Bodily Autonomy: the right to make decisions about your body without coercion or violence. It’s a fundamental human right that allows people to make choices about their health, sexuality, and reproduction.
While no right is absolute, with few exceptions, each of us has the right to do what we want with our bodies. No government, religion, or individual has the right to force us to violate our bodily autonomy. There was a time when most Americans understood this principle. Even when another’s choice fundamentally runs against our personal beliefs or morals, we have no right to force people to act against their own self-interest. Of course, this principle has frequently been violated throughout our nation’s long history. In recent years, right-wing Republicans have used the power of the state to violate the bodily autonomy of both men and women. Republicans have even gotten between people and their doctors, forbidding medically necessary treatment, all because their moral or religious sensibilities are offended.
We see this most often in the culture war against reproductive rights. Republicans demand that women surrender their bodily autonomy to the dictates of an ancient religious text — the Bible, and their errant interpretations of the text. Abortion, in particular, is THE issue that drives the right’s immoral war against a woman’s right to choose. If Republicans had their way, there would be a federal abortion ban, without exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. Further, many Republicans want to criminalize abortion. Sadly, there is little difference between the moral pronouncements of many Republicans and Muslim Sharia Law. If given an opportunity, Republicans will ban abortion, in vitro fertilization, and some forms of birth control. No matter how many state constitutional amendments are enacted protecting reproductive rights, Republicans intend to ignore the will of the people.
Women have a fundamental right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term. The choice is theirs alone. Not their husband’s; not the government’s; not God’s. Theirs alone, end of discussion. It is their body that is affected and changed by pregnancy. In what other scenario do we allow people to intervene in the medical care of others? As long as a person is mentally competent to make their own decisions, they have the right to do what they want with their body. My body, my choice, applies to all of us.
But what about the “baby,” Bruce? What about it? Eighty-eight percent of abortions take place during the first trimester, long before what’s growing in a woman’s womb is a baby. Even when it comes to third-trimester abortions, most terminations take place due to fetal abnormalities. At no point do women surrender their right to bodily autonomy.
Let’s suppose I need a kidney. Without a transplant, I will die. After testing, I find out that my brother is a match. I go to my brother and ask him to give me one of his kidneys so I can continue to live. My brother says “no.” Should my brother be forced to give me one of his kidneys? Even though I will die if he doesn’t do so, he has a fundamental right to say no. His body, his choice. The same goes for pregnant women. No woman should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term. Her body, her choice.
But, Bruce, God says . . . the Bible says . . . I think abortion is murder. What God, the Bible, or you say doesn’t matter. The woman’s body is her’s alone, and no one has the right to force her to do anything against her will. I know this is hard for conservative Christians to hear, but what you “believe” plays NO part in what a woman does or doesn’t do with her body. Think abortion is morally wrong? Fine, don’t get one. You would be rightly offended if non-Christians stuck their noses in your medical decisions; so it is when you stick your nose in the medical decisions of women.
For Evangelicals planning to post Bible verses in the comment section, don’t bother. Your proof texts are anything but. The Bible has little, if anything, to say about abortion. The notion that life begins at conception is not found in Scripture. Oh, you can massage and twist a few verses to justify your attacks on bodily autonomy, but careful exegesis suggests that your interpretations are wrong.
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.
Every year or two, I ask readers to submit questions they want me to answer. That time has arrived once again. Any question. Any subject. Please leave your questions in the comment section or send them to me via email. I will try to answer them in the order received.
I look forward to reading and answering your questions.
Revival “I Lie for Jesus” asked:
How much sleep is being lost that the babies are gonna live in Arizona? Baby killers having a fit.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I am not losing any sleep over Arizona banning abortion. Women’s lives and rights are in the balance, so there is no time for me to sleep. Instead, I am doing all I can to legalize abortion, not only in Arizona, but every state in the Union.
