As candidates and political strategists on both sides look at how to handle the abortion issue in 2024, all eyes have been on one viral ad credited with reelecting a Democrat in Kentucky. In today’s episode of the The Amendment, we hear from the young woman behind it. Read below for more about today’s guest, or jump to the episode transcript.
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On today’s episode
our host
Errin Haines is a New York Times best-selling author who has written five novels and been honored with a myriad of accolades, including an Edgar Award, the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, an NAACP Image Award, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among others. A former fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmakers Lab, Attica is also a screenwriter and producer, with credits that include Empire, When They See Us, and the Emmy-nominated Little Fires Everywhere, for which she won an NAACP Image Award for television writing.
today’s guest
Attica Locke is a New York Times best-selling author who has written five novels and been honored with a myriad of accolades, including an Edgar Award, the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, an NAACP Image Award, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among others. A former fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmakers Lab, Attica is also a screenwriter and producer, with credits that include Empire, When They See Us, and the Emmy-nominated Little Fires Everywhere, for which she won an NAACP Image Award for television writing.
Episode transcript
Errin Haines: (00:11)
Hi everybody. Welcome to The Amendment, a weekly conversation about gender, politics and power, brought to you by the 19th and Wonder Media Network. I’m your host, Erin Haynes, editor at large for the 19, a nonprofit newsroom focused on gender, politics, and power. On the show, we’re gonna sit down with activists, cultural icons, and some of the nation’s brightest reporters to figure out how to amend our democracy. Welcome to my group chat, everybody. Just this week, Ohio successfully passed a ballot measure protecting access to abortion in the state. And today I’m gonna sit down with my colleague, Grace Panetta, a politics reporter for the 19th who was on the ground in Ohio, to understand the people behind the successful campaign and what its opponents pretend for the future. Hey there, Grace.
Grace Panetta: (00:56)
Hey Errin.
Errin Haines: (00:57)
Listen, I really am so excited to talk to you about Ohio and the time that you spent there on the ground. Let’s bring, uh, these convos that we’ve been having in the Slack channel to The Amendment.
Grace Panetta: (01:07)
Yes, I’m excited to be here.
Errin Haines: (01:10)
Let’s just start by talking about your relationship to Ohio. Had you ever been there before? What made you wanna do this story?
Grace Panetta: (01:17)
I, I had not been to Ohio ever in my life, huh. Um, but I really wanted to go when I learned that this measure issue one was gonna be on the ballot, I needed to see who was organizing behind it, what was going on on the ground. ’cause it was the only one on the ballot this year in the entire country on abortion in terms of ballot measures.
Errin Haines: (01:36)
Yeah. But not the only one that, that we’ve seen kind of in this post-ops era. Right. Where were some of the other places that, that we’d seen abortion, literally on the ballot with, with these ballot amendments?
Grace Panetta: (01:47)
Yeah. Uh, so far abortion rights advocates are undefeated when it comes to ballot measures since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, 2022, which seems like a lifetime ago, but three states, Michigan, Vermont, and California, passed abortion rights and brought a reproductive rights protections in their state constitutions. And three red states, Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana had rejected anti-abortion ballot measures that had been put before the voters. And Ohio was the first state of a red state, quote unquote voting on a affirmative pro reproductive rights ballot measure. So I definitely wanted to go and see it for myself.
Errin Haines: (02:23)
So, I mean, you get there. Uh, when, when did you first, uh, go there? How long did you spend there and, and what, uh, gimme the vibes, what was the vibe check down there?
