Alas, there was no Wendy Davis to save us. Our governor, Taxin' John Kasich, has until midnight to sign the "budget" bill HB 59. He has now signed it.
Women across the state (and many men) were bombarding his office with phone calls, pleading with him to line-item veto a series of extremist anti-choice provisions that had no business being in the "budget" bill to begin with.
He ignored them and did not do so.
http://www.prochoiceohio.org/...
It was probably a bit much to expect since he has put anti-choice zealots in key roles in health agencies, including the head of Right to Life Ohio. Now he can puff himself up and pompously claim to the hardcore base that he has save thousands of babies from being killed.
In fact, this sad excuse for a budget, which was dubbed "a festering turd" the other night at a meeting in Cleveland by John Patrick Carney, a state rep. from the Columbus area who is going to be challenging Teabaggin' Dave Yost for state auditor, does things like make maternity care even MORE inaccessible to poor women. Gee, do you think lack of maternity care could be the reason that certain (very poor) neighborhoods in Cleveland have higher infant mortality rates than Haiti, Uganda, Rwanda, and other third-world countries?
WHO is "murdering babies" again?
You can read the "festering turd" here if you have a strong stomach.
http://www.lsc.state.oh.us/...
Among other things, Planned Parenthood – the only source of health care for many women in Ohio's poorest areas — is now defunded. Providers will no longer be scored on efficiency and serves delivered but on ideology.
TANF money — the very money that helps keep babies from dying after birth — can now be redirected to "crisis pregnancy centers" at the whim of agencies that are run by the aforementioned anti-choice zealots.
Clinics are required to have transfer agreements with hospitals and public hospitals are forbidden from making them.
Doctors must give a woman an abdominal ultrasound at her own expense and give her a religious propaganda speech about her fetus.
"Pregnancy" and "fetus" have been redefined in Ohio law to no longer have their medical scientific meanings but meanings based on the beliefs of extremist religious groups. These meanings could mean that a woman getting certain types of birth control could be considered to be requesting an "abortion" and required to have the ultrasound and the non-scientific speech.
It just goes on and on. I don't even entirely know what is in it, because in the worst travesty of all, a whole bunch of new anti-choice stuff was dropped in this week and passed on straight party line vote with no hearings and no public debate.
A few days ago, Politico did a gushing, fawning piece abut what a splendid, pragmatic, successful governor Taxin' John Kasich is. (Rachel Maddow said Politico was "batting its eyelashes" at him.
Kasich is showing himself clearly to be one of the most out-of-touch, defiant, woman-hating, ideologically driven governors in the country. Politico already has him reelected in a landslide and on his way to the White House. Please please please, for the love of women, if you can, help us defeat him. Our candidate is Cuyahoga County executive Ed FitzGerald, and he stands with women, with workers, with voters, with LGBT people — with all the people Kasich has trampled.
If you can spare a few dollars, I will be personally grateful. I am so pissed.
http://www.edfitzgeraldforohio.com/