A baby is a fetus that can live outside of the womb on its own. When the egg and sperm unite, potential life is formed. This potential life grows from a zygote to a fetus to a baby. I support unrestricted abortion up until viability. Most abortions take place in the first trimester.
It is forced birthers who are having a fit. They know they have overplayed their hand, and now they must contend with pro-reproductive rights initiatives on state ballots. In every state where abortion has been on the ballot, reproductive rights initiatives won. I proudly helped legalize abortion in Ohio last year. If this makes me a “baby killer,” so be it.
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.
Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God. The principle itself — that human life is fundamentally distinct from other forms of life and cannot be taken intentionally without justification — has deep roots that reach back to the creation of man ‘in the image of God.
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The People of Alabama took what was spoken of the prophet Jeremiah and applied it to every unborn person in this state.
“[Alabamians] have required us to treat every human being in accordance with the fear of a holy God who made them in His image.
— Alabama Chief Justice and Fundamentalist Christian Tom Parker
Forced birthers have spent the past 50 years chipping away at reproductive rights, finally overturning Roe v. Wade two years ago. And they are not finished, not in the least. The recent ruling on IVF in Alabama is yet another reminder that Christian theocrats will not rest until all of us are living under the iron rule of Jesus and the Bible — as interpreted by them, of course. Evangelicals, Mormons, and Roman Catholics now have birth control in their sights. Believing personhood begins when the sperm and egg unite, forced birthers demand that all forms of birth control that “murder” zygotes must be banned. Some of them want ALL birth control banned, saying that God alone opens and closes the womb, forgetting that God himself is responsible for countless abortions every year via ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages. The goal is to return women to the good old days of the 1950s.
Next up on the agenda will be same-sex marriage. Chief Justice Tom Parker had this to say about the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage:
I’ve written extensively about the judicial overreach in the Obergefell decision, and it is going to be writings like that that the new [U.S. Supreme Court] majority can use to restore what our Founding Fathers intended for America to be.
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The relationship of marriage was designed by the Creator; it both predates and transcends civil societies. No civil government was its originator, so none has power to define its essence. Rather, the nature and outer boundaries of marriage are defined only by its Supreme Architect, in His written word and in the natural order. That nature and those boundaries include the original creation of marriage as a covenant relationship by mutual consent between two human beings of the opposite sexes – i.e. one man and one woman.
Theocrats are now in seats of power, places from which they can cause catastrophic harm to our Republic and undermine a hundred years of social progress. They will not rest until all Americans bow their knees and say Allah Akbar, uh, I mean, Jesus Christ is King and Lord Over All!
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.
Don’t believe a word. The same extremists lining up to support a federal abortion ban, that would override hard-earned reproductive freedoms in states like Ohio, are now tripping all over themselves to profess their support for IVF and personal choice. Yeah right. The truth is freedom-killing MAGA Republicans were caught off guard after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos (created and stored for in vitro fertilization) are children under state law.
Public reaction to the decision — that repeatedly invoked scripture as its legal foundation for effectively stopping in vitro fertilization treatments across Alabama — was highly negative. Of course it was. Millions of Americans struggle with infertility issues. Many have turned to IVF for hope. So the patriarchal zealots on a mission from God to force their religious beliefs down our throats — to control what you read, say, do, who you marry, when and how you have kids — saw the polls on IVF and rushed to pretend they would absolutely protect access to it.
Don’t believe a word. The extreme agenda of Christian nationalists to inject government into our private lives and subjugate women as vessels of the state was bluntly exposed in the Alabama IVF case. MAGA Republicans, inextricably linked to that extremism with their minority rule, panicked. It’s an election year. An urgent, if superficial, GOP course correction was hastily activated in MAGA circles to minimize political fallout in the wake of the IVF outrage.
It is “imperative that our candidates align with the public’s overwhelming support for IVF and fertility treatments,” warned the memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Every Republican running for the U.S. Senate in Ohio took heed and raced to cover their anti-choice backsides. Every one of them affirmed their solidarity with those appalled over the Alabama ruling. Every one of them is a fraud.
