What a difference a year makes in the American debate on abortion. In the summer of 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Dobbs ruling, ending the nearly half a century old precedent established by Roe v. Wade that protected a woman's right to choose.
That ruling empowered states to establish their own laws on the matter. Many did. None were faster than Indiana. Dobbs was issued on June 24, 2022, forty-two days later on August 5, Indiana passed a near total abortion ban.
Every other state in the region is now moving in the opposite direction.
Michigan started it. Immediately after the Dobbs ruling, two things happened to Indiana's north. First, a court blocked that state's 1931 abortion law which became effective briefly last summer. Next, more than 750,000 voters signed a petition to have abortion rights enshrined in the state's constitution. It appeared on the ballot last November and was approved on a 57-43 vote. The issue contributed to a Democratic sweep of state politics there. In April, Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a law repealing the 1931 law entirely.
In Wisconsin, Dobbs reactivated a law that made abortion illegal that was passed in 1849. No that is not a typo. The law there was only used for prosecution seventeen times between its passage and the Roe ruling in 1973, resulting in only five convictions. But the Dobbs ruling made that law effective again, so, as expected, lawsuits there were understandably initiated to challenge it. As a result, the state supreme court and its political makeup became the arena for the fight.
A vacancy was created by a retirement on the Wisconsin court requiring a statewide election there in April. The court had been controlled by conservatives 4-3, but the retirement made the ideological split even, and the election quickly became a proxy vote on abortion and the lawsuit over the 1849 law. Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Janet Protasiewicz, the liberal candidate, won by eleven points, flipping the court. The margin of victory is the real shocker here. Wisconsin is known for their evenly split electorate, but apparently not so much when the issue is abortion.
Even Kentucky has been a surprise. The Bluegrass State also passed a law in 2019, modeled after the Mississippi law that was the subject of the Dobbs ruling, and became effective last year. But the Republican legislature attempted to make their statutory total-ban even more safe by adding language to their state constitution to clarify that it did not protect abortion rights. That constitutional amendment was surprisingly defeated in November, 52-47 percent.
Which brings me to Ohio.
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