Citing “God given rights,” anti-abortion Republican state lawmakers in Ohio on Friday announced they are looking to strip jurisdiction over abortion from state judges and courts, after voters successfully, by a strong margin, passed a ballot measure that enshrines the right to abortion into the state constitution.
“To prevent mischief by pro-abortion courts with Issue 1, Ohio legislators will consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary over this ambiguous ballot initiative,” reads a statement on the Ohio House of Representatives’ Republican Newsroom.
“The Ohio legislature alone will consider what, if any, modifications to make to existing laws based on public hearings and input from legal experts on both sides,” they add, indicating they will attempt to remove checks and balances on the issue without judicial review.
“Issue 1 doesn’t repeal a single Ohio law, in fact, it doesn’t even mention one,” GOP State Rep. Bill Dean said in the statement. “The amendment’s language is dangerously vague and unconstrained, and can be weaponized to attack parental rights or defend rapists, pedophiles, and human traffickers.”
READ MORE: Johnson’s ‘Symbol of Christian Warfare’ Exposes His Ties to Aggressive Christian Nationalism: Report
Rep. Dean is not an attorney but a licensed plumber. In 2019 he co-sponsored legislation to not only ban abortion, but make abortion a crime.
Dean’s bill would have forced “doctors to ‘reimplant an ectopic pregnancy’ into a woman’s uterus – a procedure that does not exist in medical science – or face charges of ‘abortion murder,’ ” The Guardian reported at the time.
State Rep. Melanie Miller said in the statement, “We will continue to be a voice for every child in their mother’s womb who cannot speak for themselves.”
READ MORE: Tennessee Republican Argues Federal Funds to Feed Schoolchildren Should Be Performance-Tested
“This is foreign election interference, and it will not stand,” declared GOP state Rep. Jennifer Gross, a pro-Trump anti–vaxxer who claims millions of dollars from “foreign billionaires” fueled the votes to make abortion a constitutional right in Ohio.
“As a conservative Christian lawmaker,” The Cincinnati Enquirer reported in 2021, “Gross said she will support the three ‘B’s: businesses, babies and bullets.”
State Rep. Beth Lear said in the announcement, “No amendment can overturn the God given rights with which we were born.”
Image via Shutterstock