Just a few months ago, Frank LaRose, Bernie Moreno, and Matt Dolan aggressively opposed a statewide issue that established a constitutional right “to one’s own reproductive medical treatment,” including the freedom to make decisions on abortion, contraception, fertility treatments, continuing one’s own pregnancy and miscarriage care. LaRose spearheaded the campaign against access to reproductive choices that encompassed IVF.
Multi-millionaire Moreno fought reproductive freedoms with six-figure donations to anti-abortion groups mobilized to defeat the right of Ohioans to make their own reproductive decisions. Matt Dolan disparaged the constitutionally protected freedoms Ohio voters decisively approved last November as too extreme — and then disparaged voters as being too dim to really understand what they were voting for.
Heading into the March 19 GOP primary, all three Republicans say they’re open to canceling the will of state voters to impose federal restrictions on abortion rights and reproductive health care. The day an Alabama court decreed frozen embryos “extrauterine children” and the legal equivalent of human beings in a wrongful death lawsuit, Moreno suggested that his religious certainties about embryonic personhood were in sync with the court’s.
“Your faith teaches you that life begins at conception,” he said, which would seem to preclude access to IVF services. LaRose echoed similar beliefs about life starting at fertilization that concurred with the religious views that influenced the all-Republican Alabama Supreme Court in finding that fertilized eggs have the same legal status as people — which prompted an immediate pause in IVF treatment at hospitals and fertility clinics in the state.
It’s not the first or last time the religious (not scientific) concept of fetal personhood justified banning abortion from the moment of conception or ending popular fertility treatments for would-be parents. There is a right wing through line from the theocratic justices on U.S. Supreme Court, who overturned Roe and punted on prenatal personhood, to the scripture-quoting state supreme court justices in Alabama, who granted legal status to frozen embryos, and the uptick in fetal personhood bills introduced in scores of Republican-dominated legislatures in the country.
Ohio House Republicans have pushed their own extreme versions of personhood-at-conception legislation to ban abortion outright and threaten IVF medical practices in the state (for fear of being criminally culpable for discarded embryos not implanted.) Even after abortion became a constitutional right in Ohio, anti-abortion advocates continue their Statehouse crusade to obstruct or obliterate that right with bills drafted to ultimately overturn Ohio’s constitutional amendment protecting reproductive freedoms.
Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a zealous opponent of allowing women to make their own health care choices, is dragging out litigation to keep the state’s six-week anti-abortion law on the books — although abortion rights are enshrined in the Ohio Constitution — to save “other provisions” of the draconian ban that might pass constitutional muster?? He’s brandishing his anti-abortion bona fides, instead of respecting the voters of the state, for a possible gubernatorial run in 2026. Depressing.
The GOP’s Handmaid’s Tale of dystopian extremism has come home to roost for MAGA Republicans at war with women and their fundamental right to self-determination. The party owns what Dobbs has wrought in pain and suffering. No matter what its presumptive presidential nominee (who is most responsible for Dobbs) says about the Alabama IVF ruling or what a bunch of course-correcting senatorial candidates say after fighting to deny women their reproductive rights and reproductive choice — don’t believe a word.
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.
I have some questions for those who believe that abortion is murder.
Does life begin at conception? How do you know it does? Is your view based on science or is it based on a religious belief?
If life begins at conception, why are you supporting an Ohio bill that makes it illegal to have an abortion once a heartbeat is detected? Does life begin at conception or at first heartbeat?
Do you support the use of emergency contraception (morning after) drugs? Why or why not?
Should a pro-life pharmacist have the right to not dispense emergency contraception drugs? Should I be allowed to opt out of anything that goes against my moral or ethical beliefs, regardless of their foundation?
Is abortion murder?
Do you believe murderers should be prosecuted?
