With just four more days to go, there’s still plenty of misinformation circulating about the radical pro-abortion amendment on Ohio’s ballot.
Know that, for the abortion lobby, this is a feature and not a bug. Confusion about the true scope of Issue 1 works to their advantage, but clarity exposes how extreme it really is. These are some of the top whoppers we’ve seen:
1. “Issue 1 simply restores the status quo of Roe v. Wade.”
Legal experts say Issue 1 is far more sweeping than Roe, which left policies like parental involvement and informed consent standing:
“This is not a vote against Ohio’s current laws on abortion,” Megan M. Wold, former deputy solicitor general in the Ohio attorney general’s office, said on a press call on Tuesday. “Some voters may not like some aspects of those laws. But this is a vote for a new legal regime that would remove from voters the ability to enact common-sense abortion laws in the future, including the very same kinds of abortion laws that exist in all of Western Europe.”
And once embedded in the state constitution, it would supersede laws passed by the legislature and could be practically impossible to reverse or change.
2. “Ohio law makes no exception for saving a pregnant woman’s life.”
During a televised debate that aired on local TV, a spokeswoman for the pro-abortion “Yes” campaign lied 14 times, claiming that women must flee the state or endanger their lives should they experience a pregnancy complication. She also claimed they cannot receive miscarriage care.
This is news to Protect Women Ohio spokeswoman Mehek Cooke, who received care at a hospital last year when she feared she was miscarrying her son.
A month ago, the Ohio Department of Health confirmed that “Ohio laws and regulations addressing abortion relate to the intentional termination of a preborn life, not the tragedy of a miscarriage…medical practitioners are expected to provide the highest level of care and nothing in Ohio’s laws or regulations prevents a medical practitioner from providing that care.”
Here is the proof of every place in state law that explicitly protects a woman’s ability to receive life-saving emergency care:
3. “Issue 1 won’t take parental rights away or affect them at all.”
Critics say the amendment won’t have any effect on parental notification or consent because the text says nothing about it. That’s precisely the point. The amendment was crafted by ACLU lawyers who deliberately chose to use the all-encompassing term “individual” instead of “woman” or “adult.” Where the amendment is silent, it does not protect.
Protect Women Ohio explains, “The ACLU, which wrote and is bankrolling Issue 1, has a long and well-documented history of attacking parental rights across the country, including in Michigan, Indiana and Alaska. The ACLU also publicly rallies against parents’ rights on its website, and its coalition partners call for the abolition of parental rights on social media.”
One local case gives a chilling preview of what will be perfectly legal if Issue 1 passes. Additionally, just this week we learned about a 15-year-old girl who was taken over 500 miles from home for an abortion by her adult “boyfriend” and his mother, from a state that requires parental consent for minors to a state that has no requirements.
4. “Late-term abortions are rare and for dire medical reasons.”
Pro-abortion researchers acknowledge that “data suggests that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment,” but for socioeconomic reasons similar to earlier abortions. What’s more, nearly 56,000 babies a year are aborted in the U.S. at 15 weeks, a point when science shows they can feel pain, or later.
5. “Partial-birth abortions don’t happen, and it doesn’t matter if they’re outlawed in Ohio or not.”
The inventor of partial-birth abortion, Martin Haskell, has donated $150,000 to promote Issue 1. This revelation – and Haskell suing pro-life advocates for telling the truth – has forced the media to cover this grisly subject:
A D&X procedure involved dilating the woman’s cervix, then pulling the fetus through the cervix, feet-first to the neck. The head was then punctured and the skull emptied and compressed to allow the fetus to fit through the dilated cervix. (AP article)
Issue 1 proponents claim everything is fine because partial-birth abortion is dealt with in federal law. This argument cuts both ways. Where’s the point, then, in stripping it specifically out of state law? In 2019, Illinois Democrats did just that. (Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has recently established a new group to funnel dark money – ABC’s words, not ours – toward ballot measures attacking the constitutions of other states.) One concludes that it was done to send a message, or in case of some hoped-for future repeal of federal law. The state’s most recent published data shows abortions up significantly.
