The countdown is now at five days. Five days until Ohioans will vote on “Issue 1,” a sweeping pro-abortion initiative that Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights are said to already have raised almost $40 million since February.
As NRL News Today has done for weeks and weeks, today we are posting original copy and reposting some of the best criticisms of “The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety.”
Along with their cohorts in the legacy media, the pro-abortion coalition behind Issue 1 denies the lessons of Roe and Doe, now thankfully in the trash bin of history. And that lesson for anyone with eyes to see is that words matter; how they are interpreted matters.
And what anyone who is honest will admit is that when abortions are allowed for the “health” of the mother it means abortion on demand up until birth. Period.
Often they will add that the abortionist has to agree, but agree with what? That the woman’s “health” will be affected. Doe v. Bolton [in]famously defined “health” as including “all factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age—relevant to the well-being of the patient.” Abortion on demand.
We talk about this more elsewhere. I’d like to switch to a column written yesterday by Michael New for National Review Online under the headline “Yes, Issue 1 Would Endanger Ohio’s Parental Involvement Law.” Why? Simply because there is strong support, even among those who tilt “pro-choice,” for parental involvement in their minor daughter’s abortion decision. Supporters of Issue 1 understand this—which is why deny this. [What else is new?]
Please follow LifeNews.com on Gab for the latest pro-life news and info, free from social media censorship.
What evidence does Prof. New present? Well for starters, “Ohio media outlets that have covered Issue 1 have made concerted effort to downplay these concerns raised by pro-lifers.” Instead, they dip into their catalogue of pro-abortion professors who flatly deny Ohio’s parental-consent law would be affected.
This is a long quote but summarizes a lot of data:
However, a look at other states shows that the concerns of Buckeye State pro-lifers are well founded. Indeed, pro-life parental-involvement laws have been struck down in several other states where state constitutions offer far less protection to legal abortion than what Issue 1 is proposes. State supreme courts in both New Jersey and California have both struck down pro-life parental involvement laws. In each decision, the court argued that such laws violated constitutional rights to privacy. Additionally, in 2016, the Alaska supreme court struck down a pro-life parental-involvement law on the ground that it violated constitutional equal-protection provisions.
Parental involvement laws, as mentioned above, are popular for what ought to be obvious reasons. We care about our children and our grandchildren. We know what’s in their best interest, not some judge.
Mr. New ends his shrewd column with this:
[O]n numerous occasions, state courts have struck down parental-involvement laws. This has happened even in states where abortion was not explicitly protected by the state constitution. This shows that the concerns of Ohio pro-lifers are well founded.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