Do you believe that driving the get-away car makes a person just as guilty as the person who robbed the bank?
Do you believe a woman who has an abortion should be prosecuted for murder? How about the doctor who performs the procedure? How about the nurse that assisted in the procedure? How about the person who drove the woman to the clinic? If you believe in the death penalty, do you support the execution of murderers?
Do you use birth control pills?
Should you be prosecuted for murder since birth control pills can, and do, cause spontaneous abortion?
Should abortion be allowed for reasons of rape, incest, or saving the life of the mother?
If you answered yes to question eleven, do you support murdering the fetus if it is the product of rape or incest?
Should a fetus be aborted if the mother’s life is at risk?
Do you support murdering the unborn if it saves the life of the mother?
Is your viewpoint on abortion a religious belief?
What passage in the Bible prohibits abortion? Does this passage define life beginning at conception?
Has God ever killed the unborn?
In Genesis, God destroyed every human save eight by drowning them in a flood. Were any of the women who drowned pregnant? Did God kill the fetuses they were carrying? (Kill the mother, kill the fetus.)
Do you support the death penalty? Do you support war? Should women who survive self-induced abortions be charged with attempted murder?
If you answered yes to question nineteen, why do you oppose the killing of the unborn but support the killing of those already born?
Why do you believe that killing the unborn is murder but consider an American bomb killing a baby 3 hours old a tragic result of war, collateral damage, but not murder?
Do you support birth control being readily available in every school? If your objective is to reduce or eliminate the need for an abortion, wouldn’t easily available, free access to birth control reduce the abortion rate?
Do you believe it is better for a severely deformed child to live for a day and die than for the fetus to be aborted? If so, explain why it is better for the child to suffer needlessly?
Do you believe that God is in control of everything? Does everything include children being born deformed or with serious defects that will result in a life of extreme suffering and pain?
Is someone a Christian if he or she supports abortion?
My view on abortion
Three Day Old Human Embryo.
I do not think that life begins at conception, nor do I think it begins at first heartbeat. That said, I do not support abortion on demand. Approximately 65% of abortions occur in the first eight weeks, and 88% of abortions occur in the first trimester. I do not support any law that restricts access to an abortion in the first trimester. Once fetus viability (the ability to live outside the womb) is established, I do not support the right to an abortion except when the life of the mother is at stake or there’s a severe fetal abnormality.
I support women having full access to reproductive services (including access to birth control), as well as school-aged girls and young women. For women who have at-risk pregnancies, I support government-sponsored access to genetic testing and amniocentesis that will reveal severe birth defects. Better to have an abortion earlier in a pregnancy than to have a child born without a brain who will die a few moments or days after birth.
I support comprehensive sex education for junior high and high school students, and health education for fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. Since girls often reach menses at ages as young as ten, waiting until they are sixteen to educate them about reproduction is irresponsible and leads to unintended pregnancies. I do not support “Just say No” programs that take the “aspirin between the knees” approach and ignore the reality that most teenagers will, at some point, be sexually active. Yes, teens should perhaps wait, but they don’t, and everyone should agree that teenagers having babies is not a good idea. If we agree that this is not a good idea, then making sure they can’t get pregnant should be a top priority.
I support radical changes to adoption laws in this country. The government should make it easy and affordable for people to adopt children (after being thoroughly vetted). By changing the law, it is more likely that women with unplanned pregnancies will carry their fetuses to term. This would also put out of business adoption agencies — many of them Christian — that charge extortion-level fees for adoptions.
Neither God, the Bible, papal decrees, nor religious rhetoric have sway over me. Showing me bloody pictures of dismembered late-term aborted fetuses also has no effect on me. I know that only 1.3% of abortions occur after the twenty-first week. In 2017, 862,000 abortions were performed in the United States. That means, roughly 11,000 abortions were performed from the 21st week to term. Why don’t pro-lifers wave around pictures of zygotes or other pictures from the chronological time period when most abortions take place? Simple: such pictures wouldn’t excite, inflame, and manipulate the passions of zygote worshipers like a bloody, gory picture of a dismembered fetus does.
