Keep Women's Choices in Ohio Strong, Safe, and Legal

Recent attempts by the Ohio legislature to change laws and restrict women’s reproductive rights are excellent demonstrations of how gerrymandering skews the will of the people in our state.  While Ohio is generally considered a “swing state” or a “purple state” when it comes to elections, Republicans in power drew the districts to give themselves a nearly two to one advantage in the state house and senate. The result is an extreme legislature that is enacting policies nowhere near what Ohioans support.

A recent bill introduced in Ohio would try to classify zygotes and unborn fetuses as people, and would call for doctors who help a woman terminate a pregnancy to be guilty of pre-mediated murder, subject to criminal prosecution. That same bill could force doctors to operate on a woman with an ectopic pregnancy (when a fertilized egg is growing in the fallopian tubes) to try to re-implant the zygote into her womb.  This procedure does not actually exist, and is very dangerous to the mother.   The Republican legislator from southwest Ohio who sponsored this bill admitted he didn’t research the issue or consult with medical experts.  This bizarre situation made international news and put our state in a bad light.

 Last spring the Ohio legislature passed, and the Governor signed, a law known as a “heartbeat” bill. This halts all abortions after a heartbeat can be detected in the fetus - about six weeks after fertilization.  Even if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, physicians who terminate a pregnancy after that point would be subject to criminal prosecution and prison.  With this action, Ohio joined Alabama, Arkansas and Utah in trying to roll back women’s reproductive choices that have been available for nearly 50 years.

A recent guest columnist in the Repository praised President Trump for halting all family planning funds going to Planned Parenthood, an organization that mainly provides education and birth control services to lower income women along with cancer screenings and other health programs. This is nothing to be proud of at all.

  

Americans, including Ohioans, by a substantial majority do not support these kinds of extreme changes to the rights and privacy that women and families should continue to enjoy.  Let’s let women, parents, families, and medical personnel make these very personal and private decisions, and let’s keep politicians in Columbus and Washington out of the bedroom and out of women's wombs.