(bright music) - Hello, and welcome to The Journal, I'm Steve Kendall.

As we normally do every so many weeks, we invite Karen Kasler to come on, host of The State of Ohio, which you can watch every Sunday at noon here on WBGU PBS to bring us up to date on what's going on in Columbus, because obviously the state activity down there is, is very significant to all the residents of Ohio.

But this week, Ohio obviously is front and center as one of the states now that really has one of the strictest abortion laws on the books after what happened with the Supreme Court just a few days ago.

So Karen, let's let's talk about Roe versus Wade and what that means in Ohio, because they said Ohio has one of the most strict abortion laws now on the books in the country.

So what does that mean for people who live in Ohio?

- Yeah, how we got to this point happened really fast.

What has been called, it is a six week abortion ban essentially.

Some people have called it the heartbeat bill because it bans abortion after the detection of fetal cardiac activity.

That was passed and signed into law by governor Mike DeWine in the early part of his administration in 2019, immediately after that signing happened, the ACLU of Ohio sued to try to stop that ban from going into effect because of the Roe versus Wade decision.

And so on Friday, after the US Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, that there is no constitutional right to abortion, that opened the door for Republican attorney general, Dave Yost, to do as he and governor Mike DeWine had said they were gonna do and filed to have that legal hold on, that law lifted.

And so a federal judge on Friday lifted that legal hold.

And so basically Ohio now has a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

The only exception is if there are any serious risks to the health of the woman, but that's the way the situation is right now in Ohio, Ohio has nine abortion clinics, six of which provide surgical abortions.

Pro-choice Ohio says that the abortion clinics are still open and they are providing abortion care to the legal limit, but they had to call patients over the weekend, and they referred to it as scrambling to try to figure out exactly what they could do for people who had appointments to terminate pregnancies.

And now it's not legal after six weeks.

- And we could get into all of the medical aspects of what that six weeks is, but that's a very narrow timeframe for someone to, if they would wish to proceed with an abortion.

By the time you find out that you're pregnant, doesn't give you a lot of time to then make this kind of decision.

If that's the decision you even wanna make.

So that six week number is pretty finite for people who may wanna seek this.

And, I guess, yeah, that's that's the tricky part here.

The difficult part.

- Yeah, and especially since most abortions in this country are medication abortions, which have to be done fairly quickly.

It still is.

Six weeks is a pretty short window.

So for many people, this is essentially a ban on abortion in Ohio, but state lawmakers have said that they want to codify that further.

And so they're planning on returning in November right now, that's the plan, which would be after the August 2nd primary.

Remember there is an August 2nd primary for state House and Senate, folks who are running, 99 members of the House and 17 seats in the Senate.

There is that August 2nd primary.

And then of course there's the November general election.

And so they've said they were gonna return after the November election and pass a total ban on abortion, which would basically mean that no abortion services would be permitted in Ohio.

That's been, I think, the goal all along.

There was a so-called trigger ban that was being discussed that would've done that immediately after Roe was overturned, that didn't pass.

And so here we are now where abortion is technically legal up until six weeks, but after six weeks it's banned.

- Yeah, and it's interesting too, that that would happen theoretically after the November elections, because typically that's considered a lame duck session at that point, 'cause we're gonna elect a lot of new state reps and state senators, but the move will be to do that.

Go ahead, go ahead.

- I was just gonna say, when it comes to the lame duck legislature, I mean quite often you see a lot of activity when there's going to be a lot of turnover in the legislature because again, 99 members of the House are all on the ballot this time, and half of the Senate's on the ballot this time.

Now, it's almost inconceivable to me to think that the Senate will potentially change hands.

There really is almost no chance that the House will change hands either.

In terms of Republicans being in control of both chambers.

The question is whether there will be Republican super majorities, especially in the House where right now there are Republican super majorities in both chambers, but whether they will maintain that or not.

Now of course, people will point out that the maps that they are going to be, the districts are that the candidates are running under are unconstitutionally gerrymandered as ruled by the Ohio Supreme Court.

But the balance is supposed to be, and this is the way that the court ruling said, 54% Republican, 46% Democratic, whether that actually turns out to be the case, that's the thing that I think a lot of us are gonna be looking for in November.

- Right, and the fact will remain that we, obviously too, will elect statewide offices too.

The Governor will be on the ballot in November.

- [Karen] Yep.

- But he's an incumbent Governor.

And usually that means a pretty solid position unless something really out of the ordinary has happened.

Although that's the other political question, which, you know, is something that will be sussed out a lot between now and whenever, is what does this mean for those primaries?

What will it mean for the general election?

Will that change the dynamic in Ohio to where that incumbency may or may not be as valuable a position to have as it as it would've been four or five days ago, or a week ago basically.

- And I think that there are a lot of questions about how this decision could potentially affect the November elections.

I mean, certainly Ohio has had a Republican dominance really going back to about 2010 in all the statewide offices and the House and Senate and Mike DeWine was considered and viewed by many people to be a very popular Governor, whether that will change at all with the result of this particular Supreme Court ruling.

For instance, as we're recording this show, this is on Monday, there was an NPR PBS News Hour Marist poll that showed a majority of Americans disagree with Supreme Court's decision.

And of course, Ohio following right along with that and, and instituting the six week ban, whether that will affect voter turnout, whether that will affect voter results, that's really something to watch out for.

So I think while the conventional wisdom had Mike DeWine beating Nan Whaley, his Democratic opponent, by a large margin, who knows whether that's gonna be the case or not.

- Right, and as you said, the idea that either branch of the legislature will show dramatic change is not predictable, but pretty unlikely given the fact that we're operating with legislative maps that have already been set or are gerrymandered to some degree, maybe not as badly as people would've said, the first couple of maps were, but these are not considered to be great maps either.

- Yeah, and when it comes to the maps question, there are three races for Ohio Supreme Court on this ballot, and those are considered to be some of the most crucial races because you have two justices, Republican Sharon Kennedy and Democrat Jennifer Brunner, who are vying for Chief Justice.

Now, which ever one loses will still stay on the court.

Then there are two Democrats vying for the seats that are currently occupied by two Republicans.

This is the first year that voters will actually see Republican or Democrat on the November ballot when it comes to the Supreme Court.

And obviously the Supreme Court has played a huge role in the redistricting process.

So the results of this election in the Supreme Court race in particular could be really, really big.

And that's why you've seen the five major business groups in Ohio, led by the chamber of commerce, endorsing the three Republicans.

Those three Republicans all ruled for the maps that the majority, the three Democrats and the Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, a Republican, viewed as being unconstitutionally gerrymandered.

- And she is now term limited, or is limited out, she can't run again.

- [Karen] Age limited, yes.

- So she'll be off the court regardless.

And, yeah, which we talk about the whole redistricting, that was, she was the kind of the linchpin vote on that.

She was the swing vote that said, hey, your maps are unconstitutional over, and over, and over again.

She'll be gone.

So that terrain will look a lot different after November as well.

- Yes, 'cause Sharon Kennedy was siding with the other Republicans, saying the maps were fine.

Jennifer Brunner was siding with the other Democrats saying the maps were unconstitutional.

So really that Chief Justice decision, who voters pick either Sharon Kennedy or Jennifer Brunner, is really critical in the redistricting process going forward, because the maps that we're gonna use this year are only good for this election cycle.

We're gonna be doing this again in not too distant future.

- Yeah, and that's the ironic part.

The idea was that this would not, this would allow us to do a 10 year map or whatever, and that's obviously not gonna happen.

We'll pick it up in just a moment back with Karen Kasler from The Sate of Ohio here on The Journal.

Thank you for staying with us here on The Journal.

Our guest is Karen Kasler, the host of The State of Ohio.

You can watch the program every Sunday at noon here on WBGU PBS.

And that will keep you up to date on what's going on down in Columbus and around the rest of the state.

When we left that last segment, we were talking about the Supreme Court in Ohio and the fact that there are seats available in the November election and, and the impact that could have, because a lot of the things that the US Supreme Court has dealt with, they're now handing back to the states.

So those Supreme Court races, as you mentioned, are gonna be extremely important.

They're always important, but this year they'll be highlighted because of some of the things that have just happened.

- Yeah, definitely.

Because again, we're talking about the Chief Justice, the Republican Chief Justice, Maureen O'Connor is age limited out.

And so two sitting justices are both vying for her seat.

And then you've got the two Republican justices, Pat DeWine and Pat Fisher being challenged by Marilyn Zayas and Terri Jamison, two Democratic appeals court judges.

And so there's a lot going on in those three races there.

And I mean, when you consider all the things that the Ohio Supreme Court has to decide, already these are big, big issues.

But now with the ruling on Friday from the US Supreme Court, sending the regulation of abortion back to the states, then that really suggests that many of those issues involving abortion, if they come up again, are going to potentially come to the Ohio Supreme Court rather than through the federal court system, because again, no constitutional right to abortion.

So I think that that's critical stuff.

Also, when you consider that we have to do this redistricting stuff again, that's critical in the Supreme Court.

And so those are really big issues.

Democrats have scored a lot of wins over the last couple years in getting justices on the court because it was only a couple years ago that the court was all Republican.

Now there are three Democrats on the court.

This is the first time, as I mentioned earlier, that the R or D designation will be on the ballot for those justices, even in those justice candidates, even though they run in partisan primaries.

So this could be really, really critical for Democrats.

- Yeah, and we've seen what the difference can be when you have a court that is more balanced than one party controls the whole thing, because obviously redistricting, those cases would've looked a lot different in terms of the way the court would've ruled if it had been a different makeup of the court, instead of having three Democrats and a swing Republic and at least on this one issue.

Those would've been almost like non-starters had they gone to the court.

They would've been, Hey, this map's fine.

See you guys later.

Thanks for stopping by kind of a thing.

- Yeah, remember, we've had six tries at the State House and the Senate maps and you know, the congressional map is still now in the federal court system.

So yeah, like I said, we have to, we have to do this again.

And so the makeup of the Ohio Supreme Court could potentially be critical.

- Right, and as you mentioned too, all the other cases that the court deals with, I mean, we had one when we talked the last time, it was sort of a tongue in cheek thing, the discussion about how streaming services, should they be considered cable companies, things like that, that seem mundane, but actually do affect people's daily lives from a financial point of view, if nothing else.

- [Karen] Absolutely.

- So they deal with everyday life in Ohio.

- Yeah, and I should say one other thing, too, when it comes to the November elections, you mentioned it earlier that the Governor's on the ballot, all the five executive offices are on the ballot, which is Auditor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Treasurer, and Governor.

And three of those people are on the Ohio redistricting commission, which draws the maps.

So potentially not only is the makeup of the Ohio Supreme Court an issue here when it comes to redistricting.

But also of course, the makeup of that panel that voters approved overwhelmingly in 2015 should draw those maps.

Right now that panel is dominated by Republicans five to two, if things change in the November election, the makeup of that panel could change as well.

- Yeah, and that would change potentially the way that next set of maps are drawn, as you said, because we're gonna do this again a lot sooner than we anticipated with the laws that were effect.

With the amendments that were... - Yeah, yeah.

We get to do this all over again, yes.

- Yeah, well, it is, you know, I guess we'll have an opportunity to revisit this and the the way it's set up.

When you look at, kind of rolling back to the Supreme Court decision with Roe, the state of Ohio, of course at one time, was not a gay marriage state, that, at least one us Supreme Court Justice said, let's revisit that because he believes that the basis of Roe, the legal basis in Roe was also the legal basis for that case and several other ones that also then would change the landscape in Ohio should that come into effect.

So, and again, Supreme Court in Ohio, an important role in that also.

- Yeah, I talked to Ohio State University law professor Mark Spindelman about this because he's been studying this for a while.

And he said that as he reads that ruling and that decision, you're talking about a concurring ruling, a concurring opinion that Justice Clarence Thomas, most conservative member of the court wrote, where he said that other cases could potentially be up for discussion as well, and potentially looked at including cases that allowed for access to birth control by married couples and single people, same sex relationships and same sex marriage.

The same sex marriage case really has a big Ohio tie because Jim Obergefell, from Cincinnati was the lead plaintiff in that case, suing the Ohio department of health director, Rick Hodges.

Those two gentlemen are now friends, which I think is a really interesting thing to look at.

But the US Supreme Court, of course, sided with Obergefell and said that same sex marriage was legal in the United States.

Jim Obergefell now is a candidate, a Democratic candidate, for the Ohio House from Sandusky.

And so he's obviously still stayed in this political arena, but the whole question about whether same sex marriage, and access to birth control, things that we have taken as rights now for several years, in fact, Obergefell was just seven years ago this past weekend, these are issues that have a lot of people very concerned.

Mark Spindelman, the law professor, told me right now the opinion from Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, said nothing in this opinion should be taken to apply to other precedents, but there's a lot of fear and a lot of concern that that may not be the case, because if the precedent that was set by Roe versus Wade could fall, what other precedents potentially could fall?

Especially when a Supreme Court justice specifically cited cases that he would like to look at again.

- Yeah, and that will then basically make some people say, well, then let's, let's see, let's test this and see what happens.

Let's bring a case that would deal with, like, Griswold versus Connecticut back to the court.

Let's challenge that and see if that will hold up with this Supreme Court 'Cause, and the phrase they use is, I think it's substantive due process, is the linchpin of the case with Roe and then these other ones.

And yeah, these are issues that I think over the last five to seven years, because Obergefell was 2015, that's seven years downstream, going on eight, maybe nine by the time the court theoretically could get a look at it.

Things that we just sort of accepted as the rule of life in Ohio, just like Roe, could change dramatically for a significant part of the population.

- Yeah, and I think that that's one of the things that has people so upset.

This past weekend, I was at several different protests.

There was a huge one at the State House on Sunday.

That brought several thousand people out.

I think the concern, not only for the loss of the constitutional right to abortion, I mean, yeah, that's a concern for people, but also there is the question about what other rights.

And I saw a lot of signs that suggested what's next, who's next, who is the next target?

Because the people who have been fighting against abortion rights, the movement that started back when Roe started, in fact started a little bit before Roe, they now have accomplished their goals.

And so when you talk to people with Ohio Right to Life, right now, they're saying that they're celebrating and they wanna do more to help pregnant women, and women and children, expand healthcare access, things like this.

But of course there's a suspicion from people who are abortion rights supporters who wanna know, okay, well what's next?

What are you going to target next?

Besides a total ban on abortion, is there another group that you're concerned about?

Is there possibly the idea of fetal personhood, which really would enshrine in the state or federal constitution that life really does begin at conception according to the law.

So there there's a lot of concern and a lot of frustration and a lot of anger out there.

I saw more signs that had profanity on them, over the weekend, than I've seen it a long time.

And that really suggests to me that there are really some angry people who are very, very concerned.

- Yeah, and there's a lot there, as you said, there's a lot out there.

The unknown again.

Where are we headed?

What direction are we headed here?

We'll take a break.

We'll come back with Karen Kasler here on The Journal on WGBU PBS.

You're with us here on The Journal.

Our guest is Karen Kasler host of The State of Ohio.

And normally Karen, we'd be talking about a lot of issues around the state, business issues, political issues, obviously.

But what we've been talking about today is the biggest issue that's on, that basically leads every newscast everywhere.

The state of Ohio, as we mentioned earlier in the show, has one of the more restrictive abortion laws, which are now in effect.

And the question then is, how does this work for people who may leave the state of Ohio to go somewhere else to a state where the rules are different, less restrictive?

And how does that work for someone who's a resident Ohio and yet goes to, let's say Illinois, where the rules are a little different.

Then they come back to Ohio.

What happens at that point?

Is there an issue for the person who has now left the state, done something that technically is illegal in Ohio, but wasn't in Illinois.

- Yeah, and when I sat down with Governor Mike DeWine earlier this year for The State of Ohio, talked to him, our year end interview.

I specifically asked him about abortion, kind of expecting where we were gonna end up here.

And he said that what Ohio needs to be doing is taking some steps to make abortion unnecessary, because he was well aware, and said so himself, that other states are going to allow abortion, primarily Pennsylvania, which shares a border with Ohio, possibly Michigan.

So he said, when people can still leave the state to go access abortion, then it's not really their goal, the goal of people who want to get rid of abortion, they have not reached that goal yet.

And so on Friday afternoon, he put out a livestream statement where he said that he's going to be seeking more coverage for healthcare for women and children, more ways to identify vulnerable mothers.

He said that he was going to reach out to his staff and he's requiring them to come up with ideas on how to identify vulnerable women, to try to reach out to them for help.

But of course there are a lot of questions then about how the legislature will respond to this.

The legislature has been trying to restrict Medicaid for instance, for over the years in terms of work requirements, which they had not been able to receive.

And some other things that they were trying to do within the confines of the federal rules on Medicaid.

So there's some questions here about how that's going to happen.