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.
Tomorrow, Ohioans will vote on Issue 1 — the enshrinement of reproductive rights in the Ohio Constitution. The amendment will likely pass. If it doesn’t, Ohio will be governed by a six-week abortion ban, with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of the mother.
A local Evangelical pastor has been seeking out people who have VOTE YES signs in their yards, asking them why they are baby killers. In his Bible-sotted mind, if you support a woman’s right to choose, you are a baby killer; a murderer. I do not doubt that he believes that abortion should be criminalized and anyone who facilitates, participates in, or has an abortion should be criminally prosecuted and incarcerated.
I have no hope of meaningfully interacting with people who think I am a “murderer” because I think women should have a right to control their bodies; that abortion is an essential part of reproductive care.
So, does this mean I am a murderer; a baby killer? Of course not. Eight out of ten abortions take place in the first trimester, long before the zygote, tissue, or fetus is a “baby.” To be sure, the fetus is “potential life,” but not a baby (in the normative sense of the word). Once a fetus reaches viability — 22 to 24 weeks, roughly six months — then a case can be made for regulations to ensure that only fetuses that have fatal birth defects or are threats to the health and life of the mother are aborted (which account for roughly 12,000 abortions per year).
All of us have a right to bodily autonomy — including pregnant women. I will vote YES tomorrow because I want women, including my two daughters, daughters-in-law, and thirteen granddaughters, to have the absolute right to control their own bodies. Appeals to God, the Bible, or other dogma carry no weight with me. I don’t care what the Bible says, the church says, or some preacher says about the matter. My only concern is for women themselves.
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.
Did you hear wailing and gnashing of teeth emanating from Ohio today? Oh my, Republicans are stumbling all over themselves trying to explain how Ohio voters turned down Issue 1 by a 3-2 margin.
Millions of dollars and liberal dark money flooded Ohio to ensure they have a path to buy their extreme policies in a pro-life state. Tragically, some sat on the sideline while outsider liberal groups poured millions into Ohio. A broad coalition of passionate pro-life Ohioans came together to fight parental rights opponents and try to take victory from the jaws of defeat. But the silence of the establishment and business community in Ohio left a vacuum too large to overcome.
Attacks on state constitutions are now the national playbook of the extreme pro-abortion Left. That is why everyone must take this threat seriously and recognize progressives will win if their opponents are scared into submission by the pro-abortion Left.
So long as the Republicans and their supporters take the ostrich strategy and bury their heads in the sand, they will lose again and again.
As you can see, Dannenfelser blames everyone but herself. Further, she outright lies when she says “Millions of dollars and liberal dark money flooded Ohio to ensure they have a path to buy their extreme policies in a pro-life state.” True in the sense that millions of dollars of outside money supported the Vote No on Issue 1 cause. What she neglects to say is that Vote Yes on Issue 1 received even more outside money.
Roughly $35 million has flowed to political groups aiming to influence Ohio’s August special election. That includes money for campaigns for or against the ballot measure raising the threshold for constitutional amendments, as well as several closely aligned organizations.
On both sides — those opposing Issue 1, those supporting it, and those technically fighting November’s reproductive rights amendment — the vast majority of funding came from out of state.
The campaigns
Issue 1’s proponents have consistently argued a higher threshold for passing state constitutional amendments will act as a deterrent.
“This is about empowering the people of Ohio to protect their constitution from out of state special interests that want to try to buy their way into our state’s founding document,” Secretary of State Frank LaRose insisted in a televised statewide debate last week. “I’m here to say the Ohio constitution is not for sale.”
Opponents have repeatedly argued back that nothing in the proposal actually limits out-of-state influence.
