Next week, Ohio voters will decide whether to pass Issue 1, a state constitutional amendment protecting decisions about pregnancy including contraception, fertility treatment, miscarriage care, and abortion. Ohioans from every walk of life — and across the political spectrum — have come together to put an end to the state’s extreme abortion ban and enshrine protections for reproductive freedom in their state constitution.

As we approach the election, our friends at the ACLU of Ohio and Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights are working to get Ohioans to vote YES on Issue 1. As part of a broad multi-issue coalition, the work by local religious communities highlights how voting YES is imperative because there is so much on the line.

Here, two Ohio-based advocates discuss their efforts to safeguard reproductive freedom for all Ohioans. These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

“When Roe was kicked back to the states on June 24, 2022, we all felt this sense of impending doom because we knew that our ban would go into place immediately, which it did. The six-week ban did so much damage in the three months it was in place. We saw folks like leaders from Ohio Right to Life supporting forced birth in Ohio.

“We witnessed our friends, allies, and partners at Planned Parenthood and Preterm Cleveland and other abortion clinics and abortion providers being targeted, defunded; being [under] the threat of closing clinics that offer so much more than just abortion care. They offer reproductive health care in its totality. Yet, access to even general reproductive health care was hanging by a thread.

Religious Communities in Ohio Are Fighting to Preserve Reproductive Rights

Religious Communities in Ohio Are Fighting to Preserve Reproductive Rights

On November 7th, Ohio voters will decide whether to pass Issue 1, which would protect their decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, miscarriage care, and abortion.The fact that this amendment is even on the ballot is a huge feat. Ohio...

On November 7th, Ohio voters will decide whether to pass Issue 1, which would protect their decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, miscarriage care, and abortion.The fact that this amendment is even on the ballot is a huge feat. Ohio...

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“Looking back on June 24 and the three months after that, I choose to focus on the fact that hundreds of doctors around our state mobilized and became Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights. The ACLU, Planned Parenthood, Ohio Women’s Alliance, Pro Choice Ohio, and many other partners immediately launched into action, immediately built these strong, robust coalitions, and immediately responded to the moment and said: not in our state, not here, not now. This is our Ohio, and therefore, our Ohio needs to look the way that we, the Ohio citizens, need it to look and feel for our safety, for our freedom, and for our families.”

“One of the things that Issue 1 showed was that you can’t count Ohioans out. We’re not idly sitting by. We are also very clear on why [the other] state Issue 1 [which tried to raise the threshold to pass ballot measures] in ‘the special election,’ as we should call it, was a problem. [Legislators] know unequivocally that Ohioans support abortion access, and that is why they did this. But we will not be fooled. We care about truth, and we care about freedom. I look at this very simply: voters are the ones who control our government, but this was an attempt by our government to control voters instead.

“The other part I want to mention is how the faith communities have turned out. Specifically, our Jewish communities have really turned out. They were active in signature collection, postcard writing, stumping, talking about the ballot, door knocking, and phone banking. It’s breaking stereotypes. When you create space for people to show up and for people to own a part of something, they will. It’s what we saw during the signature collection and what we’re seeing now.

“I believe that the movement — the social justice movement, the progressive movement — sometimes tries to other religious people because they haven’t found a way to effectively connect the religious values that these people espouse with the values of humanity that progressive movements and social justice movements seek to center. Yet, when you have conversations with faith-based communities, it is easy to connect because those folks, in particular, are very concerned about their values. So, when you’re able to build a bridge between the value of bodily autonomy and freedom, the value of compassion, the value of ensuring that every person has access to resources, care, family, support, and love. When you can build that bridge from those values that reproductive justice and reproductive freedom encapsulate, to the values of Christianity or the values of Islam or to the values of Judaism or other religions, you can kind of pull people over.”

“I think it’s important when we’re having this discussion that those who oppose access to safe and legal abortions don’t have a monopoly over faith. One of the reasons why I’m so passionate about making sure that people have access to the care — the medical care that they need, including abortion — is because of my faith and because much of Jewish teaching tells us about the value of life and the importance of protecting life. That also includes the lives of those who are pregnant and making the choice to have a baby or not have a baby. And, frankly, I didn’t always identify strongly with my Jewish faith until I started to look more at the teachings.

“One of our rabbis spoke at the Bans Off Our Bodies rally in Cincinnati, and I just remember getting emotional watching her speak, and she came down after she was done speaking. I just gave her this big hug, and I said, ‘I’m just so glad you’re my rabbi.’ It was like this feeling of, really, feeling seen in my faith as well. I’ve had conversations with other members of the Jewish community; the Jewish community is just as diverse as any other religious community.

