Pro-life voters are being urged to show up at the polls where a win for a proposed constitutional amendment would result in abortion up to birth and completely take parents out of the picture if their minor daughter has an abortion. The proposed measure would establish the right to "make and carry out one's own reproductive decisions" on matters including abortion, contraception, and fertility treatment.
Laura Strietmann, executive director of Cincinnati Right to Life, says pro-life turnout at the polls is critical. "If our people, our base do not show up to vote on this important election, it could have ramifications and be a foreshadowing for even more states in our nation that don't take how serious full-term abortion is for the world," she tells AFN.
If the "vote no" tally is in the majority, it will leave abortion decisions in the hands of the state legislature – which is where Strietmann says it belongs.
"We don't want to enshrine something so permanent into our constitution that can't be changed when we know that medical advances will protect life earlier and earlier," she argues. "Abortion is not health care – and we do not want this enshrined in our state's founding document."
Currently abortions can be done up to 22 weeks in the Buckeye State. If Ohio voters don't vote "no" in sufficient numbers, abortion will be legal up to birth, parental consent will be banished, safety standards will be eliminated, and tax dollars will be used to pay for abortions.
More than a question of life
Tea party activist Tom Zawistowski is the president of We the People Convention and the Ohio Citizens PAC. He says abortion advocates have pumped $50 million into a disinformation campaign that illustrates the extreme measures they will take to gain a foothold in state politics.
"They're running ads saying 'vote yes' on Issue 1 to protect women's rights. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. It's exactly the opposite," he emphasizes. "We have laws in Ohio that protect women's rights and protect the baby and that have been voted on by our legislature."
But Zawistowski claims the Left wants to destroy the representative form of government.
"In Ohio, we've become a red state since the tea party started up about 15 years ago – and the radical Left can't win any elections," he explains. "All of our state office holders are Republicans, our Supreme Court is controlled by Republicans, our House and our Senate have super-majorities of Republicans."
Consequently, he says, the Left went all-out and spent $50 million to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot that will basically make all those elections irrelevant. So, voting against Issue 1, he concludes, will protect the Ohio constitution from what he describes as an "attempt to install direct democracy."
