Since the Supreme Court decision last year that overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion-supporters have been making efforts to undermine pro-life laws across the country. In Ohio, parents are pushing back against a particularly dangerous constitutional amendment that could enshrine abortion in the state constitution – and potentially much more.
The measure, The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety, is expected to go on the ballot in November of 2023. The wording of the measure lumps together things like miscarriage treatments and abortion (two vastly different acts), stating 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.”
According to Fox News, the language of the amendment was drafted by the ACLU, and Planned Parenthood has been heavily involved as well. Planned Parenthood previously teamed up with the ACLU to fight abortion restrictions and pro-life laws in Ohio. Because of this, pro-life groups know they have an uphill battle when it comes to funding.
As part of the spending battle and in an effort to show voters the depths of the amendment’s problems, pro-life group Protect Women Ohio (PWO) – a coalition of faith leaders, medical providers, parents, and families – has produced commercial spots to spread the word. The ads warn parents that “this amendment would take away” parental rights to protect children from making decisions like abortion. One ad shows mom Libby McCartney stating that the amendment “doesn’t differentiate between a minor and an adult” and opens “the door to… anything to do with the reproductive organs.” She added, “As a parent, I could be cut out of these decisions that my child is making… [S]he could get an abortion or get a procedure done, and I don’t even know about it. That’s what’s scary.”
In another ad, Ohio mother Linda Corbitt expressed similar fears, saying the amendment would mean “my kids can access abortions and even sex change surgeries without my consent… the government does not have the right to co-parent my kids.”
While proponents of the amendment claim it is limited to abortion, PWO disagrees.
“The language in this amendment is so broad and so vague, and it puts no age limits on this,” Amy Natoce of PWO said to the Washington Examiner. “It specifically says ‘including but not limited to,’ so that leaves this so open-ended. Sex-change operations affect someone’s reproductive organs. Gender reassignment surgery, hormone blockers, hormone replacement therapy.”
Pro-abortion groups, however, claim this is false. “There is absolutely nothing in our amendment that mentions or supersedes Ohio’s parental consent laws,” Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights (OPRR) told Fox. “Their intentionally deceptive ads are part of a multi-million-dollar disinformation campaign designed to raise unsubstantiated fears and distract from the fact that our amendment will ensure Ohioans have access to comprehensive reproductive health care, including abortion, and preserve the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship.”
However, because state laws cannot be in conflict with the state’s constitution, the enactment of the proposed constitutional amendment would invalidate other pro-life laws currently in force in Ohio, such as parental consent and waiting periods.
And the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, OPRR and other groups supporting the ballot measure have well-documented positions opposing measures like parental consent laws.
According to OPRR’s “Bill of Rights” (emphases added):
A woman (including a child or an adolescent minor) may choose to have an abortion after being raped and impregnated. A woman may choose to have an abortion simply to protect her future. No explanation should be required for a choice that allows a woman to enjoy the same status in society as a man: freedom to preserve her health and wellbeing. The decision to perform an abortion should be left solely to a woman and her physician.
The organization — in going out of its way to include a child/minor and stating that the decision should be left to the doctor and the person seeking an abortion — strongly implies the exclusion of a minor’s parents.
Pro-abortion organizations are attempting to portray the measure as simply codifying Roe into the state’s constitution. “This commonsense amendment will restore and protect the vital reproductive rights that were guaranteed by Roe v. Wade for fifty years,” Dr. David Hackney of AGOG-Ohio and Dr. Amy Burkett (formerly of the same) said in a joint statement.
But, as PWO Press Secretary Amy Natoce points out, the truth is beginning to come out.
“Now that they’re being confronted with their own words and actions, they’re completely panicking and saying, ‘Oh, no, this amendment doesn’t have anything to do with parental consent,’ but Protect Women Ohio is going to hold them accountable to the records,” Natoce told Fox News. “We have their own words in their legal filings, their own website has an entire page dedicated to explaining how parental consent is a burden to teenagers trying to obtain abortions.”
