State abortion rights are up for grabs in Ohio’s Nov. 7 Election. With early voting already underway, misinformation is infiltrating the conversation and potentially swaying the vote.

The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety or Issue 1, would amend the state’s constitution, allowing each person the right to make decisions about their own pregnancy, miscarriage, contraception, abortion, and more.

Research by Baldwin Wallace Community Research Institute found 58% of voters said they support Issue 1.

The term “partial birth abortion” is being used in ads and debates, even though the procedure has been federally banned since 2007. Partial birth abortion is not a medical term, but refers to dilation and extraction, or D&X, and “intact D&E, an in-clinic procedure which can be used in second trimester abortions.

“Issue 1 is just not right for Ohio,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said in a political ad in which he sits alongside his wife. His statements have been scrutinized, as local political commentators accuse him of lying and local news stations produce fact-checking segments on some of the ads.

With the potential to change the reproductive healthcare landscape at stake in this election, some reproductive justice organizations are suiting up to ensure Black voices are heard.

“What’s at stake for Black Ohioans in particular, the continued erosion of access to our human rights,” said Beulah Osueke, Interim Executive Director of New Voices for Reproductive Justice, an intersectionality-inclusive organization that works to provide political education and voter engagement in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

According to the U.S. Census, 14.3% of Ohio’s population is Black, which is about 1.7 million people. A report by the Ohio Department of Health shows that 48% of Ohio residents who had an abortion in the state last year were Black, 43% were white, 5% Hispanic and 3% Asian or Pacific Islander.

Gov. DeWine has a track record of anti-abortion legislation, and Issue 1 has been a major talking point for the governor leading up to this election.

“For many years, in Ohio and in this country, we’ve had a law that said a partial-birth abortion — where the child is partially delivered and then killed and then finally delivered — was illegal in Ohio. This constitutional amendment would override that.,” DeWine told reporters.

NBC 4 Columbus fact-checked another ad funded by an anti-abortion political committee Protect Women Ohio.

“Martin Haskell invented partial birth abortions in Ohio,” says the ad, which proceeds to claim that his clinics were not safe.

Haskell presented a paper on dilation and extraction, a late-term abortion procedure at the 1992 National Abortion Federation, which the National Right to Life Committee rebranded as “partial birth abortion” and began a campaign to ban it in 1993. Haskell responded to the 2023 ad with a cease and desist letter.

“This notion of partial abortions, in my mind, is language that conservatives have used to try to push this notion of fetal personhood. I don’t necessarily equate those with science, so much as they are words to help incite people to particular position,” said Dr. Regina Davis Moss, President and CEO of In Our Own Voice.

Fetal personhood laws have popped up around the country, and essentially grant a fetus the same or more rights than a pregnant person.

“If that is indeed the case, why not put the resources and services and all that support around women so that they can continue their pregnancies and know that they can take care of this child, because economics is largely a contributor as to why people don’t continue pregnancy,” said Davis Ross.

Black, woman and femme-led orgs are mobilizing their own communities

In May, the Washington Post reported that Black voter turnout dropped across the country from 51.7% in 2018 to 42% in 2022.

Osueke believes that there has not been enough intentional effort to engage Black voters in Ohio.

“I think there’s this notion that Black people are just naturally socially conservative, [but] I don’t think that’s true. I think that Black people have competing priorities, and so abortion access is being framed as a right to privacy in ways that Black people have never been afforded,” said Osueke.

New Voices teams up with organizations who offer mutual aid, like free groceries, to help provide education and context around Issue 1.

“Essentially, we utilize mutual aid to show up where social systems and social services failed. It’s not charity, but it’s justice-centered support for our community members,” said Osueke.

New Voices meets people where they’re at, incorporating Black culture, like at block parties. Osueke says that discussing information like reproductive rights resonates more when it’s someone within your own community, rather than a stranger knocking on your door with a sign up sheet, telling you to take political action.

“Well, we Black. And how do you look at the things that Black people do in their everyday life by tradition, and infuse conversations, these difficult conversations? How do you make your family, your friends, your community members feel like this is not taboo, right, like we have a conversation, and it’s okay,” said Osueke.

According to a 2022 poll by In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, 85% of Black respondents in FL, GA, LA, OH, PA, TN, TX agreed to the statement “when it comes to abortion, we should trust Black women to make the important personal decisions that are best for themselves and their families.”

If Issue 1 does not pass in this election, it isn’t a guessing game to what abortion access would look like in Ohio. Ohio operated under a six-week abortion ban for three months in summer 2022, before that policy was challenged and paused.

Dr. Davis Moss says that a shift in access to abortion would go beyond abortion procedures, and affect Black communities the hardest.

“We’re going to see higher infant mortality rates, we’re going to see higher teen pregnancy rates. We’re going to see over surveillance. When we start criminalizing abortion, Black women are going to be the most impacted and the most harmed by this because they tend to have higher rates of abortion. So we’ll see higher rates of criminalization among Black women,” Dr. Regina Davis Moss, President and CEO of In Our Own Voice.