legislators polled, 61% said lawmakers should continue to serve on the redistricting body. The partisan split was significant, however, with 88% of Democrats in the survey saying no lawmakers should acts as map adopters as 12% undecided, and 91% of Republicans landing on the side of lawmaker-led redistricting, with 6% against it and 3% undecided.
Unanimously, Democratic participants said the governor should not be a member of the commission, but 76% of GOP survey-takers saying the leader of the executive branch should be a part of the map drawing process.
Republicans were split when asked if a more competitive district map could be drawn in Ohio, with 45% of those participating saying there could be a more competitive map, and 42% of the GOP members surveyed saying it couldn’t be done.
Unsurprisingly, all Democratic participants said more competitive districts were possible.
Ohio’s U.S. Congressional district map won’t see a change until after the 2024 election, as court cases challenging the map declared unconstitutional by a bipartisan majority on the previous Ohio Supreme Court were dismissed by the current Ohio Supreme Court at the request of map challengers.
With a map draw set to happen after 2024 either way, challengers said they decided that continuing the case would only add confusion and another state of “limbo” for voters as a general election with hot-button issues approaches.
SUSAN TEBBEN
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
