It sucks to be a woman in Ohio right now

RH Reality Check should be read by everyone every day. That is all. Just kidding.

Ohio is getting ready to put the hurt on women with the Heartbeat bill’s reappearance, the threat to defund the Planned Parenthood (the hearing is happening on Wednesday as I write this), and of course for those of you who read my twitter, I apologize for the John Kasich tweets about his attempts to appoint Mike Gonidakis to Ohio’s Medical Board (the President of Ohio’s Right to Life with no medical training).

Robin Marty wrote a piece for RH Reality Check on the Ohio “heartbeat ban.” Two anti-choice groups were trying to reach a compromise on the ban, which had been blocked, but never fear Ohio Right to Life and Faith2Action have come to a conscientious that makes the ban even more restrictive. The original bill would have made abortion illegal once a heartbeat was detected, which can be very early.

Ok, so to be clear the ban was always supposed to be unconstitutional, Faith2Action is taking aim at Roe v. Wade, hoping to get a case before the Supreme Court. Ohio Right to Life is a bit more cautious; they worry that a challenge to Roe v. Wade will result to it being reaffirmed instead of overturned.

However, they are cautious no more. I guess the re-election of President Obama was too much for all of them, and they’ve lost their damn minds like those threatening to secede. The solution is to break the bill apart so that is some aspects are overturned as unconstitutional, then some other aspects will stay as a more moderate set of pre-termination restrictions. Sounds moderate to me.

So what exactly does this mean? According to Marty:

“With that sort of ‘get out of jail free’ card attached, the bill’s backers have allegedly decided to go all out when it comes to unconstitutional abortion bans. According to speculation from multiple sources, rather than just banning abortions at the point of a heartbeat—which would be as much as 4 weeks post conception—they have chosen to write the bill so abortion is banned at conception itself. Should that be struck down by the courts, the ban would revert to the heartbeat as it was originally proposed. If the courts strike that down, then the law would default to a trigger law that would go into effect if Roe ever is overturned, banning abortion at any point for any reason. Until that goes into effect, women would still be required to have a forced ultrasound prior to terminating a pregnancy, and be forced to listen to the embryonic heartbeat before having an abortion.”

The bill will be introduced on Thursday’s senate session. The anti-choicers are keeping everything on the down low, which is why there is only speculation on the bill. Ohio Senator Nina Turner is not pleased with the bill’s reappearance, but neither is she surprised, “This has always been on their agenda. They are very shrewd, they took this behind the scenes while we wages this fierce battle nationally (the Presidential election).”

So as previously mentioned the “heartbeat ban” isn’t the only attempt to restrict women’s rights, we have another attempt to defund the Planned Parenthood. This time they are focusing on tiered payments, this way they don’t defund the Planned Parenthood outright, but this could result in Ohio losing their Medicaid funding. By providing Medicaid funding in a preferential, tiered manner, and setting Planned Parenthood as last in line, the state guarantees that by the time the reproductive health care provider comes to the table there will be no funds left.

So the last time Ohio tried this they were defeated because of the public outcry. You see some of the clinics they are targeting don’t even provide birth control. Yeah, they just hate women.  They just have a complete disrespect for women. They aren’t concerned with women’s health.

Stephanie Kight, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio sees the Ohio legislature’s attempts at restricting reproductive health as puzzling, “We are all surprised by the intense hostility that has come out of the Ohio Legislature about women’s health care. We find it frustrating and dangerous.”

Planned Parenthood in Ohio provides care to more than 100,000 patients every year. Much like Texas, there aren’t other providers ready and able to take up this kind of commitment. Low cost care to low-income individuals.

Marty points out in addition to an all-out ban on abortion and the defunding of Planned Parenthood, the anti-choicers wand a PRENDA-style ban on abortions they believe to be based on race or gender of the fetus. There is no evidence that there is an issue with women seeking abortions for these reasons. I have no idea how this could be enforced.

The last thing Marty points out is the senate will vote to approve former Ohio Right to Life president Mike Gonidakis as one of the three non-medical seats on the state’s medical board. This is Governor John Kasich’s attempt to get more anti-choice people in high level of Ohio’s government. Additionally, this means that Kasich will restrict abortion and birth control by any means necessary, voters be damned.

All of this is happening during the lame duck session, shocking I know. Marty even includes speculation that this is some kind of payback for the large scale support for pro-women candidates like Sen Sherrod Brown and President Obama.

I wanted to include this last quote from Sen. Turner: “I don’t think this is revenge (for voting pro-woman). They planned this all along. This is how they treat women. They are treating us like we are second class citizens. This is far beyond abortion. This is about reproductive health and reproductive rights that men disproportionately feel like they are entitled to tell us what we can or cannot do with out bodies. And really treating women like we are carriers. Like we don’t have a heart, we don’t have a soul, we don’t have a mind.”

That’s exactly what they are doing. They don’t respect women. They are infantilizing women. And for a group of people so concerned with life they completely disregard the lives of women. That much is obvious from the restrictions to Planned Parenthood, which provides so much low-cost cancer screenings.

UPDATE
So I wrote this on Wednesday before Ohio's Senate vote. Surprise, surprise, Ohio voted to defund the Planned Parenthood. From what I read on the train it seemed like a straight party vote with three Republicans absent.