Pro-Life Group to Appeal to Young Voters in Ohio Abortion Battle 

With the failure of Issue 1 in the Ohio special election, a youth-oriented pro-life organization is looking to galvanize young voters ahead of the state’s November election — where abortion on demand will be on the ballot.

Ohioans voted against Issue 1 on Tuesday, a measure that would have raised the threshold to pass amendments to the state constitution from 50 percent plus one to 60 percent. While that amendment would have impacted many issues, the amendment was largely viewed as a proxy war over abortion in Ohio. In November, Ohioans will vote on codifying a radical abortion ballot measure into the state constitution, and Issue 1’s passage would have complicated left-wing activists’ push for abortion on demand.

“The vote to protect the state constitutional process was never the end game, though being outspent almost 5 to 1 certainly helped create the confusion about what was at stake,” Students for Life Action (SFLAction) President Kristan Hawkins said in a statement. “But abortion will be on the ballot in the fall, and Students for Life Action will be employing our unique targeted marketing to get the votes needed to continue protecting life in law in Ohio.”

Hawkins called the results of the Ohio special election “disappointing,” but noted that Issue 1’s failure is not the end of the line.

“The abortion lobby has been parachuting in across the country into states to wipe out laws protecting life and further entrench their bloody abortion,” she said. “While protecting the process was step one in Ohio, step two is protecting life in law, something Big Abortion Pharma and its powerful lobby wants to stop. Students for Life Action will be focusing in on a unique Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) strategy, reaching out to the youth vote.”

 In the months ahead, the pro-life organization’s Ohio-based team, along with national staff, plans to organize on-campus voter education and registration, set up teams for campus polling place advocacy, and manage digital social media campaigns “aimed at the youth vote.” 

 “The Youth Vote isn’t really motivated by labels such as Democrat or Republican, but they want to make a positive difference in culture and many care about the human rights issue of abortion,” SFLAction Ohio regional coordinator Jamie Scherdin said in a statement. “In the months ahead, we will recruit many students to get out the facts about the extreme violence to the preborn that would be allowed if the state’s constitution is changed.” 

 The group is also utilizing student influencers on social media platforms to reach hundreds of thousands of people, conducting prayer calls, deploying canvassers along with Ohio Right to Life and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, engaging in dialogue at statewide events and on 25 different college campuses, training students in political leadership workshops, and mobilizing student leaders for the Ohio March for Life, according to the organization. 

 “SFLAction will also utilize its proven digital campaign to reach voters through personal text messages and emails, targeting more than 5,356,196 voters, or more than 65 percent of the roughly 8 million registered voters in Ohio,” according to the organization.   

Hawkins said SFLAction ran its Vote Pro-Life First Digital Campaign in nine states that were “crucial in determining the likelihood the abortion lobby would have the votes to federally codify Roe after the elections or in states with legislative priorities, like Nebraska.”

“With empirical data from 2020 to review, we came in with a cheaper cost per swing 18–35-year-old vote in 2022 at $1.22 per converted youth vote,” Hawkins said, adding that SFLAction had been active on the ground before the August 8 special election, with the organization participating in an SBA Pro-Life America effort that involved more than 80 students knocking on more than 60,000 doors.

Opponents of the abortion ballot initiative are urgently warning that it would decimate parental rights, lead to abortion on demand, and even allow minors to pursue sex-change procedures. Notably, the left-wing coalition members pushing the measure have long campaigned to end parental involvement laws.

The language of the abortion ballot initiative is extremely broad and makes no differentiation between minors and adults, instead opting to use the term “individual.”

It states that “every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on: contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion.”

Under the amendment, the state would also not be allowed to:

…directly or indirectly, burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against either an individual’s voluntary exercise of this right or a person or entity that assists an individual exercising this right, unless the state demonstrates that it is using the least restrictive means to advance the individuals health in accordance with widely accepted and evidence-based standards of care.

“Sadly, attacks on state constitutions are now the national playbook of the extreme pro-abortion Left,” leading pro-life organization Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America said in a statement. “That is why everyone must take this threat seriously and recognize progressives will win if their opponents are scared into submission by the pro-abortion Left.”

“So long as the Republicans and their supporters take the ostrich strategy and bury their heads in the sand, they will lose again and again,” it concluded.

 Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Twitter @thekat_hamilton.