The yes campaign committee, Protect Our Constitution, raised a little more than $4.85 million according to its filing. Nearly all of it came from a single individual who lives out of state.
Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein donated a total of $4 million to the committee. The right-wing megadonor owns the Uline shipping and office supply company, and his grandfather and great-grandfather ran Schlitz brewing.
The largest contributions aside from Uihlein were $100,000 each from a PAC solely funded by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, and another connected with Ohio nursing homes. Other substantial contributions came in from Washington, D.C., Georgia and Tennessee. But less than $700,000, or just 14% of the total, came from Ohio donors.
Issue 1’s opponents are fundraising through a committee called One Person One Vote. The campaign raised a total of $14.8 million, about 16% of it coming from Ohio donors.
The filing doesn’t show anyone giving quite as much as Uihlein did in terms of dollar amount or percentage of the total. Still, the campaign did attract some pretty big fish. Karla Jurvetson, a Silicon Valley psychiatrist and philanthropist, cut checks totaling about $1.1 million.
One Person One Vote also got contributions of $1 million or more from liberal groups including the Sixteen Thirty Fund, among the largest left-leaning dark money groups, the Tides Foundation, Ohio Education Association and the National Education Association.
Alongside its filing, One Person One vote put out a statement describing their pride for “the enormous bipartisan coalition that has come together to defeat Issue 1.”
The (not quite the campaign) campaigns
Although One Person One Vote outraised Protect Our Constitution more than three-to-one, the ‘yes’ campaign was never just one committee. In all, there are four “Protect” organizations including Protect Women Ohio, Protect Women Ohio Action and Protect Our Kids Ohio.
Taken together, they give the yes side of the campaign a financial advantage.
These organizations are chiefly concerned with defeating the reproductive rights amendment that will be on the ballot this November. But because Issue 1 will raise the threshold for that November vote, they’re also deeply invested in its approval.
The first televised ads in favor of Issue 1? Those were paid for by Protect Women Ohio — not Protect our Constitution. Around the state, anti-abortion activists are making explicit appeals for Issue 1 based on undermining the reproductive rights amendment. Seth Drayer, the Vice President for Created Equal, recently warned the Delaware City Republican Club about a 2022 abortion amendment that passed in Michigan with 56% of the vote.
“If we move to 60% they’re not going to win in Ohio,” he said. “If we win August, we win November. It’s really about that simple.”
And like Protect Our Constitution, these allied groups are getting the vast majority of their funding from out of state.
Protect Women Ohio Action is actually a 501(c)(4) based in Virginia. Five million of its $5.2 million bankroll comes from The Concord Fund, a Washington D.C. based 501(c)(4) known publicly as the Judicial Crisis Network that spends heavily in favor of conservative judges. The other $200,000 comes from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. The organization’s president is Protect Women Ohio Action’s sole board member.
Among Protect Women Ohio’s contributions is a $2 million check from Protect Women Ohio Action reported the same day The Concord Fund made a $2 million donation to the latter.
Of the groups pushing for Issue 1, Protect Women Ohio has by far the biggest piggy bank. But more than $6 million of that $9.7 million total comes from Susan B. Anthony. The only other substantial donations came from the Catholic Church. The Columbus and Cleveland Dioceses gave $200,000 each and the Cincinnati Archdiocese gave $500,000. In all, Protect Women Ohio raised about 16.3% of contributions in-state. The three donations from the Catholic Church make up more than half of that.
Today, Ohio voters rejected an effort by Republican lawmakers and special interests to change the state’s constitutional amendment process. This measure was a blatant attempt to weaken voters’ voices and further erode the freedom of women to make their own healthcare decisions. Ohioans spoke loud and clear, and tonight democracy won.
