The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: ohio
Abortion Rights

Ohio Approves Abortion Rights Clause In State Constitution

Ohio decided to vote "yes" on Issue 1 Monday, enshrining abortion rights in the state's constitution, The Associated Press reports.

With approval of the amendment, The Washington Post reports, "Ohio would be the seventh state to protect abortion access since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade’s federal abortion standard in June 2022."

Per AP, "Opponents had argued that the amendment would threaten parental rights, allow unrestricted gender surgeries for minors and revive 'partial birth' abortions, which are federally banned," but "Public polling shows about two-thirds of Americans say abortion should generally be legal in the earliest stages of pregnancy, a sentiment that has been underscored in both Democratic and deeply Republican states since the justices overturned Roe in June 2022."

According to the report, "Issue 1 specifically declared an individual's right to 'make and carry out one's own reproductive decisions,' including birth control, fertility treatments, miscarriage and abortion."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Sherri Tenpenny

Medical Board Suspends License Of Notorious Anti-Vax Doctor

A doctor whose false claims that COVID-19 vaccines could magnetize you (and that this was also somehow connected to 5G cell towers) has lost her medical license. The State Medical Board of Ohio decided that Dr. Sherri Tenpenny’s license should be suspended indefinitely due to her refusal to cooperate with its investigation into more than 350 complaints against her.

Tenpenny’s July 2021 testimony in front of Ohio legislators made headlines because of how bananas in the belfry her claims were, including her statements that videos of people claiming to be magnetized by vaccines were real evidence. "You can put a key on their forehead, it sticks,” she said with a straight face. “You can put spoons and forks all over and they can stick because now we think there is a metal piece to that.”

And while the board’s indefinite suspension of Tenpenny’s license was not directly tied to her erroneous claims, the report released with the decision includes a lot of unanswered questions regarding proclamations Tenpenny has made in her capacity as a medical professional over the years.

Some of the questions still lingering in the wake of Tenpenny’s investigation include:

“The Interrogatories asked for information regarding Dr. Tenpenny’s practice in general as well as asking specifically about her practice regarding recommendations concerning, and administration of, vaccines and whether any of her patients subsequently contracted certain illnesses. The Interrogatories also specifically ask how many doses of COVID-19 vaccines she had provided and whether she had personally received a COVID-19 vaccine. ”

And:

“The Interrogatories also asked Dr. Tenpenny what scientific evidence she had, and specifically asked that she cite her sources for this evidence, regarding COVID-19 vaccines causing people to become magnetized or creating an interface with 5G towers; regarding the COVID-19 vaccine not injecting a real virus but strips of genetic material and patients suffering complications such as abnormal bleedings, myocarditis, strokes, and neurological complications; and regarding some major metropolitan areas liquifying dead bodies and pouring them into the water supply.”

One of the board members, Dr. Amol Soin, explained the decision in language even a person with a spoon stuck to their forehead can understand.

“The license to practice medicine is not a right. It’s a privilege,” Soin said. “A privilege that is earned, and a privilege that you have to uphold. And as you get that license, and as you obtain that privilege, you consent to certain reasonable things. And a reasonable thing you consent to... is to cooperate when someone complains about you. In this case, 350 complaints. It is a very reasonable thing to cooperate in that scenario.”

The Trump administration’s botching of our public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic will go down in history as an epic failure. After spending a year trying to figure out how to blame the pandemic on everybody and everything and even helping to promote the idea that it wasn’t that bad in the first place, Trump realized that the only success his administration might be able to hang its hat on was getting an effective and safe vaccine to Americans in under a year.

Unfortunately for Trump and the Republican Party, the toxic cauldron of anti-science rhetoric and bad public health proposals meant they had trained the most vociferous members of their voting base to be anti-vaccine. In the months after the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were rolled out, anti-vaxxers made all kinds of unsubstantiated claims, and Tenpenny’s wild accusations were just one of the more headline-grabbing instances.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Abortion rights supporters

Ohio Voters Torch GOP Scheme To Kill Abortion Rights Amendment

Ohio voters on Tuesday rejected a Republican-backed measure called Issue 1, a proposed constitutional amendment that would have made it difficult to ever change the state's constitution again. The proposal was failing 62-38 with 36% of the estimated vote tallied when the Associated Press called the race. The result means that pro-choice advocates will need to win a simple majority on Nov. 7 in order to pass their own amendment to enshrine abortion rights into the state's governing document instead of the 60% supermajority that Issue 1 would have imposed.

The outcome also ensures that activists seeking to pass other amendments opposed by Ohio's GOP-dominated state government will not need to contend with the dramatically increased signature requirements that Issue 1 would have required in order to qualify measures for the ballot. (Republicans in numerous other states have also been trying to make it tougher to pass progressive ballot change at the ballot box, mostly without success.) That's good news for a 2024 effort to create an independent redistricting commission in place of a broken bipartisan board that tilts heavily to the GOP, as well as a campaign to raise the minimum wage from its current level of $10.10 per hour.