“So, some of us agree on a lot of things, and some of us don’t agree on some things. I was having a conversation with a woman in the Orthodox community about this issue. And when I started sharing with her that this amendment isn’t just about access to abortion, that it’s also about fertility treatments, that it’s also about miscarriage care, it’s also about contraception, we were able to have more of a discussion. Certainly, fertility care is important in the Orthodox community.

“I’m also a board member of the Jewish Fertility Foundation. And so, making sure that all members, all women in the Jewish community, can have access to the fertility care they need so they can create the family they want when they want it. It is an issue that goes beyond reform, conservative, orthodox Judaism. The Jewish community alone collected over 10,000 signatures when we were in the signature-collecting stage, and we’ve contacted over 200,000 potential voters. Much of the messaging that we give is, “‘Look, I’m a member of the faith community as well, and this is why I care about this issue, and you can be a person of faith and care about this issue.’

“Most people I speak with are very excited about this amendment and a handful of people I’ve spoken with may or may not agree. But I can say, look, I’m a mother, and I’m a person of faith as well, there’s probably a lot more that we agree on than we differ on. The goal isn’t necessarily to change someone’s mind to suddenly say, ‘Oh, okay, I, I think abortion is okay.’ The goal is to say, look, do you want someone else making these decisions for you? Do you want your government to make these decisions for you? Or do you want you, your family, and your loved ones to have the opportunity to make these decisions? I think there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors around this issue. At the core of it, though, is just saying that we all love our children. We all love our families. We just want to do this in our own way and keep the government out of our families.”

Paid for by American Civil Liberties Union, Inc. in coordination with Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights

The devastating conflict in Israel and Palestine has roiled campuses here at home. College students across the country are exercising their constitutional right to free speech by organizing, protesting, posting, and debating, sometimes resulting in speech that is intemperate, hateful, and abhorrent. We’re also seeing a rise in antisemitic and anti-Arab and Muslim discrimination, with documented threats against Jewish, Palestinian, Muslim, and Middle Eastern and South Asian origin students and faculty alike. These colliding dynamics have left colleges and universities contending with how to manage increased threats, genuine fears, and anguished tensions on their campuses while trying to keep students and faculty safe. We take the weight and complexity of these challenges seriously, and understand that balancing public safety and public debate can feel insurmountable.

But it is precisely in times of heightened crisis and fear that university leaders must remain steadfast in their commitment to free speech, open debate, and peaceful dissent on campus. These principles are the bedrock of academic freedom at all universities. Moreover, the First Amendment requires public universities to protect the right of students and student groups to debate and demonstrate on campus.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen a surge in efforts to punish and silence students for their speech. The Anti-Defamation League and The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law issued an open letter last week calling on university leaders to investigate pro-Palestinian student groups, alleging their speech constitutes “material support for terrorism,” punishable under federal and state law, despite no evidence to support such claims. That is why the ACLU sent its own open letter to the administrative leaders of each state’s public college system, reaching over 650 colleges and universities, expressing our strong opposition to any efforts to stifle free speech and association on college campuses. The letter unequivocally urges universities to reject calls to investigate, disband, or penalize pro-Palestinian student groups for exercising their free speech rights.

The consequences for students are not hypothetical. In late October, Florida State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues and Gov. Ron DeSantis took action to deactivate the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters at public universities in Florida, based on nothing more than the speech of the national SJP organization.

Blanket calls to investigate every chapter of a pro-Palestinian student group for “material support to terrorists” — without even an attempt to cite evidence — are unwarranted and dangerous. They harken back to America’s mistakes during the McCarthy era, and in the months and years after 9/11. The ACLU has decades of experience fighting abusive and discriminatory “material support” investigations and prosecutions that infringe on or violate constitutional rights. We know from history just how damaging these types of sweeping unsubstantiated allegations can be.

In the letter, we make clear that “material support” does not include independent political advocacy, regardless of its content. The ADL cites no evidence that SJP published statements at the direction of or in coordination with Hamas. Without that connection, their advocacy is fully protected by the First Amendment, and is not “material support” for terrorism. Essential principles of academic freedom stand firmly against any attempts to punish these students for their protected speech and associations.

And, local chapters of student groups cannot be punished for their association with national organizations. As the letter states, such “investigations chill speech, foster an atmosphere of mutual suspicion, and betray the spirit of free inquiry.”

