As pro-abortion groups work to promote abortion in Ohio, another group has set up 30 billboards across the state, specifically targeting Catholic voters.
Catholics for Choice, the controversial abortion advocacy group, announced a “billboard blitz,” with signs reading “63% of Catholics support legal abortion in all or most cases” and “Pro-Choice Catholics: You Are Not Alone.”
In a press release, Catholics for Choice President Jamie Manson said the campaign is specifically meant to rebut the pro-life campaigns being presented by the Catholic Church.
“In the same way bishops are organizing their parishes to try to defeat Issue 1, so too must pro-choice religious groups mobilize to say: ‘Not in the name of our faith will you take away fundamental freedoms.’ Ohio’s Catholic bishops are pulling out all the stops to stigmatize and silence pro-choice Catholics across the state, preaching blistering sermons from the pulpit and pouring an astonishing $1.4 million into the campaign to defeat this abortion rights amendment. Their spending is an outrageous misuse of the hard-earned funds that ordinary Catholics donate to their parishes and dioceses,” Manson said. “Catholics for Choice is immensely proud to spend just a fraction of what the bishops are spending in Ohio to counter their harmful messages with the truth of our own: pro-choice Catholics are not alone, and they must help pass Issue 1.”
Ohio Catholic leaders harshly condemned the effort as promoting abortion as Catholics. “It is sad that a group of individuals who identify as Catholics would promote a message that endangers pregnant women and vulnerable children,” Brian Hickey, the executive director for the Catholic Conference of Ohio, told the Catholic News Agency. “We pray they convert to Christ’s message of solidarity with the marginalized and join the Church’s commitment to accompanying migrants, the poor, and all vulnerable people.”
This is not the first time Catholics for Choice has behaved in a controversial manner; last year, ahead of the March for Life and during a pro-life prayer vigil, they projected pro-abortion messages onto the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., and also have sent love letters to Planned Parenthood for Valentine’s Day.
Out-of-state abortion groups have spent millions of dollars promoting Issue 1 in Ohio, a ballot measure which would enshrine the right to abortion within the state constitution.
