The Ohio legislature just passed a bill banning the abortion of any fetus or embryo with a detectible heartbeat. An embryo typically has a heartbeat\u00a0at\u00a0six weeks gestation. Gestational age counts from the first day of their last period; most women are at roughly\u00a0four weeks gestation\u00a0when they miss their first period. According to the CDC<\/a>, 25.3% of abortions performed in Ohio in 2013 occurred at<\/em> or before six weeks gestation. In other words, Ohio\u2019s heartbeat bill would ban well over\u00a0three-quarters of abortions currently performed in the state.<\/p>\n I am pro-choice. I oppose this bill and others like it\u00a0for a large variety of\u00a0reasons.\u00a0However, for\u00a0the first twenty years of my life<\/a>, I opposed abortion. I wanted to see the practice banned. I participated in our\u00a0annual October Life Chain, put up crosses at cemeteries of the innocent, attended National Right to Life banquets, and campaigned for pro-life candidates. I even ran my university\u2019s\u00a0Students for Life chapter. While I now disagree, I do understand why many\u00a0people today oppose abortion. What I don\u2019t understand is why they are so inconsistent.<\/p>\n This past April,\u00a0state representative Christie Kuhns introduced a bill<\/a> designed to extend paid maternity leave in the private sector. This bill would have created a payroll deduction\u00a0program<\/a> that has been successful in other states, ensuring that a larger number of private workers in the state would be able to take time off after the birth of a child to recover and bond with their new baby without worrying where the money is coming from. As you\u2019ve likely already deduced, this bill\u00a0did not pass.<\/p>\n Alas, the bill\u00a0died in committee.<\/p>\n What\u2019s baffling is that this program was\u00a0everything small-government conservatives are supposed to like\u2014it wasn\u2019t the government mandating private companies to pay for maternity leave out of their pockets, and it wasn\u2019t the government paying for women\u2019s maternity leave. It was effectively a private insurance program you would have paid\u00a0for through your job<\/a>.<\/p>\n Paid for through employee payroll deductions that, based on other states, could cost workers about $25 to $30 per year, Ohioans could get a portion of their salary paid for up to 12 weeks for qualifying circumstances. The program would be administered by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, which also would create a sliding scale to determine how much each worker contributes to the fund.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ohio would have been the sixth state to create such a program. Republicans in the state legislature balked. It didn\u2019t pass. Look, we know it\u2019s good for both babies and mothers to have several months of maternity leave so that the mother can recover and the infant can grow with minimal exposure to germs. Many new mothers\u00a0struggle to take any leave at all because they can\u2019t afford to take time off work without getting paid. For individuals who claim to care deeply about protecting babies, this\u00a0is a no brainer<\/em>.<\/p>\n Ohio Republicans couldn\u2019t find time to extend affordable maternity leave\u2014using a plan that has worked in other states\u2014but they could<\/em> find time to ban abortion from the sixth week on. My, those are interesting priorities.<\/p>\n For all their rhetoric about protecting children from being murdered, Ohio Republicans also rejected<\/a> a group of bills designed directly at\u00a0protecting young children from being shot and killed with guns. Yes, really<\/em>.<\/p>\n State Rep. Bill Patmon, D-Cleveland, introduced four bills last year involving firearms, including a safe-storage bill, one requiring universal background checks and another banning imitation firearms.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re still laying .45-caliber handguns in the reach of children,\u201d Patmon said. \u201cThere\u2019s something wrong with that picture.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n These bills are designed to ensure that guns are not left within the reach of children<\/a>; to ensure that criminals are not allowed to by guns<\/a>; and to ensure that children are not killed<\/a> because someone mistook an imitation firearm for a real firearm. These things are not hypothetical. Ohio children are dying<\/em> due to\u00a0problems these bills would solve. According to Toledo police<\/a>, two children in that city have died due to unsecured firearms in the last two months alone. And of course, we\u2019re all familiar with the story of Tamir Rice<\/a>, who was shot while\u00a0carrying an unmarked imitation gun.<\/p>\n The Republicans in the legislature couldn\u2019t be bothered\u00a0to pass common sense gun requirements that we know<\/em> would save children\u2019s lives\u2014but they totally had time to ban abortion. This is complete and utter madness.<\/p>\n Again, I\u2019m pro-choice. I\u2019ll oppose undue restrictions on abortion any day of the week. But it\u2019s hard to take seriously those working to ban abortion when there is a completely lack of consistency. I\u2019m happy to disagree on factual questions or even on values\u2014though I\u2019ll definitely argue my case\u2014but watching people who claim to care about life, about babies, about saving children from being murdered turn around and make it clear that they only care about those things when the term abortion<\/em> is involved\u2014let\u2019s just say my civility is feeling a bit worn thin these days.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s hard to take seriously those working to ban abortion when there is a completely lack of consistency. I’m happy to disagree on factual questions or even on values—though I’ll definitely argue my case—but watching people who claim to care about life, about babies, about saving children from being murdered turn around and make it clear that they only care about those things when the term abortion is involved—let’s just say my civility is feeling a bit worn thin these days.<\/p>\n Click through to read more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":31233,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[104,24],"class_list":["post-31202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-abortion-2","tag-children"],"yoast_head":"\n