Following the passage of Ohio's very modest Heartbeat Law, which bans abortion of a child with a detectable heartbeat, radicals from around the country lined up to oppose the new law, but not by lobbying the legislature or primarying candidates who voted in favor of the measure. Instead, they went for the nuclear option, spinning up a statewide ballot measure to enshrine abortion on demand, essentially with no exceptions, in the Ohio Constitution.
Ohio has been a reliably red state for more than a decade, but thanks to the deceptive ads the pro-abortion forces are running nonstop on TV, radio, the internet, via email, and snail mail, the state could end up with one of the most liberal abortion policies in the country. And once it's enshrined in the Constitution, it will be almost impossible to roll back. The legislature will be taken out of the equation and will not be able to pass any limits on abortion, not even the gruesome partial-birth abortion.
My friends at the Ohio Roundtable created a really helpful (and, frankly, terrifying) markup (see below) highlighting some of the language in the amendment. Note that 1) it never mentions the word "woman," instead using the term "pregnant patients," which tells you everything you need to know about the radical groups pushing this, and 2) the language is intentionally vague, which will allow judges and abortion doctors to interpret it in a way that makes limits on abortion—again, including partial-birth abortion—impossible.
Amendment 1, if passed, will add abortion on demand to the Constitution's Bill of Rights, right there next to the right to bear arms, freely assemble, and have a trial by jury.
The title itself—The Right to Reproductive Freedom With Protections for Health and Safety—doesn't say who would be protected—certainly not unborn children—but as the Ohio Roundtable notes, the protections are "mostly for abortion providers."
The amendments states that:
Every individual has a right to make and carry out one's own reproductive decisions, including, but not limited to decisions on:
- contraception
- fertility treatment
- continuing one's own pregnancy;
- miscarriage care; and
- abortion
That "every" there includes minors, who will be able to get abortions without parental consent. The sneaky "not limited to" means the sky is the limit. According to the Ohio Roundtable, this could include (but is not limited to) gender selection abortions, harvesting body parts, chemical castration, transgender surgeries on minors, and possibly even human cloning.
The language states that abortion "may" be prohibited after fetal viability, "But in no case may such an abortion be prohibited if in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient's treating physician it is necessary to protect the pregnant patient's life or health."
That "may" means the abortion doctor gets to decide whether carrying the child to term would harm the mother's physical or mental health—that includes things like depression, anxiety, and other feelings that could be characterized as mental health issues. It's the abortion lobby's dirty little secret that "mental health" in this context can be stretched to mean almost anything, which gives abortion doctors a free pass to kill babies at any and every stage of gestation.
The amendment defines fetal viability as
...the point in a pregnancy when, in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient's treating physician, the fetus has a significant likelihood of suvivial outside the uterus with reasonable measures. This is determined on a case-by-case basis.
Again, the doctors who get rich by tearing unborn babies apart will get to decide which babies to exterminate through all nine months of pregnancy.
Ohio AbortionAmendment Language MarkedUp 1 (2) by PJ Media on Scribd
Boatloads of cash have poured into the state to support the abortion-on-demand amendment, including $3.5 million from George Soros's Open Society Policy Center, $3.2 million from the ACLU, and $2.5 million from the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. To date, the pro-abortion minions have raised $41 million, to the opposition's $29 million.
Related: HEARTBREAKING: Britney Spears Reveals She Had an Abortion While Dating Justin Timberlake
The ads from the abortion radicals have been the worst kind of fear-mongering from alleged "Christians" who support killing unborn children. They claim that if Issue 1 does not pass, women who miscarry will not be able to receive treatment, which is ridiculous. A woman who tragically miscarries has a baby with no heartbeat, so Ohio's law would not prevent a D&C or whatever procedure a doctor deems necessary to treat the mother in that situation.
If the polling is correct, the radical amendment will pass. An Ohio Northern University poll from 10/16-10/19 found that 52% support the amendment, 35% are opposed, and 12% are undecided. A Baldwin Wallace University Community Research Institute poll from 10/9-11 shows 58.2% for, 33.5% against, and 8.2% undecided.
Those undecideds could tip the balance one way or the other. The Ohio Roundtable has sent 8.5x11-inch "See the Language" cards out to 2.3 million Ohio homes. Hopefully, once voters read the language for themselves (rather than the truncated summary that appears on the ballot), they'll see how radical it is and reject the amendment.
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