By Dave Andrusko
In eight days, when they go to the polls to decide the fate of “Issue 1,” whether they know it or not, Ohioans will actually be answering two related questions. First, they will decide whether they want abortion embedded in their state constitution. Second, if Issue 1 does pass, they will, for the most part, be giving a thumbs-up to an initiative that is far more radical, more extreme, and more chilling than all but a tiny minority of people realize.
For months and months, we’ve covered Issue 1 from stem to stern. You could summarize the conclusion by quoting the words of pro-life Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine: “It’s not who we are. It’s not where we are.” He and his wife, Fran,
“have never done an ad before for a statewide issue or even a local issue but we both feel very strongly about this and I think whether you’re pro-choice or pro-life the constitutional amendment that we will be voting on in a couple of weeks just goes way, way too far.”
For example, “It would allow abortion at any point in the pregnancy,” DeWine added. “It would negate Ohio’s law that we’ve had on the books for many, many years that prohibits partial birth abortion.”
But, of course, the media doesn’t deal with the truth, at least not when it is the pro-life side that is making accurate assessment. This is exactly—exactly—the case with
the non-stop attacks on pregnancy resource centers, also called Crisis Pregnancy Centers.
A godsent to women in the throes of a crisis pregnancy, their reward for all their hard work is to be smeared, besmirched, and labeled purveyors of “misinformation and harm.” But writing in The Federalist, Theresa Bonopartis tells us it is “Abortion Facilities, Not Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Deal In Misinformation”.
How so? Let’s see.
Bonopartis uses an October 23 open letter written by the, Attorney General of California Rob Bonta along with 15 other attorneys general as the focus on her piece because it is so typical and so revealing.
“The impetus for the letter was to signal support for Yelp in its ongoing legal spars with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over the review site’s descriptions of CPCs,” Bonopartis writes.
Since the Dobbs decision [overturning Roe], Yelp added disclaimers to CPC center review pages alerting users that the centers do not provide abortion services, even adding language like, “May not have licensed medical professionals onsite.”
The attorneys, hiding under the statement that Yelp’s efforts “ensure that consumers receive clear information” sadly lack pursuing the same “clear information” for abortion facilities advertising where very real damage has been done to countless numbers of women for more than 50 years. In fact, the AGs even go so far as to deny the personal experiences of these women.
As a post-abortive woman and a person who has worked in ministry with other women who have experienced abortion for the past 30 years, I represent thousands who have sought our help with the damage of abortion, which Bonta’s letter denies.
Bonopartis systematically rebuts the nonsense of the eight-page letter. For example, crisis pregnancy centers that aren’t health care facilities don’t claim to be, “so you must wonder why these 16 AGs feel the need to attack them on that premise.”
Or the AGs assertion that CPCs offer maternity and baby supplies “Usually only if pregnant individuals attend religious-based programming.” In a letter supposedly written to eliminate misinformation, this is perhaps the biggest untruth: “I am familiar with many CPCs and not one that I know of requires religious-based programming.”
Bonopartis concludes
These AGs can claim they are protecting women, but more and more of us are learning the truth not from words like theirs but sadly through our own experiences. Try as they might, they cannot hide what we know to be true.
Lawmakers should be more concerned with the misinformation in the abortion facilities that actually kill the unborn and very often harm women, mentally and physically, than the CPCs that aid pregnant moms in need.