Grace Panetta: (02:32)
So I first went to Columbus in early October, and I was mainly there because there was the big March for Life in Ohio, the annual event down in the State House, uh, grounds in Columbus. And I really wanted to go to that to see how anti-abortion advocates were talking about the issue. There were a lot of national leaders there, as well as local advocates. Um, and to hear how they talked to their rhetoric at the event itself, they definitely painted the amendment in stark terms that first weekend. It was kind of seeing like, alright, there’s a lot on the line here for the anti-abortion groups to defeat this amendment. Yeah. ’cause they are, you know, oh and six going into it. What were they gonna do that was different? And it was kind of a question of is making it about parental rights going to be effective? Is painting it as extreme going to be effective? So hearing about that on the ground was really, really valuable to me. Yeah,
Errin Haines: (03:24)
It sounds like they were kind of workshopping even their messaging going into those final weeks. Mm-Hmm. And what about, what about the crowd? Was it like a, was it a big crowd? Were they, were they pretty galvanized? Did, did it, did it feel like there was a lot of energy, uh, on, on that side at that time?
Grace Panetta: (03:37)
Yes. It was a huge crowd. Um, I’m not great at estimating crowd sizes, but definitely over a thousand people there. Um, both young and old. A lot of students, a lot of younger people were there. Definitely everyone very fired up. It was an absolutely like electric atmosphere for sure. And then there was the rally and then the march around downtown Columbus and I walked along the ma– uh, the March route and interviewed a Republican state lawmaker who had sung the national anthem at the rally earlier. And I was asking her sort of about it, and she was saying, you know, we have to change the discussion because we’re oh and six, and we had to start changing people’s hearts and minds with this amendment. Which was an interesting contrast to some of the more extreme stark rhetoric I heard from the speakers up on stage. So yeah, you, you’re right, it was absolutely trying out different messages through the final weeks.
Errin Haines: (04:31)
Great. I know I don’t have to tell you what an emotional issue this is, uh, for folks on both sides. And, and so I wonder kind of how both sides were tapping into that emotion when they were making the case, uh, for and against issue one going into this election. What are some of the things, some of the rhetoric that, that you heard from people that you were talking to on the ground about the case that they were making to voters to either support or not support this ballot initiative?
Grace Panetta: (05:02)
Yeah, it was really fascinating, uh, to see on the anti-abortion side how much they were trying to make the issue about anything but abortion, uh, to a certain extent. Mm-Hmm. They were not defending the six week ban that Republican lawmakers and the current governor Mike DeWine passed in 2019, uh, which has no exceptions for rape or incest, and was in effect for about 11 weeks in 2022. They weren’t defending that. They were tapping into this notion of parental rights, saying that the amendment would infringe on parents’ rights to know about their, you know, kids’ medical decisions, that it could undermine Ohio’s parental consent law for abortions. And they even went as far to try to connect it to transgender rights and say that the amendment would somehow make it easier for minors to receive gender affirming care. And to be clear, there wasn’t really a lot of evidence behind those claims, um, from legal scholars who had analyzed the ballot measure. But it was certainly an interesting way of framing. And they did that the main group opposing the measure, Protect Women Ohio, ran a lot of ads related to parental rights and saying, you know, if your child is assaulted by like an authority figure, they could go and like, get an abortion and you wouldn’t know about it.
PROTECT WOMEN OHIO AD: (06:15)
A closed door on the other side, your daughter making the biggest decision in her life to get an abortion or not. Today, you have a right to go through that door to be there for her to help if issue one becomes law, that door locks forever. Your rights as a parent gone to keep the door open to be there for her vote no on issue one.
Grace Panetta: (06:45)
We know that this term parental rights is something that the right has used in a way to try to mobilize women voters, particularly in the context of school board races. But anti-abortion advocates were definitely using it in Ohio as well.
Errin Haines: (06:59)
And what were Democrats telling their voters to get them galvanized and mobilized to support this issue?
Grace Panetta: (07:05)
Yeah, there were arguing that the, you know, Ohio legislature had infringed on the personal freedoms and bodily autonomy of Ohioans when it passed the abortion ban. They were able to point back and say, look, when this ban was in effect, it caused pain and trauma to people. It was really stressful for doctors to figure out whether they now were gonna get in legal trouble, how they could, you know, advise their patients. And it was this overwhelming sense of the government overstepped, put themselves sat down in your exam room, in your doctor’s office, and have just caused a lot of pain and trauma and stress to what is already a really stressful time and what is already a deeply, you know, emotional decision or experience to go through for many people. And that was really, their messaging was around personal liberty freedom and emphasizing the extreme nature of the six week abortion ban.
