Ohio's 2023 abortion fight cost campaigns $70 million
Columbus, Ohio — The fight over abortion rights in Ohio cost a total of $70 million this fall, according to campaign finance reports filed Friday.
Voters overwhelmingly approved November's Issue 1, which guaranteed an individual's right “to make and exercise their own reproductive decisions,” making Ohio the seventh state where voters chose to restrict access to abortion protection in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last summer to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The pro campaign, known as Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, raised and spent more than $39.5 million to pass the constitutional amendment, the documents show. Protect Women Ohio, the opposition campaign, has raised and spent about $30.4 million.
During the last reporting period before the Nov. 7 election, nearly $11 million in donations fueled the No. 1 endorsement. That included $2.2 million from the Tides Foundation and another $1.65 million from the progressive Sixteen Thirty Fund, based in Washington, D.C., which had already given $5.3 million. The backers include Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire who has given the group more than $200 million since 2016.
The campaign in support of the abortion rights amendment also received another $500,000 from the New York-based Open Society Policy Center, a lobbying group linked to billionaire philanthropist George Soros, and a second donation of $1 million from billionaire Michael Bloomberg in recent weeks. of the high-stakes campaign.
Meanwhile, Protect Women Ohio's fundraising pace slowed significantly in recent weeks, with the campaign reporting $3.4 million in contributions for the latest reporting period, down from the nearly $10 million raised in the previous period.
The vast majority of that money came from the Protection Women Ohio Action Fund, which was largely supported by The Concord Fund of Washington, D.C. and Susan B. Anthony Pro Life America, based in Arlington, Virginia.
In the three years it took supporters of recreational marijuana legalization to get their private member's bill passed (Issue 2 this fall), they spent only about a tenth of what the abortion fight cost.
The pro-campaign Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol has raised and spent approximately $6.5 million since its inception in 2021, with the bulk of contributions coming from the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization for the legalization of marijuana – which raised approximately $3 million during that period – and of medical marijuana dispensaries across the state.
Protect Ohio Workers and Families, the opposition campaign that only launched earlier this year, has raised just $828,000, according to reports. The largest donor was the American Policy Coalition, a conservative nonprofit based in Alexandria, Virginia, which donated about $320,000.
Other notable donors included the Ohio Manufacturers' Association and the Ohio Hospital Association.
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Samantha Hendrickson is a staff member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.