Although Donald Trump as a person isn’t exactly the model of supposed conservative Christian morality, he remains the favorite leader of the religious right. On his own time, he’s pursued goals like tax reform and putting a wall up in between the United States and Mexico, while elsewhere — like in Ohio — others continue to push for the more classic goals of the religious right — like banning abortions.
To be clear, Trump has offered his own version of support to Republicans pushing such an agenda, offering up his sexism-infused attacks on women’s rights on a regular basis.
Forever remaining unaware of how concrete, financial support for struggling young mothers might help ease the pressure on them to get an abortion, Republicans in the Ohio state legislature have now introduced a bill that would ban all abortions in the state, with no exceptions. In addition to that component to the legislation, the bill would allow for those who seek or carry out an abortion to be charged with a crime — an idea Trump himself seemed to support at one point.
In other words, the world that certain Ohio Republican leaders want us to live in is one where a victim of rape could be charged with a crime if they were made pregnant during their ordeal and sought an abortion.
House Bill 565 was introduced by two members of the Ohio state House and has 18 others as co-sponsors.
Rep. Nino Vitale, one of the joint sponsors of the bill — who, as a male, could never feasibly be in the position that the people whose behavior he is trying to legislate could find themselves in — defended the lack of exceptions for cases of rape in the bill, saying:
‘Life isn’t always giving us things by our choice and I don’t want to put a woman through a second trauma after she’s been through such an awful first one.’
In other words, if you are victimized by a rapist in the state of Ohio, this man — Nino Vitale — would like to legislate your response to the situation.
He also sought to defend the absence of an exception for cases where the mother’s life is in danger, saying that House Bill 565 should be considered a “save them both” bill.
Rep. Ron Hood seemed to indicate in his remarks that he is prepared for his bill to fail, describing it as essentially an evangelistic publicity stunt.
As he put it:
‘I believe life begins at conception so the goal of this bill is to first of all continue to get the word out that life does begin at conception and move the debate in that direction, and to protect unborn Ohioans from being aborted.’
In other words, Hood thinks it’s acceptable to use government time and resources on evangelistic outreach missions on behalf of his pet causes.
The bill backed by Vitale, Hood, and others would make an “unborn human” a person and thus allow wrongful death lawsuits, making causing the death of an “unborn human” a crime punishable by provisions in the state criminal code against murder, manslaughter and homicide.
Ohio lawmakers have passed a whopping 20 total restrictions on abortion just since 2011, although one of their most recent efforts — a bill banning abortions carried out because of a diagnosis of Down Syndrome — was recently deemed unconstitutional by a federal court.
Nevertheless, in Ohio and around the country, efforts to restrict abortion are continuing to proceed, energized in part by a conservative leaning U.S. Supreme Court.
The state of Mississippi, for instance, recently enacted a ban on most abortions after 15 weeks.
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