In the meantime, cabinet-level Biden appointees such as HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra have opted to simply pretend the law doesn’t exist.
In D.C., which has no gestational limits, we’ve seen the tragic consequences of officials turning a blind eye. Medical experts who reviewed the case of five babies – estimated to be in the late second or early third trimester, old enough to live outside the womb – recovered from Cesare Santangelo’s late-term abortion facility believe that at least one victim’s injuries may indicate illegal partial-birth abortion. Yet D.C. authorities would not conduct autopsies. When Republican congressional leaders called on D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser for an investigation, Bowser’s insolent response was to accuse the pro-life activists who recovered the bodies of “extremist” activity and to punt to the Department of Justice – the same Department of Justice that is currently putting peaceful pro-life activists in jail.
Those who still don’t believe Ohio needs a law prohibiting partial-birth abortions ought to go see “EVIDENCE: Crime Scene Photos from the Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer,” by the makers of the Gosnell movie. Thanks to a state law, former Pennsylvania abortionist Kermit Gosnell currently sits in prison for delivering babies alive and cutting their necks with scissors.
6. “Issue 1 allows limits on abortion after viability.”
Dr. Ingrid Skop, a practicing OB-GYN with 30 years’ experience, explains how Issue 1 deliberately leaves the definition of viability to the judgment of the abortionist who profits:
7. “Pro-life protections will result in inferior medical care for women.”
In a particularly egregious op-ed, a retired doctor/professor claimed pro-life laws cause more pregnant women with breast cancer to die.
In almost 20 uses of the word “patient,” the professor only ever refers to the woman as a patient and never to her baby. She states, “I recall discussing the ways cancer therapy can damage a fetus, whether patients facing a grave prognosis should bring a new child into the world, and if parents already overwhelmed by dealing with breast cancer would be able to cope with the difficulty of caring for a new baby. These conversations were nuanced, often heartbreaking, and always included an exploration of all available options, including abortion.” But she never clarifies who initiated those “discussions.”
This is shameful fearmongering. First of all, approximately 90% of U.S. OB-GYNs don’t commit elective abortions, which are the overwhelming majority of abortions. On the whole it’s just not in their repertoire.
A story out of Texas shows what outcomes are possible when both women and babies are cared for as patients, even with a difficult diagnosis. Jasmine, a patient of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, was scared to find out she had breast cancer just weeks after learning she was pregnant. Her story notes M.D. Anderson’s reputation for treating more pregnant women with breast cancer than anyone else, and how her doctor gave her hope and peace of mind:
Dr. Oke assured me that pregnant women undergo surgeries all the time, for things like gall bladder removals. And, neither a lumpectomy nor a mastectomy should pose any risk to the baby.
She also said that pregnant women had been receiving chemotherapy successfully since the 1980s and that while it was possible a small amount of those drugs could be passed through the placenta, there was no conclusive evidence showing that this was harmful.
“Thanks to them,” she writes, “my second son was born perfectly healthy on May 23, 2023. And, I am on my way to being cancer-free.”
In reality, it is abortion businesses that are already actively harming women, as a recent 911 call from a Dayton, Ohio abortion center shows. Issue 1 would block health and safety protections for women, along with anything else that could conceivably “burden” the “right” to abortion.
8. “Ohio pro-life laws need a health exception.”
Cleveland.com called out the pro-abortion Yes campaign for making this misleading claim in an ad. Unfortunately, the article did not explain how health has historically been defined by the Supreme Court in the abortion context. It’s far from what the average non-lawyer might assume:
The medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age—relevant to the wellbeing of the patient. All these factors may relate to health. (Doe v. Bolton)
As the Yes campaign has flat-out admitted, Issue 1 leaves health deliberately undefined.
Don’t let friends and family be misled by misinformation on a critically important vote – share this post today!