Pro-Abortion Election Victories Cause for a Shudder
In the wake of the off-year elections across the country last week, it became very clear that abortion was the single most important issue that motivated voters.
More specifically, it motivated voters to choose Democrats. In case after case, when abortion was on the table, the pro-life movement lost.
In Ohio, a reliably red state that voted for Donald Trump and just elected a Trump-backed U.S. senator, voters passed a referendum that now enshrines abortion in the state constitution.
The amendment essentially legalizes abortion at every stage of the pregnancy, because of this last paragraph:
“However, abortion may be prohibited after fetal viability. But in no case may such an abortion be prohibited if in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient’s treating physician, it is necessary to protect the pregnant patient’s life or health.”
That is chilling. A viable child, one with the ability to live outside of the womb, can be destroyed in utero if it threatens the “health” of the mother.
What Ohio has done is resurrect language from the companion case to Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, which allowed abortions at any stage if the health of the mother was threatened.
That had been interpreted by lower courts as including the mental health of the mother.
The Ohio amendment will give Ohio women the right to abort their babies at any time up to and including the moment of birth because of that last paragraph. Doe is back, with a vengeance.
And there are many reasons why the mental health of a woman would be compromised by an unwanted abortion: a child diagnosed as having Down, a child that is going to be an economic burden, a child that is going to interrupt a career or further studies, and in some societies, a child who is the wrong gender.
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Copyright 2023 Christine Flowers, All Rights Reserved. Credit: Cagle.com