Errin Haines: (08:00)
You really kind of got to see how real the stakes are for both sides. Right. And, and, and so many of these things that we kind of talk about at this high national level, how people are living out, living out this issue every day in a state like Ohio.
Grace Panetta: (08:15)
Yes, absolutely. It’s the consequences and the impacts are very, very real. I also went to, uh, rally for the pro issue one side, and that’s where I started to see kind of the really pivotal role of young women, and especially young women of color in this campaign. You know, that’s who’s staffing the abortion funds and the hotlines and connecting patients to care and doing a lot of that advocacy and that work on the ground. It’s a lot of young women, um, who have taken this on. And that’s also where I got a sense of the magnitude of what it is, what it’s meant to have uncertain abortion access in a state as large as Ohio. I mean, currently there are fewer than 10 operating clinics and not all of them provide, you know, the full range of services. And so hearing about that on the ground, and there were also physicians there, which was interesting. There were been a lot of doctors who did not expect to find themselves in political fights, but have done so when it comes to abortion access, and hear them talk about the pain and the fear and the trauma that their, their patients have experienced, um, under a six week abortion ban, not knowing if they can get care, that was really, uh, useful as well.
Errin Haines: (09:23)
Yeah. And, and, uh, you know, you were on the ground there. How much were you seeing a lot of ads around this too? Uh, you know, how much were were voters really kind of being bombarded with with all of these messages, uh, in the weeks leading up to the election?
Grace Panetta: (09:37)
Oh, yeah. There was a ton of ad spending. Um, lots of lots of stuff on the airwaves from both sides. Yeah. The, the, uh, anti-abortion side was all about, you know, this amendment goes too far. It’s extreme. It’s not what we want. It’s, you know, not the will of the people. And then also some of these parental rights arguments, including Spanish language ads that were targeted towards Latinx voters, which I thought was interesting. Yeah. And then on the pro-abortion rights side, it was ads emphasizing the lack of, uh, exceptions in Ohio, six week abortion ban, and also really leaning into this idea of getting the government outta your doctor’s office. Personal freedom from government intrusion.
Errin Haines: (10:17)
Yeah. I mean, honestly, that’s one of the things that I love so much about being able to be on the ground reporting. You get to see those ads, you get to really hear from those voters, you know? Mm-Hmm. if, you know, God bless local newspapers that still exist. Yeah. You get to read, you know, a letter from the editor or look at a front page and see Yeah. You know, how much of an issue, uh, something really is talk radio, you know, even on the ground Mm-Hmm. when you’re in your car, you know, going to, to these different events can be so illuminating, uh, you know, and, and helping to kind of understand what it is the voters are processing. Right as they’re headed into, um, headed into an election, especially when the stakes feel as high as, as something like this. So, you know, there was also, you know, voters, voters were engaged, they’re paying attention to kind of how things were unfolding in Ohio, you know, getting a ballot initiative, you know, getting that to the ballot is more than an notion. Right. I mean, that it, that took a herculean effort from the folks in Ohio who, who wanted this. What was that process like? And, and then what were, what, what, what were those people up against in, in terms of the people who did not want this issue on the ballot and certainly didn’t want it to pass?
Grace Panetta: (11:28)
Yeah. It’s a really important point. A ballot measure is not like a traditional campaign or election between two candidates, which is why I thought it was important to go be there in person and see that on the ground. But yeah, to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot, you have to get a ton of signatures more than you need. ’cause some are gonna get challenged or thrown out. You have to draft language that’s gonna both hold up, you know, be sound legally and work politically as well, which is difficult. And once you get your measure on the ballot, there are gonna be more legal fights over the ballot summary language, for example, which happened in Ohio. You have to get out and do a ton of GOTV persuasion mobilization of voters. And in this specific instance, in Ohio, Republicans and Republican office holders, um, and especially used through everything they had against this measure to stop it from passing, including using the powers of their offices, their state offices, um, and holding elections, special election paid for by the taxpayers on an amendment that did not pass, that would’ve raised the rest, the threshold to pass ballot measures, um, to a super majority that was clearly aimed at thwarting the abortion amendment that did not pass back in August.
