A supporter of Issue 1, the Right to Reproductive Freedom amendment, attends a rally held by Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio, on Oct. 8, 2023.
Alice Miranda Ollstein/POLITICO

“I’m voting no and I’m certainly urging everyone to vote no,” DeWine told GOP staff and volunteers at the Saturday event. “Whether you’re pro-life or pro-choice, Issue 1 just goes much, much too far.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Missouri Gov. Mike Parson also signed anti-abortion legislation and DeWine’s tactics could offer a roadmap should those state laws go before voters next year.

Having state leaders on their side has other advantages for the anti-abortion side.

Ohio Republicans held a special election in August on a proposal to require a supermajority vote to change the state constitution — a tactic some state officials acknowledged was aimed at making it harder to approve the abortion-rights referendum. That measure failed, but state officials moved to label the November proposal “Issue 1” — the same name as the vote threshold amendment that voters just rejected in August.

Students inside the bustling student union at The Ohio State University appeared confused when speaking this week with anti-abortion advocates who were tabling and handing out flyers. Over the course of a few hours on Monday, several were unaware the referendum was happening, with others asking which side was “yes” and which was “no” and what the difference was between the August special election and November’s contest.

LaRose’s office also rewrote the ballot summary submitted by the abortion-rights campaign, replacing the word “fetus” with “unborn child,” and mentioning abortion only, when the amendment would also ban state interference in contraception, fertility treatments and other reproductive health decisions. Abortion-rights groups blasted the revisions as “designed to confuse and mislead voters” and sued the state, but the Ohio Supreme Court upheld most of them in a mid-September decision.

“The language that we drafted is very clear, and explains to Ohioans what is in this constitutional amendment,” LaRose said in an interview. “I thought it was silly that the other side wanted to take issue over the difference between ‘fetus’ and ‘unborn child.’ The word ‘fetus’ is a Latin word that means offspring. So by definition, it means unborn child. I’m glad that the court supported that.”

Anti-abortion advocates are also hoping to win by going after voting blocs they feel their counterparts neglected in other states — including college students, communities of color and people who support abortion rights.

“We’re doing persuasion, not just pure base turnout — that’s a major focus of ours,” said Aaron Baer, the president of the Center for Christian Virtue, one of the biggest groups in the coalition fighting the amendment. Baer said their messaging is tailored to “cut across a wide spectrum of folks,” focusing on areas where polling indicates public discomfort even among progressives, such as abortions later in pregnancy and minors seeking abortions without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

Ohio’s Lt. Gov. Jon Husted implored fellow conservatives to adopt this strategy during his speech at a March for Life rally outside the state capitol on Friday, encouraging the thousands in the crowd to reach out to “those who disagree with us.” In particular, he said it’s important to convince voters who support abortion access that rejecting the amendment simply allows the legislature to keep debating the issue.

“There will be a process. This will not be the end of it,” Husted told reporters following his speech. “We need to defeat this and then the conversation will go on about what the right policies should be.”

The state’s six-week near-total ban is enjoined, but GOP officials are appealing and the injunction could be lifted at any time. And Ohio lawmakers at the rally indicated that if they were to revisit the state’s abortion laws, they would try to make them more restrictive, not less.

State Sen. Kristina Roegner, a Republican, opened her speech on Friday by declaring, to cheers from the crowd, that she believes “life begins at conception” and supports a total ban.

“At every stage of life, we should protect everybody we can,” she told POLITICO.

Anti-abortion groups are taking a similar message as Husted’s to Ohio students in an effort to chip away at one of abortion-rights supporters’ most reliable voting blocs.

As they approached dozens of Ohio State students over the course of four hours on Monday, staff and volunteers with the group Students for Life of America told them that voting against the amendment “would keep abortion accessible up to 21 weeks and six days” while approving the amendment would “stop the debate.”

They did not mention the state’s six-week ban or its status in court.

The amendment protects abortion until the point of fetal viability — about 22 to 24 weeks into pregnancy — with exemptions after that point when doctors identify a threat to the health of the parent. While tabling on Monday, the volunteers with Students for Life claimed doctors would abuse those exemptions, with one saying: “They could just make up anything.”

The Ohio State event was one of about 15 Students for Life had or will host at public, private and community colleges across the state. They are also planning to table at a high school football game to target parents and students who will turn 18 by election day. At Franciscan University earlier this month, the group said they registered more than 150 students to vote, and recruited dozens to canvass against the amendment over their upcoming fall break. On Monday at Ohio State several students who initially said they supported abortion rights signed the group’s pledge to vote no after listening to the group claim the amendment would allow abortions “through all nine months, for any reason.”

Thousands of abortion opponents rallied outside the state capitol in Columbus on Friday in opposition to the state’s upcoming referendum on enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution.