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At OHEA.ORG A protest for abortion rights and legislation to ban abortion as activists wait on a final ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court and a deal takes the possibility of a vote on legalized marijuana off the table till next year.

All this weekend, the state of Ohio welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

Abortion rights supporters held rallies throughout the country last weekend a little less than two weeks after a draft opinion leaked from the US Supreme Court on a Mississippi case on abortion.

Those protests are leading up to late June, when the court's majority is expected to announce it is overturning the landmark Roe versus Wade decision that allows abortion nationwide.

State House correspondent Joe Ingles reports on those events in Ohio.

Abortion is a human right not just for the of.

Supporters of legal abortion rally in Columbus outside the statehouse Saturday joining advocates that gathered in other cities around the state and country.

Because I believe in pro-choice and I don't like what's happening in America right now not giving girls and women and anybody a fair shot making their own decision about what they want to do with their body.

Because we're really you know, we should all be taking care of each other.

Women deserve the right to make our own decisions about our bodies.

And laws need to keep their pants off our bodies and off our health care.

The rallies were hosted by Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights organizations and advertised with the slogan Bans Off Our Bodies.

Similar protests were held in Cincinnati and Cleveland and nationwide, and more are planned in the weeks to come leading up to the expected U.S. Supreme Court decision in a Mississippi case A draft opinion leaked in early May indicated the new conservative majority of justices will overturn Roe versus Wade.

The landmark 1973 decision that made abortion legal nationwide.

But it's a draft and it could change.

Ohio is one of around two dozen states that could almost immediately ban abortion using laws on the books or pending legislation.

Advocates for legal abortion, say of Ohio outlaws the procedure either surgical or by medication.

Women will have to go to neighboring states to obtain legal and safe abortions.

Some doctors who participated in Saturday's rally say banning abortions won't stop it, but will just make it less safe because women will still seek options to end a pregnancy they are not physically, mentally or emotionally ready to handle.

Because people die in childbirth.

People are severely injured in childbirth.

We have a horrible maternal mortality crisis in this country and in Ohio specifically.

And so women will die So as a physician, it's my job to to follow evidence based medicine and health care.

And all the data shows that it's important for women to have access to reproductive rights.

And that's a full scope of reproductive rights, includes abortion care.

A Lutheran minister who's worked as a clinic escort at abortion facilities in central Ohio for the past few years said he and other clinic escorts were on hand to make sure people protesting were safe.

We're not going to intervene or tackle anybody, but just making people sure they're aware of these folks who have these GoPros on and they film and then they use it for their PR stuff.

Lexie Hall of Columbus was one of the people devil I was talking about.

She was part of a small number of abortion opponents who showed up carrying large signs and wearing GoPro cameras.

Every single human being has value and I believe that we should all be protected under the law.

Hall and others engaged with the crowd, talking to them about why they opposed abortion.

Many abortion rights protesters held up their own signs to try to cover the large signs being held by those who oppose abortion.

Republican Attorney General Dave Yost and Governor Mike DeWine are looking into whether the state could immediately resurrect the so-called heartbeat bill, which was put on hold by a federal court It would ban abortion when a fetal heartbeat can be detected at about six weeks into a pregnancy before many women even know they're pregnant.

Both the Republican dominated Ohio House and Senate are considering bills known as trigger bans that would make abortion illegal as soon as the U.S. Supreme Court would allow states to do so.

But though they're deep in the minority, Democrats are fighting back.

Proposing a constitutional amendment that would guarantee access to abortion and birth control.

Representative Michele Report.

Hagan says Republicans have made it their top priority to force extreme views, representing a minority of Ohioans on the majority, noting polls consistently show more than 60% of Americans support abortion rights.

I'm eight years short of my medical degree, but this is 50 years short of common sense.

And when asked whether it would be possible to get three fifths of the legislature to approve this and put it on the ballot directly, Senator Sander Williams didn't mince words.

And we're not naive enough to believe that the Republican controlled legislature will pass this proposal, in my opinion.

But what I do believe it will do is allow people in the state of Ohio to voice their opinion in the committee process, to show all of us, not just legislators, but those of us across the state that this is something, as the polls have shown, that the majority of Ohio's want details from the Democratic proposal are still pending since the lawmakers have yet to officially introduce full language.

They'd need to collect more than 250,000 valid petition signatures to put it before voters and that would take time.

So it wouldn't happen this year.

Ohio Right to Life President Mike Gun Advocates thinks the text of the constitutional amendment will likely go too far, allowing abortion for any reason at any time, something he says isn't popular with Ohioans.

And he says it will fail.

They will fail to get the necessary votes in order for that to be on the November 2023 ballot.

And I think this is more of a gimmick and a way to appease some of their their base leading up to an election.

For now, Ohioans are waiting for the Supreme Court ruling that the court of public opinion might be the one that really matters because Ohio and the nation are bitterly divided on this issue.

Joe Ingles, Statehouse News Bureau.

This week, a second hearing on a so-called trigger abortion ban, which would make abortion a fourth degree felony and does not allow exceptions or affirmative defense for rape or incest.

The hearing featured only supporters or proponent testimony it sponsored by 23 of the 64 Republicans in the Ohio House.

House lawmakers also heard testimony in committee on a bill that would ban gender affirming medical treatments such as puberty blockers or surgery for Ohioans under 18.

More than a third of House Republicans are backing this bill, which they say will ensure parental rights.

Similar bills in more than 20 states have been opposed by major medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

As protesters chanted outside, Democrats raise questions about the supporters research and the dangerous bans like these posed to trans youth.

Meanwhile, there's been no movement on a bipartisan bill that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or expression.

A bill that's been called the Ohio Fairness Act.

More than a third of the entire House, Republicans and Democrats, are behind the bill, along with major business groups.

It was introduced in March 2021 and hasn't had a hearing.

Its Republican sponsor is Representative Brett Hillier.

The top of me about it in November.

As you know, the Ohio Fairness Act has been around for some time now.

But at this juncture the in this House in the Senate has a record number of Republican supporters.

And I actually don't think that is surprising given that what conservatives really stand for our individualism, liberty, economic prosperity and opportunity.

Those are all pillars of our party.

And by the way, pillars that former conservative stalwarts such as Jack Kemp himself championed And I think that works very well of with our platform and in the conservative Republican Party.

And you've got business groups that have actually come out including the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, saying this is a bill that really would be potentially helpful for Ohio's economic situation.

Certainly.

And if you look at the history of nondiscrimination, laws, it's actually been business groups, whether you talk about racial discrimination in the South or the sex discrimination.

It has been chambers of commerce, local business groups that truly want to see discrimination stamped out.

Ultimately, Discrimination has no place in business and no place in the workforce.

And you know it for me.

What's interesting is Ohio has a massive number of colleges and universities and we're attracting talent from across the world here in Ohio.

And yet, as you know, we're redistricting.

We just lost a congressional seat.

Our population is aging.

And younger people, although they're living here for several years, they're going on to go elsewhere.

So I think ultimately creating an inclusive society where people can go to a movie theater, take a job and truly be judged on their talents and merits is beneficial to our state and beneficial to society.

But does this potentially run up against a buzzsaw when it comes to things like there was a provision in the state budget that would allow for its medical conscience clause is what it's been called that would allow for medical professionals to deny treatment to people if they have a disagreement over beliefs.

I mean, and the LGBTQ community has said that could potentially really affect people in that community.

Does the Ohio Fairness Act run up against that?

I don't necessarily think it does.

The provision in the budget, certainly, I think we should follow legislative processes where you actually have the ability to have hearings and have testimony and ultimately have good policy.

So, you know, it's interesting that one of the leaders of this movement nationally, the Conservatives for Nondiscrimination, was the former speaker of the Texas House.

And although he was initially not supportive of this kind of legislation, after hearing the testimony of families and students and children and businesses ultimately changed his opinion.

You talk about the script that you're in, this national Conservatives Against Discrimination.

You're on the Leadership Council for this group.

One of the guiding principles for this group is that freedom of religion is important to all of us.

So it kind of goes beyond just business ideas, but also into the area of freedom of religion.

And that and this is a quote from the website, we can and we must ensure that all Americans are free from discrimination no matter who they are.

Whom they love or how they worship.

There's a strong connection between Republican lawmakers and politicians in evangelical Christianity, most obviously on abortion, but also on other issues, too.

Does this potentially put you at odds with a big part of the Republicans voting base?

Certainly, I don't think so.

I think if you look at leaders of faith and here in Ohio, for instance, we have a faith group that is supportive of this legislation and federal legislation.

It's over 200 members, I believe of various faiths, whether it be mainline Protestant face, Christian faiths, Muslim faiths, Jewish faith, even some Catholic supporters.

For legislation like this, just because you are not discriminating doesn't mean that there are there aren't protections and they don't have that.

You don't have to get rid of religious protections just by passing this legislation.

That medical conscience clause, which allows health care providers to refuse to administer medical treatment based on their personal beliefs, is the subject of lawsuits filed by Columbia City Attorney Zach Klein and the ACLU of Ohio.

A proposal to legalize marijuana for personal use in Ohio is off until at least next year.

The coalition to Regulate Marijuana like alcohol struck a deal with Republican state leaders after filing a lawsuit over the signatures they turned in to get lawmakers to consider their plan.

If lawmakers don't pass the plan, as is, the group could gather thousands more signatures to put it before voters.

But there was a dispute over whether the petitioners submitted their signatures in time to make this year's ballot.

The settlement moves the potential ballot issue to next year instead of possibly being on this year's crowded ballot, which includes races for governor and US Senate.

Tom Herron speaks for the Coalition to regulate marijuana like alcohol.

So what can you tell me about this agreement that you reached with Republican leaders here in Ohio?

Well, most importantly, what it did is it preserved a clear pathway to the ballot for our proposal.

But we're frustrated with the fact that it won't be on the ballot this year.

We worked really hard to try to get it there, but ultimately we wanted to make the right decision for our coalition, the right decision to ensure that we could ensure that Ohio voters got a say on this topic.

Given the resistance that was put up by legislative leadership.

So through this settlement, you know, we preserved the initial batch of signatures.

We drew the validity of the initial batch of signatures that we collected previously.

The proposal will be transmitted in January of next year, and we will have an opportunity to get to the ballot in 20, 23 if the legislature continues to sideline this proposal.

Democrats have already said that this deal seems to have been done to keep the issue off the fall ballot because it likely would have helped Democratic turnout since polls show more Democrats are supportive of legalization of marijuana than Republicans.

What do you say to that?

Why were you why did you agree to this when there might be a political element here?

Well, I'll say what I've said previously.

When people have asked this question, I'm not so sure that this issue is as partizan as people think.

Right?

It's not.

This is an issue that we think is popular certainly among Democrats.

It's popular among independents.

But you know what?

It's also popular among Republicans.

So I don't look at the legalization of marijuana as a turnout driver necessarily for one party over the other, because as more and more Americans and more and more Ohioans learn about this issue, it becomes popular across all different kinds, whether it's political, geographic, economic, what have you.

So when we made this agreement, we were really focused on giving a choice to Ohio voters and making sure that we could preserve their opportunity to have a say.

If the legislature continues to stall on this issue and we wanted to you know, we didn't want to be tied up necessarily in litigation over the course of the summer and had this be a question mark as to whether Ohio voters were ever going to get an opportunity to voice their opinion on this.

Do you think Ohio voters and voters in general will still be supportive of this?

I mean, polls show that people are on your side here.

Is is now the time to strike or do you think that that will continue on into next year?

I absolutely think that it will continue on.

Public support for this issue has only gone one way.

Year after year after year.

And that is it becomes more popular year after year after year.

So I can understand the frustration from folks who are frustrated with not getting a chance to voice an opinion this fall.

But it may actually be more popular next year, next year if the legislature doesn't pass your proposal, which seems unlikely unless there is a historic and quite unexpected change in the makeup of the state legislature.

You have a very small window in which to gather 132,887 signatures.

You'd have from May 3rd to early July, if I'm not mistaken.

How do you do that in that short period of time?

Well, look, we've proven we can gather this amount of signatures already.

We're not concerned about that.

We know that we've got the team in place to do it.

We have two track record that establishes you know, we can gather the required number of signatures.

And so beginning on the day after that four month window elapses, we're going to have people in the field gathering signatures at every part of the state.

And you have contracted with a professional company to help you do this.

What's the cost that you're paying for that?

Oh, that's a good question.

I don't know if I get it with the classes.

I'd have to check with our with our campaign folks.

What I will say is that as we were out gathering signatures during this first phase, the one thing that we found time after time after time was that there's a lot of enthusiasm from Ohio voters on this issue.

You know, people were excited about getting a chance to voice their opinion, getting a chance to sign our petition and eventually, you know, to to get our proposal enacted into law.

And I think that enthusiasm is only going to grow over the next several months.

So I fully expect that when we're out gathering signatures in the spring of next year and the weather's nice and people are out at concerts and in the types of places that they haven't been for a long time, I think the enthusiasm will grow.

And so I don't anticipate any problems with with gathering signatures, particularly with the professional staff that we'll have out in the field.

I think the number I've seen is about $2.3 million.

Is that sound like it's in the ballpark?

It sounds about right.

Yeah.

Okay.

And finally, you said to me last July when we talked about this, if the federal government schedules marijuana means makes it legal and we don't have a system in place, the marijuana could be that.

It's totally unregulated in a sense, and that's bad policy.

So what happens to your effort if indeed the federal government does do this and we don't have a system in place, do you still go forward with your plan?

We have to, right?

Because if if our legislature doesn't enact our proposal on its own, then our proposal needs to be enacted by Ohio voters because we'll have a disastrous public policy outcome due to delay in the legislature.

And that would be incredibly unfortunate.

So if the legislature refuses to act and the federal government acts in advance, then we have to pass our proposal.

In your conversations with this on this agreement, did you get any sense from legislative leaders that they are interested in passing this No, quite frankly.

But we were really focused on resolving ballot access in and resolving this this dispute with the legislative leadership.

So that was our primary focus.

And look, over the next coming months.

We do plan on continuing to stay engaged with the legislature to try to push this proposal forward.

But, you know, we're going into it with eyes wide open, sort of expecting that, you know, like we would have had to have done this spring.

That will we'll end up going back before Ohio voters.

Anybody else you want to add?

No.

No, thanks.

Okay.

Thanks again for bearing with me.

Today.

Tell me a little bit about the coalition to regulate alcohol.

Marijuana like alcohol.

Who is in that coalition?

Where's the funding for that coalition coming from?

So as you probably have seen from our campaign finance report, there was a sizable contribution from the Marijuana Policy Project, as well as from from other operators here in the state of Ohio.

So that's where the funding has come from, as reflected in the campaign finance reports.

But, you know, more broadly speaking, when we talk about our coalition, it's not just the operators.

It's it's a wide swath of folks in Ohio.

You know, business interests, philanthropic interests, public policy, interest as well.

You know, we have a lot of folks that we've been having conversations with over the last several months who have given their support and helped our campaign in lots of different ways.

And it's legalization for marijuana of marijuana for recreational purposes for Ohioans.

Over 21, there's a 10% tax.

That money goes to certain programs.

Is there anything I'm missing here?

No.

You've hit that.

All right.

There's a 10% tax at the point of sale that funds social equity efforts.

A sizable proportion of that increased tax revenue will go to local communities that welcome adult use dispensaries into their their localities.

Funding for substance abuse and addiction.

Our proposal authorizes home cultivation for adults and also builds upon the existing medical marijuana infrastructure that we already have.

So it should be a relatively quick rollout of an adult use program.

The Ohio Supreme Court has unanimously upheld a law that allows the state to cut funding to communities using traffic cameras by the amount of money they raise from those devices.

Cities have brought in millions of dollars from camera programs, though many have abandoned them because of state restrictions and arguments before the Ohio Supreme Court in February.

Stephen Carney with the attorney general's office said cities can still run red light or speed cameras, even if the state reduces their funding by the total of the fines they bring in.

There's no intersection here.

We keep spending over here.

They keep doing traffic tickets over there.

They're we're on parallel roads where there's no red light here in the state.

Is Cleveland's law director, William Hammonds, argued that her city's residents voted for cameras and they pay state taxes.

The state has very paternalistic, decided that it is the state's money.

It's not the state's money.

It's the people's money.

These Clevelanders pay taxes and they also have a right to home rule In the unanimous opinion, Justice Sharon Kennedy struck down the claims of home rule violation by East Cleveland and Newburgh Heights and wrote that there's no constitutional guarantee that the state will provide funds for communities, but that those decisions are left up to state lawmakers.

And finally, a COVID update.

Infection rates in Ohio going up for the last six weeks.

State health officials say while the numbers are still comparatively good, the virus could be a threat later this year.

So they're stressing that the one third of Ohioans who haven't been vaccinated should get shots now.

In the first COVID briefing from the Ohio Department of Health since March, director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff said COVID deaths have dropped 16% in the last three weeks, and hospitalizations are a fraction of what they were when the Delta and Omicron variants were both prevalent in January.

But he said there's no way to track positivity rate because testing has dropped off and positives from at home tests are not being reported in many cases.

The state reports more than 38,500 people in Ohio have died of COVID since the start of the pandemic.

That's it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching Please check out our website at State Newstalk and follow us and the show on Facebook and Twitter.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutuel, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at med mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter Wright Morris and Arthur LLP.

Now with eight locations across the country, Porter Right is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

More at Puerto Right dot com and from the Ohio Education Association representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.ORG