Ohio votes to guarantee abortion rights in latest post-Roe referendum as US elections offer 2024 preview
- The result in Ohio is yet another sign that abortion remains a potent issue for Democrats ahead of the 2024 campaign for the White House
- Tuesday’s vote comes 17 months after the Supreme Court struck down the national right to abortion, paving the way for some states to completely outlaw the practice
Democrats and abortion rights advocates notched a string of electoral victories on Tuesday, including in conservative Ohio and Kentucky, an early signal that reproductive rights remain a potent issue for Democrats ahead of the 2024 presidential race.
In Ohio, a state that voted for Republican Donald Trump by 8 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election, voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights.
The outcome extended an unbeaten streak for abortion access advocates since the US Supreme Court’s decision last year to overturn its 1972 Roe. v Wade ruling and eliminate a nationwide right to end pregnancies.
Meanwhile, Democratic Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear won a second four-year term, defying the conservative lean of a state that voted for Republican Donald Trump by more than 25 percentage points in 2020.
Beshear, one of only a handful of Democratic governors in Republican states, defeated state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who would have been the state’s first black chief executive, by 26 percentage points.