An organization called Protect Women Ohio has been making the rounds in the news. Without commenting on the morality or lack thereof of abortion, one should be aware of this organization. It is an organization that is strongly pushing Issue 1 that will be decided by voters in August. The reasoning is that if Issue 1 passes, then children will not be able to get abortions or sex-reassignment surgery without parental consent.
As other commentators have noted on this site, that motivation is simply mistaken when one looks at the process involved here: the legislation the ACLU is pushing (and even here we must be careful as Ohio Right to Life is accused of misrepresenting the language of the amendment) would be on the ballot regardless of whether Issue 1 passes or not and furthermore, as noted by another scholar, the amendment could very well pass by 60% anyway!
Let’s look more into the history of Protect Women Ohio.
On the “about” section of the website, it has no names of its founder(s) nor individual contact information. One must look elsewhere to see that Ohio Right to Life and the Center for Christian Virtue are the founders of this organization. The Ohio Right to Life is headed by a climate change denier, COVID conspiracy theorist, and strong supporter of JD “I didn’t support Alex Jones” Vance. Center for Christian Virtue, which seeks to legislate its view of morality, has a history of pushing (sometimes successfully) legislation that severely violates autonomy (restrictions on strip clubs, bans on gay marriage, etc.). According to the Wikipedia entry, in 2019 CCV got the Ohio House to pass a non-binding resolution calling pornography in general a “public health crisis.”
To this I wonder: did this organization also ask the Ohio House to declare the Roman Catholic Church and its priests a “public health crisis” or ask the police to send undercover officers into the confession booth? One must wonder why the inconsistency. Countless people in general and minors in particular have been directly harmed by Catholic priests, so why aren’t Protect Women Ohio and CCV pushing to ban Catholic priests from interacting with minors? Given the risk, shouldn’t there be parental consent laws on the books preventing Catholic priests from interacting with children without parental oversight? Parents want cameras in the classroom but not the confession booth or the sacristy? No other Christian denomination has such a history of abuse as the Catholic Church. It would therefore be unwise in the extreme to listen to anything its representatives have to say about “protecting” minors.
This is not an attempt to stir up anti-Catholic bigotry or distrust but a retelling of history. It was the Reich Concordat that formally prevented any Catholic from opposing Hitler. Ironically, this was all done in the name of protecting children, and the terms of the agreement made it impossible even for the future Pope Pius XII to forcefully object against violations of it.
Then there’s the complicity of the broader Catholic clergy in the rise of National Socialism. Historian Kevin P. Spicer calculated that there were at least 138 “Brown Priests” (Catholic priests who danced to Hitler’s fiddle). Less than thirty ultimately left the priesthood. Actually, it would be in the CEO of Ohio Right to Life’s interests, as a Catholic looking to increase the Church’s standing in America, to shirk Issue 1 as his support for it brings flashbacks of the diplomatic failures between the US and Papal States in the late 19th century and shortly after WW2.
In addition, I find it interesting that Ohio Right to Life CEO Peter Range is unaware that the Catholic Church gave an imprimatur to a book written by a Nazi Catholic priest named Dr. Joseph Mayer, a book which argued not only in favor of forced sterilization but, unsurprisingly, abortion as well. The idea that the Catholic Church has always, officially, opposed abortion is hard to believe given this disturbing fact from a past that is all too often whitewashed. Given the circle he runs in (those who think school shootings are “staged”), denying this painful reality about the holocaust is disappointing yet not shocking.
It is also worth noting that, among faith leaders in support of issue #1, all of them appear to be Christian. Despite the fact that Ohio is home to many masjids, synagogues, Gurudwaras, and Hindu temples, no faith leader from any other religion appears to be campaigning alongside the “Religious Right”. That should give us pause.
A “Yes” vote on Issue 1 is not a vote for our autonomy as citizens but rather, as many have noted, a vote for out of state billionaires to meddle with our affairs.
Bill Kennedy IV
Bowling Green
