Kasich vetoes heartbeat bill; bans 20wk abortions to challenge Roe v. Wade
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/12/13/John-Kasich-ac…
The Heartbeat Bill’s foremost champion, Janet Porter of Faith2Action, immediately denounced Kasich’s “betrayal of life” and promised a campaign to find the necessary votes in the House to override the governor’s veto. The Senate’s vote was veto-proof on what would have been the nation’s most stringent abortion law.
Ohio Right to Life President Michael Gonidakis supported Kasich’s decision to veto the Heartbeat Bill, which the group opposed. “The 20-week ban was nationally designed to be the vehicle to end abortion in America. It challenges the current national abortion standard and properly moves the legal needle from viability to the baby’s ability to feel pain,” Gonidakis said.
It strikes me that Ohio right to lifers are trying to work a “West Coast” offense when the courts are saying that the only thing they can get through is Woody Hayes’ “three yards and a cloud of dust”. That is, they’re throwing for the end zones by saying no abortions after the heart starts beating, which is at six weeks, when reality is that the courts aren’t supporting restrictions before viability at 23 weeks per Roe V. Wade. The courts are also not particularly amenable to laws that will increase costs on abortuaries without serious justification in terms of maternal safety.
I’m as pro-life as anyone, but Planned Parenthood and NARAL is going to have a field day with this kind of thing; we need to do abortion restrictions that will pass the courts while we work to get justices who understand that the 4th Amendment restricts government searches, but does not confer a blanket right to privacy regarding certain acts.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
I agree with Bert. Anyone who is laboring under the goal of a complete and utter criminalization of abortion needs to remember that the US constitution once prohibited the sale of alcohol as well. That didn’t work out real well.
If Kasich knows that the law is unconstitutional before he even signed it, I can’t say that I fault him for vetoing it. Why spend political capital and money defending a bill that will be overturned by the Supreme Court, especially since there would be an emergency court case for an injunction to keep it from ever taking force?
Sometimes the Pro-life movement is our own worst enemy…the heartbeat bill would probably have done more to encourage abortionists and the pro-abortion camp than it ever would for us.
"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells
I think the moral imperative for banning abortion is a wee bit stronger than for prohibition! Just a little.
But as far as strategy goes, I’m usually an incrementalist. But these are weird times. It’s true that “the courts” are going to shoot this down, but the stated aim is to get this to SCOTUS. Depending on who is on the bench when this happens, Roe v. Wade could well go away.
The result would be that abortion law would go back to the states where it belongs.
As for “unconstitutional,” a Supreme Court ruling does not make anything permanently unconstitutional, because the court has the authority to reverse it’s own rulings. There was never any constitutional basis for Roe v. Wade to begin with… beyond an imaginary “penumbra.” The long term goal of ending RvW is well worth pursuing.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
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