Ohio Right to Life is at it Again: Pretending They Care about Women

Not about adoption…exactly…

Today I received my weekly Ohio Right to Life legislative report. Unlike most states whose legislatures run anywhere from 2 to 6 months Ohio’s is open for business 24/7, though it does take a summer recess. As a result, after the elections (whatever they are for) a lot of bills that have lain dormant for a year or even 2 years, suddenly rise from the dead to be rushed through. It hasn’t hit peak time yet, but it’s coming soon.

Bill sponsor, Joshua Williams. A really interesting guy. Why is he wasting his time on this stuff?

Today I learned that Sub HB475, sponsored by Joshua Williams (D41-R) had a hearing recently. I was not aware of this bill, much less its predecessor plain old HB475. According to my report, the sub bill prohibits counties and municipalities from using tax dollars to pay for abortions. This puzzled me since I didn’t think that counties and municipalities actually paid for their residents’ abortions to start with. If they did, people would be flocking to Ohio.

A closer look though explains that the bill prohibits them from paying for “elective abortions and other related fringe benefits,” in employee benefit packages. To be honest, I am surprised that any of those places pay coverage, Ohio being Ohio. Maybe Cleveland, the only sane city in the state, but that’s it.

I was curious about what “related fringe benefits” are. I found this handy-dandy chart on the H475 bill page on the Ohio House cite which rescued me from slogging through the entire wretched bill. According to it, fringe benefits include: but are not limited to:

transportation, housing, wage reimbursement, or paid time off directly related to providing for an elective abortion.

Does this mean that sick leave or vacation time can’t be used? Is the state compelling employees to lie to their employers about taking off a couple of paid days legally owed them? Is it your bosses’ business why you’re calling in sick? When I worked for Ohio State doctor’s notes were not required unless your sick time was (I can’t remember exactly) 10 consecutive days…maybe?

I dunno.

The original HB475, however, was pretty different. It prohibited “state funds from being given directly or indirectly to any entity that supports, promotes, or
provides abortions. ” That’s gone.

What happened?

I dunno.

But here’s the kicker.

The other day, Emma Martinez, ORTL’s Legislative Director (their latest lobbyist; ORTL has a big turnover) testified in support of the bill. And here is where it gets funny. She told the House Government Oversight Committee:

Simply put, our public dollars should offer women in need of opportunities to have a healthy pregnancy and to raise their child in a healthy environment.

In all my years of attending legislative hearings and testifying at some, I have never once heard ORTL say that it supports any such thing–unless it’s to help pry the baby from the hands of a mother to transfer it to a “healthy environment” which she, as a single mother, cannot furnish.

ORTL can’t wait to spend taxpayer money on relinquishment incentives, maternity homes, crisis pregnancy camps, adopter tax breaks, and adoption advertising. To the best of my knowledge, it has never supported financial and material assistance to expecting and new moms and their babies, decent welfare payments, family preservation, fathers’ rights, or a living wage. Foster care is barely on their radar. And they do love baby abandonment boxes! Baby Box lover Jean Schmidt is a co-sponsor of the bill.

Everything, instead, goes to the state adoption industry and adopters. Babies tumble down the Baby Bumble Chute into the arms of strangers with a hefty bank account who live in the right part of town. Obviously, a healthy environment ,unlike the ORTL flop house fantasy.

Here is an article I wrote for the Columbus Free Press in 2013: Ohio Right to Life’s Infant Adoption Reform Bill: Threatens birthparent rights, doles out tax credits. Gak! For some reason the article is not paragraphed on the site. Here’s the lede. You get the idea.

HB 307, known as the Infant Adoption Reform Bill, shortens the time that an adoption in Ohio can be challenged post-finalization, decreases the time a man is eligible to file with the Putative Father Registry, permits individuals and couples to advertise for a child to adopt and increases the Ohio adoption tax credit from $1500 to $10,000. ORTL president Mike Gonidakis claims that these measures will reduce abortion rates and encourage adoption by relieving potential adoptive parents (popularly known in adoption reform as “paps”) from the stress and expense of a long drawn-out, often expensive, adoption process. There is nothing in the bill, however, to indicate how making the adoption process easier and cheaper will increase newborn adoption rates since newborns are traditionally in short supply. Nor does it address how to increase the adoption of hundreds of available children warehoused in the state’s over-burdened foster care system.

Nothing has changed.

Ohio Right to Life and its ilk could almost be palatable if it just stopped lying and playing the hypocrite. It’s not nice.