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"Abortion"
State Senator Kris Jordan says that he’s entitled to his privacy, even though he’s still under investigation of a crime. Robert Mecklenborg said the same thing… a week or two before he resigned.
The one-time recipient of the Ohio Christian Alliance’s Local Elected Official of the Year says he made a mistake, but what was that mistake?
We had an emotional argument and are embarrassed that some very personal issues have become public. We are all human. We make mistakes.
The mistake was their domestic dispute became public? Senator Jordan’s wife didn’t make a mistake calling 911. The [...]
Full Story... →We knew that this State budget was going to be such a big story that we jumped at the opportunity to form our sibling site, Ohio Budget Watch, which is likely to go on a hiatus until the next budget cycle. Kasich’s budget didn’t disappoint. There were so many crazy proposals and changes, it’s hard to keep up with them all.
Obviously, if you’re interested in doing your own comparison, the most comprehensive document is the Legislative Service Commission’s “Comparison Document” that breaks it down by agency what the differences has been between the Governor’s initial proposal, the House [...]
Full Story... →The budget conference committee continues to push back the date on which they plan to release the revised budget bill. We hope one of the sticking points is the bizarre inclusion of anti-abortion language. We hope they have the sense to remove these devisive, misplaced and down-right dangerous provisions from the bill.
Abortion restrictions impacting public hospitals and private insurance plans available to local governments have no place in the budget. And the lack of any kind of health exception puts women in Ohio in serious danger and ties the hands of the doctors that treat them.
Republicans love [...]
Full Story... →How radioactive is SB 5? It’s so radioactive that Josh Mandel feels more comfortable putting himself at the right of the Ohio Right-to-Life in endorsing HB 125, the so-called “heartbeat” abortion ban bill, even though he’s taken no public stand on SB 5. Mandel has all but announced that he is the likely GOP candidate to take on Sherrod Brown’s Senate seat next year reveals as his first public policy as a candidate a bill so extreme on abortion that the Ohio Right to Life says they cannot endorse it because it is so patently unconstitutional.
This shows you what [...]
Full Story... →From the Dayton Daily News:
Hearings could take from four to six weeks, Wachtmann said, before a committee vote to send the bill to the House floor.
It was three weeks today that the substantive SB 5 bill was unveiled and hearings began. And it’s already passed committee and is expected to pass the Senate during its session starting at 1:30.
That means that the Senate will spend less time on a 500-page bill that reverses nearly 30 years of Ohio’s collective bargaining law than the House committee will spend on a twenty-seven page [...]
Full Story... →From the Dayton Daily News:
Two young mothers were given ultrasounds in a packed room at the Statehouse as part of a House committee meeting Wednesday. The heartbeat of a fetus at 15 weeks gestation was easily detected. The heartbeat in a fetus of nine weeks gestation was difficult to detect.
Is that like taking the Fifth? In what was staged as political stagecraft to pander to the Pro-Life crowd, Chairman Lynn Wachtmann unknowingly revealed the other fatal flaw of his “heartbeat” abortion ban besides the fact that even Ohio Right to Life recognizes it as being certainly [...]
Full Story... →Channel 4 in Columbus:
A fetus has been scheduled as a legislative witness in Ohio on a unique bill that proposes outlawing abortions after the first heartbeat can be medically detected.
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An aide to committee Chairman Lynn Wachtmann said a pregnant woman will be brought before the committee and an ultrasound image of her uterus will be projected onto a screen. The heartbeat of the fetus will be visible in color.
Well, at least the Republicans aren’t taking a serious issue like abortion and turning it into a sideshow carnival act of political grandstanding. Incidentially,
[...]
Full Story... →Modern already thoroughly covered the abortion issues that have been floating around Ohio the past few days including Ohio Right to Life’s support for certain anti-abortion bills (and lack of support for one specifically unconstitutional one) along with their attempts to “petition the Governor to install pharmacists with conscience and pro-life convictions to the Board of Pharmacy”.
But reading about Ohio Right to Life in each one of his posts just made me realize (again) what a bunch of hypocrites anti-abortion groups like this can be. If you don’t want to stick around while I vent I [...]
Full Story... →Story was on the Columbus Dispatch’s “Daily Briefing” blog:
Michael Gonidakis wants to ban all abortions, but the executive director of Ohio Right to Life knows it doesn’t help his cause to fight for bills that he says have no chance of being upheld by the federal courts.
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"Unfortunately the court has ruled that states can place limitations on post-viability abortions, but pre-viability there can be zero restrictions," Gonidakis said, adding that the current makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court, with two recent appointments from President Obama, would not reverse that.
"We certainly don’t want the courts [...]
Full Story... →One of the odder areas where the Ohio Senate Republicans decided that Governor Strickland’s appointments should be rejected for no other reason than they were Strickland’s appointments was the Ohio Board of Pharmacy.
Although most Statehouse observers understood the political motivations behind Kasich wanting to have the full slate on the Casino Commission, BWC, and the Board of Education, more obscure entities which are viewed as typically apolitical like the Ohio Pharmacy Board struck people as rather odd.
Now we know why they did it. Remember outgoing Senate President Bill Harris said that the GOP would block any appointment [...]
Full Story... →Budget Watch
You call this progress? The 1st 100 days of the 129th Ohio General Assembly
The Ohio House Republicans ran in 2010 on job creation. They even had an entire platform of job-related bills they said they’d pass. As they self-congratulate themselves over their first 100 days in power, why is that 11 of the fifteen bills they highlight passing have nothing to do with jobs? And why did they spend more time on abortion than the budget or job creation?
Full Story... →