In Healy v. James, the Supreme Court affirmed that the First Amendment protects the right of student groups to associate and speak out on matters of public concern, free from censorship by public university officials. And in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the court held that the federal statute prohibiting material support to terrorist groups does not criminalize independent advocacy, but only “advocacy performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization.”

These are difficult times, and we urge colleges across the country to hold fast to our nation’s best traditions and reject ill-advised proposals to restrict constitutionally protected speech. While one group is at the center of such affronts today, other students, groups and speech could face similar attacks tomorrow. Restricting speech may seem like an attractive option for college administrators to quell campus tensions. But efforts to censor speech often prove counterproductive, and undermine the very mission of the university. We strongly caution universities against conflating the suppression of speech with the façade of safety.

Last month, Texas lawmakers convened for a special legislative session to debate some of the most extreme anti-immigrant bills any state legislature has ever considered. Already, one such bill — SB 4, which threatens humanitarian workers and family members of undocumented immigrants with severe criminal penalties — was passed by both chambers and is now headed to Gov. Greg Abbott to be signed into law. With just days left in the current legislative session, the legislature is attempting to short-circuit debate and rush through an even more fanatical bill that manufactures a new state crime so that Texas police may arrest, jail, and deport people.

If enacted, HB 4 would easily rank among the most radically anti-immigrant bills ever passed by a legislature. The anti-immigrant agenda advancing in the current special legislative session has been fueled by groups with links to white supremacy. Just last month, it was revealed that Texans for Strong Borders — an anti-immigrant advocacy group connected to neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes — urged Gov. Abbott to call a special legislative session to take up anti-immigrant legislation such as HB 4.

Tell Your Legislators: Say No to Any Version of Texas HB 4, an Anti-Immigrant Bill Written by White Supremacists

Right now, the Texas Senate is preparing to vote on an extreme and hateful bill that will harm U.S. citizens and migrants, despite the fact that...

One of the versions of this legislation being considered would make it a state crime to attempt to enter the State of Texas from Mexico between ports of entry, and authorize state police and sheriffs to arrest, prosecute, and imprison anyone suspected of violating this new and unprecedented state law. Another version would go a step further and purports to authorize these officers — who are not trained in immigration law — to also deport people they suspect of violating this law.

In federal immigration proceedings, people have a right to due process and an opportunity to demonstrate that they should not be deported because, for example, they have lawful immigration status, are U.S. citizens, or are eligible for humanitarian protection. No such safeguards are in place under this version of HB 4. In fact, people suspected of illegal entry will be deprived of the basic rights afforded by federal immigration law and Texas criminal law: The bill suggests they can be summarily ordered removed to Mexico without even an opportunity to speak to a lawyer.

HB 4 is preempted by federal law and unconstitutional for good reasons. No state has ever empowered its police to deport people, but we’ve seen before that laws authorizing local law enforcement agents to investigate immigration offenses lead to racial profiling. Citizens and immigrants with permission to be in the U.S. would be at risk of wrongful arrest, detention, and deportation. This unprecedented move will distract police officers from investigating actual crimes, deter victims of human trafficking from coming forward, and in turn, make our communities less safe.

Ultimately, lawmakers are pretending they can stop people from coming to the U.S. by turning local law enforcement into border patrol. Evidence already shows that deterrence policies from fleeing persecution and instead create more disorder and harm. Laws like HB 4 would unnecessarily waste taxpayer dollars under the guise of national security and public safety, all while harming our communities and the integrity of federal immigration laws.

HB 4, in all of its forms, is founded on the idea that there is an “invasion” at our Southern border. This is the same logic, rooted in white supremacy, that motivated the man who killed 23 people and wounded 22 others during a shooting at an El Paso Wal-Mart in 2019. This rhetoric has repeatedly been backed by Texans for Strong Borders. And it’s no surprise that last month, reports revealed that that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — who also serves as President of the Texas Senate — received $3 million from a conservative PAC also connected to white supremacist leader Nick Fuentes.

The hateful narrative these voices are pushing has real consequences. We’ve already seen vitriolic state policies like Operation Lone Star lead to the tragic drownings and other deaths of people and children seeking safety. We cannot allow other harmful anti-immigrant policies take root — not in Texas, not in any state.

Texans have a critical opportunity to act now and demand that their representatives vote no to policies that criminalize migrants and divide our communities. We can’t allow our elected officials to misuse our legal systems to do the work of white supremacists.