Older Ohio women list abortion as a top voting issue

By Genna Sobiech/Kent State NewsLab

As the 2024 presidential election approaches, some of the women who lived through Roe v. Wade are taking a stand after watching policies they fought for get overturned two years ago.

“We thought the Supreme Court decision would hold,” said Anne Reid, 78, who helped a loved one get an abortion before Roe v. Wade. “When it didn’t, I thought, ‘We are going to have to fight like hell,’ because women’s lives depend on it.”

Almost two weeks after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, when the Supreme Court overturned the Roe decision, the Pew Research Center found that 57% of adults in the U.S. disapproved of the decision, including 62% of women.

The following year, Issue 1 in Ohio — which created a constitutional amendment protecting abortion and other reproductive rights — passed with nearly 57% of the vote. 

“Women have economic resources, education, civic and political skills that they didn’t have 50 years ago — they’re not just going to get mad and go home,” said J. Cherie Strachan, director and professor at the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. “They went home and formed the resistance.”

Baby Boomer women remember Roe v. Wade

The overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 was a shock to those who experienced the day it was established in 1973. 

Reid said that in the years before Roe v. Wade, abortion was legal in New York and Washington, D.C., but not the rest of the country. Reid paid for an abortion for her sister, and their other sister took her to D.C. to get the procedure done.

“That was a year or two before Roe v. Wade passed,” Reid said. “It was terrifying.”

Iris Meltzer, 75, recalled that pre-Roe v. Wade, girls would disappear from school for a bit and then come back a while later. She would later learn that these young women were pregnant, and could not attend school if they were pregnant because it was not socially acceptable.

“I went off to college in 1967, so still pre-Roe, and in 1970, I remember the screams of excitement in my dorm when the newspaper arrived with the headline that the state of New York had legalized abortion,” said Meltzer, who later served as president of the League of Women Voters of Kent. She celebrated the decision with her mother.

Today, Reid said, having a son and two grandchildren has heightened her feelings and opinions on reproductive policies. 

And Meltzer said she has spoken with her brother about how disheartened her parents would be after seeing many things they fought for gone, including Roe v. Wade.

“My daughter is now 47, and it never occurred to me that any portion of her adult years would be spent with fewer rights than I had at her age,” she said.

How abortion is motivating Ohio women today

In an August survey conducted by AARP Research, 22% of Ohio women over 50 ranked abortion as one of their top two voting issues. Only two of 13 issues — immigration and inflation — were more important to a larger share of that group.

“You don’t realize how dramatically this affects people’s lives, or the sheer number of women across their lifespan who had abortions — whether it’s elective or for life or death healthcare reasons,” Strachan said.

Gallup News found that in 2024, 42% of US adults over the age of 65 identify themselves as pro-life. Those who don’t agree with reproductive policies state that this is to protect human life and stress the humanity of an unborn child – religion can play a role in this as well.

After initially responding to emails about being interviewed for this story and requesting access to their administrative director, the president of Ohio Right to Life, Mike Gonidakis, stopped responding. The administrative director did not respond.

Sherry Rose, development director for the League of Women Voters of Ohio, believes one’s political party does not have to determine their position on abortion rights. 

“You can have a Democrat that’s pro-life or a Republican that’s pro-choice,” Rose said. “Positions aren’t partisan.”

Rose and Strachan both noted that the November 2023 passage of Issue 1 demonstrates that.

“Last November, Ohioans stood up, and we know that Ohio leans Republican, and yet, we passed Issue 1 with 57% of the vote,” Rose said. “We know that candidates are partisan — issues are not — and we know that there had to be Republicans that came over to support a woman’s right to choose.”

As Election Day nears, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 65% of women say that this election will have a “major impact” on abortion access here in the U.S.

“The polling that has been done shows that there seems to be a solidifying around the standard of Roe v. Wade being the preferred standard,’” Strachan said. “That’s what people want.”

This story was originally published by the Kent State NewsLab, a collaborative news outlet publishing journalism by Kent State students.