Dear Editor,
On August 8, 2023, Ohio voters will have the opportunity to vote no on Issue One; to turn back a Republican attempt to keep a simple majority of citizens from successfully exercising their right to overturn and invalidate egregious laws or amend the Ohio Constitution. We must not let this happen. That aside, we must not lose sight of why Republicans are so desperate to pass Issue One next month. One word: abortion.
In November, voters will have the opportunity to pass the Reproductive Rights Amendment. The passage of this amendment will legalize abortion in Ohio and put an end to Evangelical and conservative Catholic attempts to abolish and criminalize abortion. Left to their own devices, God’s Only Party will criminalize abortion, take away exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother, and ban certain forms of birth control. In other words, Republicans want to force women to give birth regardless of their circumstances.
700,000 signatures were collected to put the Reproductive Rights Amendment on the November ballot. 700,000! Republicans know that this number alone is a sign that the amendment will pass. So, using Issue One, they want to change the percentage of votes for passage from fifty percent to sixty percent. This ten percent swing could be enough to defeat the Reproductive Rights Amendment.
Forced birthers are primarily motivated by their religious beliefs. Most of them vote Republican. All of us have a right to believe whatever we want about God and life. However, we don’t have the right to force our religious views on others. Whether to have an abortion is a personal decision. If conservative Christians don’t want to get an abortion, fine, they don’t have to get one. End of discussion. However, other women may believe differently. Should they not have the right to make medical decisions for themselves? Republicans have no business getting in between a pregnant woman and her doctor.
If Ohioans who support the reproductive rights of women and think majority rule is sacrosanct turn out and vote, we will turn back the latest attempt by Ohio Republicans to force their religious beliefs on all of us. We will let them know that we have no intention of giving up the power to turn back egregious laws passed by legislators who are out of touch with everyday Ohioans.
Bruce Gerencser
Ney, Ohio
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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It is so sad to me how many midwestern states are controlled by near super-majorities of Republican legislators. The Republican Party has engineered minoritarian rule in Wisconsin, with an absolute lock through the most pernicious gerrymandering imaginable. As one small result, we spent over a million dollars “investigating” “election fraud.” Such fraud allegedly occurred in only a single race, and certainly none of those races which resulted in Republican locks on state government. If you’re that concerned about “election fraud,” I suggest examining Christianity, i.e., the fraud that there is an elect who have the key to a blissful eternity while everyone else gets an undying flame to the ass. Now that’s a sophisticated model of the universe. But I digress.
Whenever there is a chance the minoritarian political system (i.e., Republicans in power because of all the sparsely populated, socially and politically regressive counties voting them in by overwhelming majorities, such as 112-62) will face the reality of a popular majority, some scheme is hatched to undermine majority rule. This is stunningly evident in Ohio, an absolutely brazen effort to undermine a simple majority rule. Why not require this super-majority on “Issue One”? Good luck, Ohioans, may you fare better than we do in Wisconsin.
Good job on the Letter to the Editor. I have followed this issue in your state and am watching, as many throughout the US are watching, to see how this plays out.
Great letter, Bruce!
Just as the forced-birthers and other ultra-conservatives know that this is their only chance to get the laws they want passed (or struck down), they know that their only chance of holding power is through exploiting minoritarian systems.
I think most people in Ohio know this. I would have encouraged voters to get an absentee ballot. Those August elections tend to get forgotten or victim of a summer vacation (which is also part of this sinister underhanded anti-democratic ballot proposal).