Grace Panetta: (12:37)
But even then, there were fights over the ballot summary language. Uh, the Republican Secretary of State, Frank LaRose, who was also a candidate for US Senate, got the preferred ballot measure language he wanted. And then there was just a lot of misinformation coming, um, from that side, in some cases from official government sources about abortion itself and what the measure would do. So the pro-abortion rights advocates had to overcome all of that. The voters had to overcome all of the obstacles put in their path Yeah. To pass this thing, which makes it even more notable.
Errin Haines: (13:06)
Yeah. I mean, and what did you hear from the voters, uh, as, as they’re watching all of this kind of play out? What, what was their response? Did? Was this something that made them even more determined to, to, to participate in the, in this election? Where were they?
Grace Panetta: (13:22)
Yeah, I think that the Republicans rushing to put this August special election on the ballot ended up being a pretty strategic misfire because it just like drew more attention to the fact that they were clearly trying to stop the abortion amendment from passing. And so that gambit failed. And I think the margin by, which the Pro-Abortion Rights Amendment passed, and that measure shows that, you know, voters, regardless of how they identify politically, regardless of what labels they use to describe themselves or their positions on a portion, they do not like being told what to do. They do not like being condescended to by their elected officials, um, or saying, oh, no, it’s best for you if we have to make it harder to amend your own state constitution. They just don’t like being told what to do, uh, is the bottom line. And they don’t want their elected representatives taking one of those tools, the tool of direct democracy away from them. Now, for example, if, you know someone voting against the August measure voting for the abortion rights measure, doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll be mobilized always to vote one way or another on like a partisan election. But it did say something very clear about, uh, how they feel about their elected leadership’s attempts to stop this amendment from passing. Yeah.
Errin Haines: (14:37)
And about what, what happens when, uh, people feel like their rights are being challenged or taken away.
Grace Panetta: (14:43)
Yeah, absolutely. That was a big theme. And that this whole issue of rights and values, um, was something I had a, I talked to a democratic pollster who was working on this ballot measure the day after the election. That was one of the big points from our conversation is this succeeds in large part because of keeping it on values. Not a specific policy proposal, but say, Hey, you should have all of these rights in your constitution, and you can, you should be able to do whatever you want and not the government telling you what you should do. Um, and I think Republicans, you know, had some trouble refuting that argument and trying to make it about different things other than abortion at the end of the day, really came down to these issues of values and rights.
Errin Haines: (15:24)
Well, Grace, I mean, I just, I’m really struck on the other side of, of yet another election. You have people in a state, uh, Ohioans, who were able to amend their constitution right. To, to, to ensure that, that they were going to ha have this access that, that, that they wanted. And they were able to speak with their own voice, uh, and, and say what they wanted and amend their constitution. What do you think that this whole process, uh, you know, all of the reporting that you’ve done, what does it say to you about our democracy? What does it say to you about, uh, you know, voters in this state and, and how you’re thinking about going into 2024?
Grace Panetta: (16:03)
Yeah, I think it showed that democracy takes a ton of work from everyone. It’s not easy. It’s not something that just exists. It needs to actively be upheld every day. And that requires citizens coming out and making their voices heard, um, including standing up against attempts by their elected officials to undermine the democratic process. Um, in the context of Ohio. They’ve historically had a very gerrymandered state legislature and very lopsided voting maps. Um, and I think that the direct democracy process is one of the last few things voters had going into this. And they made it clear they do not want that taken away from them. And they made it clear they do not want government intrusion into their medical decisions. And they, you know, it was their opportunity to express directly their thoughts on the six week abortion ban and on all the abortion restrictions passed in Ohio. And I think that should give everyone a lot to think about going into 2024, about how voters see the explicit connection between reproductive rights and having full citizenship and a democracy and the explicit ties between abortion rights and democracy.
