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Update: The AP reports Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine has rejected the Personhood Ohio ballot language after the group collected 1,000 valid signatures. Now they’ll have to collect a new batch of 1,000 John Hancocks and resubmit the language.

He said Monday the summary lists three items the amendment would not affect. He said the group Personhood Ohio should either remove the items or place them in the amendment.

Once that’s done, it would need another 385,000 valid signatures to put the issue in front of Ohio voters in 2012.

For some background on the Personhood movement and its success, or lake thereof, in other states so far plus consideration from both sides of the fight in Ohio, the Columbus Dispatch has a pretty comprehensive article with fun quotes like these:

“This is the most unbelievably dangerous assault on women’s health I have ever seen.”

And…

“We can do this every year until we win. And we will.”

And…

“The Ohio Revised Code makes 15,000 references to a person. This has the potential to affect all of them.”

***

Now that Ohio has created good jobs for everyone, conquered poverty, fixed its crumbling infrastructure, and solved the education dilemma, it’s time to sound the alarm on abortion again.

A new group called Personhood Ohio has just launched a drive to put a “personhood” amendment on the ballot. The amendment would confer full citizenship rights on every fertilized egg — outlawing not only all abortions, but also IUDs and some forms of hormonal contraception.

This article appears in Oct 19-25, 2011.

Vince Grzegorek has been with Scene since 2007 and editor-in-chief since 2012. He previously worked at Discount Drug Mart and Texas Roadhouse.

6 replies on “‘Personhood Ohio’ Wants to Ban All Abortions (Updated)”

  1. A double edged sword. On one edge there are more babies raising babies and more poor single mothers. Then on the the other edge is the killing of a living being. Maybe a logical solution (non-emotional) is to make temporary birth control for both males and females MANDATORY until BOTH can prove fianancial responsibility. Having and affording children today is becoming a luxury item.

    Besides, a growing populaton is our biggest pollution control problem. The USA population doubled from 1960 to 1995 (35 years). IF we cut our pollution in half in the next 30 years, we will be right where we are now because: We need to consume double our current land use, double the production of consumable products, double our foor production, double our housing, double our road systems to alleviate traffic flow, double the cars spewing pollution, etc. Why only 30 years? There will be greater strides in science within our healthcare system to keep people alive.

    Hate to say it but maybe, just maybe, the Chinese and their “one child per family policy” have latched onto a good idea. Hey, even a blind squirl will find a nut.

  2. do they not understand that some of those hormone birth control pills actually help with other health matters other than stopping a baby bump. so if this law passes i would have to stop taking my pill and have an f’d up cycle and other bodily misfunctions just because some religious wack job has seen “Every Spearm is Sacred” from Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life way too many times. I Don’t F’in Think So!!

  3. Well, Ashley, would you move out of Ohio and take your family and your skills to some other state in order to keep your prescription?

    I would hope you can and would, although many people with similar views and physical reactions to the loss of BC pills might not be able to…

    If you leave, and others do too, what does that leave behind IN Ohio? People who can’t afford to move for financial or family reasons and people without skills needed in any other states…

    Congratulations, Ohio, on such critical thinking… NOT!

    Good luck to you and yours, Ashley, whatever happens.
    +af in NC [where there are lots of jobs and warmer winters…]

  4. I hate Ohio more and more! The only thing Ohio had going was the Buckeyes and now they’re garbage!

  5. A becomes a person in relationship with other persons, hopefully loving parents. A fetus that develops because a brutal or deranged male rapes and impregnates his own child (or one in the household) has little chance at personhood. No, this is not fiction. Talk to any social worker. It must be nice to live in a world where every growing fetus has a nursery stocked with pink or blue layette and soon to be adoring relatives, but THAT IS FICTION for many. Pregnancy is used in some societall groups as a weapon to keep women tied to birthing and the house, a kind of tether. Abortion is a tragedy, it is ugly and gravely hurts those who must seek it. But until we live in a perfect world, it must remain as a choice, or women will take a giant step backward in protection their OWN personhood. We grow all weepy-eyed on this subject, but seem not to notice that our military is now composed of just 1% of the service-age population, often “forced” into it but lack of other job options, while the rest of us go blithely about our business, unscathed by the wars we see only on the news.
    And we REALLY don’t notice that every year, some 40,000 Americans are killed on our highways, even though the number dropped when we had a national 55mph speed limit.
    Anyone who tells me that they honor life by denying abortion to people whose lives they know nothing about and have never faced, honor only their own narrow definition of what is “good” and indeed to not “love thy neighbor” nearly as much as they shout they do.

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