Both sides, however, chiefly viewed Tuesday's contest as a proxy fight over abortion rights, with Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose outright declaring in June, "This is 100 percent about keeping a radical, pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution." The "no" side ran a barrage of ads highlighting those comments from LaRose, who is seeking the GOP nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, warning that "[c]orrupt politicians and special interests" were "trying to rig the rules to lock in Ohio's extreme abortion ban and stop efforts to restore our rights."

Conservative groups, though, seem to have decided that abortion rights were too popular to directly attack in a state where, according to Civiqs, voters agree 55-40 that the procedure should be legal in all or most cases. The "yes" side instead resorted to transphobia by insisting, "Out-of-state special interests that put trans ideology in classrooms and encourage sex changes for kids are hiding behind slick ads." (Neither Issue 1 nor the abortion amendment has anything to do with any of these issues.)

Other right-wing ads insisted that Issue 1 was necessary to stop "radical groups" from "tak[ing] away parents' ability to be informed and to make decisions for their children," even though the November abortion amendment wouldn't impact the state's parental consent laws.

The pro-Issue 1 side further claimed it was trying to stop out-of-state interests from changing the state's governing document for their own ends, despite the fact that much of their money came from one out-of-state billionaire, Illinois megadonor Richard Uihlein. But Uihlein's deep pockets were not enough: AdImpact reports that the "no" side outspent its rivals $15.9 million to $10.7 million on TV and radio ads.

None of the GOP's messages helped avert defeat on Tuesday, but it remains to be seen whether conservatives will adopt different tactics heading into the fall. And another expensive battle looms: The groups backing abortion rights tell NBC they'll spend at least $35 million to pass their amendment, while their opponents at Protect Women Ohio say they've already booked $25 million in ad time.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Abortion Rights

Abortion Rights At Stake In Ohio Ballot Measure Tuesday

On Tuesday, Ohio voters will decide Issue 1, a ballot initiative that would make it harder to pass constitutional amendments in the state. The outcome of the special election could dramatically impact the future of abortion rights.

If Issue 1 passes, it would require citizen-initiated constitutional amendments to get 60 percent of the vote to pass, up from the simple majority currently required by law. And that would have immediate consequences for a reproductive freedom constitutional amendment, which will be on the ballot this November.

That amendment states, “Every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion.”

Republicans in the state have been campaigning for Issue 1. Secretary of State Frank LaRose said outright that the initiative is a direct effort to change the rules to block the reproductive freedom constitutional amendment from passing, stating in May, “It’s 100 percent about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our Constitution.” LaRose is running in the Ohio GOP Senate primary to take on Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in 2024.

A USA Today/Suffolk University poll from July found that 58 percent of Ohioans support the reproductive freedom amendment, just shy of the 60 percent threshold Issue 1 would impose.

Anti-abortion groups in the state support Issue 1.

Catholics for Catholics, a religious group that has the support of a number of far-right figures, including former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, held a prayer rally on Sunday in Ohio to urge support for Issue 1.

“Thousands rallied in support of #VoteYesOhio today in Cincinnati with @CforCatholics. I was proud to stand with them to protect Ohio’s constitution from the all out assault which radical coastal liberals have launched against us,” LaRose tweeted along with photos of himself at the event.

PBS Newshour reported that Protect Our Constitution, another group supporting Issue 1, is funded almost exclusively by Richard Uihlein, a Republican billionaire who also funded efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Meanwhile, abortion rights groups are urging voters to vote no on Issue 1.

“The good news: Via a ballot measure, Ohio voters will soon have the opportunity to enshrine reproductive freedom in the state constitution! The bad news: anti-abortion Republicans are trying to make it harder to pass ballot measures in the state,” NARAL Pro-Choice America tweeted on July 31. “Anti-abortion lawmakers are quietly dismantling our democracy to push their extreme agenda — but we won’t let them get away with it. If you live in Ohio, VOTE NO on Issue 1 on August 8.”

Aside from raising the vote threshold needed to pass constitutional amendments, Issue 1 would also make it much harder to get constitutional amendments on the ballot in the first place. It would require those proposing citizen-initiated constitutional amendments to collect signatures from five percent of voters in all 88 counties in Ohio. Currently, constitutional amendment petitions need signatures from 44 Ohio counties. The ballot initiative would also get rid of the current 10-day period that those proposing amendments have to replace signatures that have been determined to be invalid after the petitions are filed with the secretary of state’s office.

Polling from July showed that Issue 1 was headed to defeat, with 60 percent of voters in the state opposing the GOP effort to make it harder to pass constitutional amendments.

The Associated Press reported that early vote totals are higher than in the past two midterm election primaries in the state. As of August 4, 533,000 people had voted early in person or by mail, almost double the 288,700 people who voted early in the 2022 primary.

L2, a political data firm that is tracking early voting in the state, said as of August 4 that Democrats were casting more votes than Republicans by a margin of 52 percent to 40 percent.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.