Errin Haines: (17:11)
Yeah. I think, uh, voters we are seeing are continuing to send a message around this issue, and I know, grace, that you are going to continue to stay tuned to see exactly what that message is and how that is playing out in our democracy. So thank you so much for your reporting, and thanks so much for joining me on the Amendment today.
Grace Panetta: (17:29)
Thank you so much for having me, Erin. This has been great.
Errin Haines: (17:34)
Okay, so my 19th Hive knows this, but in case you are new to the 19th, new to the amendment at the 19th, we have an asterisk in our logo. Uh, the asterisk really is to signify the fact that while the 19th Amendment granted some women, not all women, the right to vote on paper, that was really not the whole story. And the asterisk really reminds us that our work is far from finished in this democracy. And so that is the journey that we are on. Thank you for being on this journey with me. And to end each show, I’m gonna give you my asterisk on the news. Uh, so what that means is really gonna be kind of a story that either lacked or needed a lens on race or gender, or maybe an under undercover story or a moment in culture that deserves a shout out or just something that happened, uh, you know, in, in, uh, recent events that, that I am thinking about, uh, through, uh, that race or gender lens.
Errin Haines: (18:23)
So, uh, with that said, here is my asterisk on the week’s news. I don’t know about you all, but I am looking forward to some fun holiday reading, uh, with Liz Cheney’s new memoir, Oath and Honor, uh, which is out this week. And she’s been doing a lot of interviews, talking a lot about, um, just what her journey as a defender of, of our democracy has been like. Uh, somebody who was so prominent as, as co-chair of the January 6th hearings, uh, and, and so prominent in fact that her role in that cost her her seat in the House of Representatives, uh, you know, as, as a Republican member of representing the great state of Wyoming, uh, at the same time this week as Liz Cheney’s memoir is debuting, you had former Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, saying that he’s resigning at the end of this year, that he is saying, you know, I am am am not gonna wait for , you know, to run for, for reelection as he claimed he was gonna do.
Errin Haines: (19:21)
Uh, was not waiting to see whether his colleagues were again, going to kind of challenge his, his leadership or representation, but said he is exiting, uh, on his own. And, and I just find it’s so interesting that you had both of these members of the Republican party, uh, taking different kinds of risks, uh, that, that, uh, and, and now at the end of that, both of these folks are, are no longer in the US House of Representatives. What does that mean for our democracy? What does that mean for our politics? What it means to hold onto power really at all costs, which is a conversation that we are having and thinking through in our democracy even in this moment, as, as we are headed into 2024 cost of, of toxic masculinity in our politics. That’s been such a central part of, of Trumpism. You know, for folks who feel like that is a politically expedient strategy, uh, I think Kevin McCarthy might be a cautionary tale in, in, uh, a way in which that does not work.
Errin Haines: (20:17)
And then you have Liz Cheney that cost her her seat, but she’s talked about the support that she’s gotten, particularly from young women in our democracy, uh, in, in, in the months that she’s been out of office. She is now, you know, at the University of Virginia talking about democracy, uh, and, and just continuing to encourage people to be on the side of, of democracy regardless of what their political leanings are. Even though, you know, she lost her bid for reelection, I think we’re still seeing maybe what she has gained as a result of that and, and maybe even what our democracy may stand to gain for her leading in this very different way. And really what it means to think you won when maybe ultimately you’ve lost something and, and what you win when you think maybe you lost.
So that’s my asterisk for this week, and that is, uh, this week’s episode of The Amendment, which is also a newsletter by the way that I write, and that you can subscribe to for free by going to 19th news.org. Uh, that’s where you can also find all of our great journalism around gender, politics, and policy for the 19th and Wonder Media Network. I’m Erin Haynes, talk to you again next week.