And also the concern about what happens to kids who end up in the foster care system.

DeWine talked about having adoption awareness.

And right now there are 15,348 kids in Ohio's foster care system.

That's a lot of kids and the state is still searching for foster parents to try to help manage that caseload.

And so these are all issues that are going to have to be dealt with.

And while the state is in a good financial position, which we just heard about on our TV show last week, these things will potentially cost money.

And the question is, how is that money gonna be spent?

- Yeah, and you made a good point too, that the fact that this Governor has always had a lot of initiatives, a lot of intentions, a lot of proposals, they don't always come back reflective of his ideas when the legislature takes those up.

We've seen that with a lot of things, his discussions about gun regulation.

He got very little of what he was hoping to get.

He got a gun bill that came back to him, which he signed, but it didn't have many of the things, if any of the things in it that he had really tried to push forward.

So his intentions are always, I think, you know, he tries to be in the right place, his ideas to, as you said, to provide assistance to children in foster care, and try to do things so that abortion doesn't have to be even an option for people, but whether or not the legislature reflects his views, of course, is always up for grabs.

- Well, and his views seem to have moderated in some respects.

I mean, people will note that in 2019, after the mass shooting in Dayton, where he had proposed legislation, that would do some, some rules on setting up a system where people can sell guns privately, something like a red flag law, that kind of thing.

It went nowhere.

And now here we are a couple years later where DeWine is on the ballot this year, again, along with the entire Ohio House and half the Ohio Senate and Republicans really have been kind of strengthening their position with their base when it comes to not just abortion, 'cause there are seven abortion related pieces of legislation, two of which have been enacted, right now in Ohio.

But then there also is the gun bill.

And the gun portion, there have been two major pieces of legislation that DeWine has signed with regard to guns.

The so-called stand your ground bill, which allows for more self-defense and some people have said real concern about the safety of people, whether they feel threatened or not.

And then also the bill that was just signed fairly recently that allows for school districts to permit their teachers, to be armed in the classroom with around 24 hours of training.

And so we're starting to see some school districts sounding off lately saying they're not going to permit this, that they're going to keep guns out of classrooms.

But you know, those are the two bills that people will point to DeWine and say, Hey, you said you were gonna do something after the 2019 mass shooting in Dayton.

This is not what we expected you to do.

- Right, right.

Yeah, it's an interesting thing because in some people, and again, you there's of course obviously opinions, multiple opinions on all of these things.

'Cause I know the Governor said, we need to protect innocent lives in Ohio.

And of course some would argue that the laws that he signed regarding guns have actually made it maybe more dangerous for people.

But that's an opinion, and everybody's got an opinion, especially when it comes to guns.

But as I say, his ideas on gun regulation or gun management, whatever you want to call it, didn't come back reflected in anything that came back to him really.

And that's where even these issues, you said, yes, his intentions are good.

He wants to make it better for children who are born in the state of Ohio to be able to live great lives, and to make abortion not an option by virtue of some of these other policies.

But the question is, is that shared by enough of his colleagues in his party, in the Republican Senate and House in Ohio.

- Yeah, and we're gonna see that when it comes to a possible total ban on abortion, that lawmakers say they'll pass later this year.

And again, there are, like I said, seven bills that relate to abortion, two of which were enacted.

But one, for instance, is in the Texas style abortion law that would allow for people who help others get abortions to be prosecuted.

You know?

So there, there are all of these, this bill, this issue's not over.

The Supreme Court decision doesn't end this issue.

And they even admitted that in the opinion, that this does not settle anything, that this is something that will continue on.

All it does is send regulation back to the states.

- Back to the state.

And I guess we'll see how that plays out because obviously there are 50 states and there're at least a minimum of 50 different ways of approaching this, which in and of itself makes it kind of difficult for people to sort out.

So we'll, we'll have to leave it there right now.

Karen, thanks again for being on.

And obviously as we get closer to the November elections, we'll be back to talk about that because we'll see what happens in the August primaries, and what things look like at that point.

So thank you again for coming on.

- Always glad to be here.

Remember that August primary.

And if you need to register to vote, be sure to, to make sure you're registered or check your registration.

- There's still time.

There's still time.

Good.

Yeah.

Thanks Karen.

You can check us out at wbgu.org.

Of course you can watch us every Thursday night at eight o'clock here on WBGU PBS.

We will see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

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