ACLU Submits Signatures for Radical Ohio Late-Term Abortion and End to Parental Consent Ballot Initiative

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) submitted signatures Wednesday for its Ohio ballot initiative that would not only bring late-term abortions to the state but also end parental consent laws and other protections for women and children.

Protect Women Ohio (PWO) is a parental rights and pro-life coalition seeking to block radical leftist organizations’ attempt to rewrite Ohio’s Constitution via the ballot initiative that would eliminate parental notification and consent requirements for minors obtaining abortions and gender transition hormone drugs and surgeries.

“The ACLU’s extreme anti-parent amendment is so unpopular that they couldn’t even rely on grassroots support to collect signatures,” said PWO press secretary Amy Natoce.

“The ACLU paid out-of-state signature collectors to lie to Ohioans about their dangerous amendment that will strip parents of their rights, permit minors to undergo sex change operations without their parents’ knowledge or consent, and allow painful abortion on demand through all nine months,” Natoce explained. “The ACLU’s attempts to hijack Ohio’s constitution to further its own radical agenda would be pathetic if it wasn’t so dangerous.”

Yes, Every Kid

Constitutional scholars Carrie Campbell Severino, president of Judicial Crisis Network, and Frank J. Scaturro, a former special counsel to the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, conducted a legal analysis of the anti-parent amendment.

In an article in National Review in March, the scholars noted the proposed amendment “would effectively obliterate most limits to abortion or sex-change surgery, among its other far-reaching consequences.”

The scholars warned the scope of the proposed amendment is “sweeping”:

Beyond abortion, the text of the proposed amendment provides more broadly that “every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to” several categories: contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion. “Reproductive decisions,” however, is a very broad term. By explicitly defining such decisions as “not limited to” the enumerated categories, the proposal establishes its scope as sweeping.

Ohio members of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), an organization of nearly 7,000 members nationwide who serve a wide range of patients in the state, have weighed in on the initiative with comments sent to The Star News Network.

“This amendment is so radical it would allow abortion at full-term, when babies can feel pain and survive outside the womb,” said Angela Martin, M.D., an OB/GYN based in Cincinnati. “It also endangers the women it claims to care for by eliminating existing health and safety protections for abortion facilities. This amendment is not the way to support real, quality care for Ohio women and children.

Lindsay Rerko, DO, a Columbus family medicine physician, commented that the proposed amendment offers no benefits for any of her patients.

“Eliminating parental involvement in their minor children’s health decisions while allowing abortion up to birth when babies can feel pain will lead to worse health outcomes for everyone involved,” Rerko said. “The amendment is anti-women and anti-parent.”

Maureen Curley, Ph.D., CNP, who counsels patients in Cleveland, said that by allowing abortions up until birth, the proposed amendment “puts Ohio women at high risk for severe and long-term depression, substance use and psychological stress.”

“This mental distress is the ultimate injustice for Ohio women who need and deserve better,” Curley added.

Vivina Napier, M.D., a Columbus-based OB/GYN, observed Ohioans can already see “the effects of limiting parental rights” on display throughout the country.

“Children falling prey to abuse and trafficking schemes, being subjected to therapies backed by no evidence, and undergoing surgeries out of fear and false pretenses,” Napier detailed, elaborating:

Parents want to, and should, partner with their children in their healthcare education and decisions. We should not allow for the isolation of children from their parents as they walk through life-impacting medical decisions, while third parties – including abusers and traffickers – are protected and encouraged as is being demonstrated when such amendments are being utilized in other states. This ballot initiative would permit gruesome late-term abortions in our state as well as exclude parents from participating in their children’s life-altering healthcare decisions.

“This amendment endangers the safety, health and well-being of children in Ohio, as well as the rights of parents,” she added.

Logan Church, the director of CatholicVote Ohio, also commented on the extreme nature of the proposed amendment.

“As part of its unrelenting attack on parents, the ACLU’s proposed amendment seeks to cut parents out of their child’s most important and life-altering health decisions – including abortions and sex change operations,” he warned. “On top of that, the amendment would nullify existing and future health and safety protection for women and permit abortions in Ohio through all nine months of pregnancy, well after the point at which the unborn child can feel pain.”

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Susan Berry, PhD is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]
Photo “Abortion Protesters in Ohio” by Becker1999. CC BY 2.0.

 

 

 

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