Biden rightly understood that this was a power grab by Ohio Republicans. They don’t want voters looking over their shoulders, daring to smack their hands when they overstep and ignore the will of everyday Ohioans. That’s what happens when you have a super-majority and control every major state office. The defeat of Issue 1 was Ohio voters saying to legislators that “we the people” have the final say. Hopefully, Ohioans will take the next step and vote deaf and blind Republicans out of office. They have largely stopped listening or seeing the commoners among them, so the only thing that will get their attention is to send them packing.
Ohioans rightly understood that this August special election was all about November’s vote on legalizing abortion. In 2022, eight percent of voters turned out for an August election. Afterward, Republicans did away with August elections, only to ignore this and hold a special election. Yesterday, forty percent of registered voters voted — a five-hundred percent increase in turnout. Take that Republicans, and come November’s election, a record voter turnout will lead to the approval of the reproductive rights amendment. Further, it looks like marijuana legalization will be on the ballot too. I guarantee you, more than fifty percent of voters want cannabis legalized.
The November vote will likely be a day of woe for Ohio Republicans. Supposedly, they are the party of “freedom.” Welp, this is what FREEDOM looks like. Don’t want an abortion, don’t get one. Don’t want to smoke marijuana, don’t take a toke. It’s really that simple.
I predict that Republicans will turn to the courts to stop the November reproductive rights amendment. Hopefully, their challenges will be rebuffed and Ohioans will have the final say on abortion.
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.
There is a staggering lack of Biblically-based knowledge and impact in America’s public square. Secularism, Christianity’s chief competitor, thrives solely in the absence of morality, and Christians have handed over the culture and its mountains of influence to those in rebellion against God. Any casual observer will recognize that secularism’s dominance of academia, newsrooms, sports, the Courts, big business, Hollywood, and medicine isa direct result of Christians ‘not doing politics’. It would seem that modern Christianity is ‘not doing education’ either, given that the secular worldview now is being spoon-fed to 85% of America’s youth. Until Christians step into the public square, reestablishing a Biblically-based culture, the ‘sexualization’ and secularization of youth, allied and abetted by Hollywood and media cliques, will continue to bring the nation to ruin.
Evangelicals, conservative Catholics, and Mormons clamor for a Bible-based culture. In their minds, the Bible is the moral and ethical standard by which all of us should live. If only the United States were governed by the dictates of the Bible, all would be well. Several years ago, a local Fundamentalist Christian wrote a letter to the editor of the Defiance Crescent-News (behind a paywall) extolling the wonderfulness of living in a country governed by the Bible. He went on to say that no one should fear Bible-based rule. “Christians,” he said, “only want what’s best for everyone.” Sadly, there are a lot of naive believers who think just like this man; Christians only want love, joy, peace, and ice cream for everyone. However, history tells us differently; that when church and state are one, blood is shed, people die, and freedoms are lost. And make no mistake about it, theocracy is the goal. Christian apologists might hide their theocratic beliefs with flowery words and philosophical verbiage, but the naked truth is that, in their minds, there is one Lord, lawgiver, ruler, king, and potentate, and his name is Jesus. There is one perfect and infallible law book — the Bible. Knowing they believe these things to be true, perhaps we should ponder what a Bible-based culture would look like.
One need only look at the frontal assault on abortion and Roe v. Wade. The latter having been effectively overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, what has happened since? Hundreds of new state anti-abortion laws severely restrict or outlaw abortion, often without exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. The goal? A federal ban on ALL abortion.
This will not be the end of the matter either. Emboldened by their win, Evangelicals, conservative Catholics, and Mormons will demand that birth control be outlawed and public-school students be taught Bible-based abstinence-only sex education. These zealots will also tirelessly work to enact laws that give fertilized eggs constitutional rights — demanding personhood for zygotes. The culmination of their efforts will come when doctors, following the dictates of their conscience, are prosecuted for performing abortions, and mothers are arrested and imprisoned for “murdering” their unborn “children.”
Several years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. The same people who tirelessly worked to ban abortion are the same people who strived to criminalize homosexuality and deny LGBTQ people the same constitutional rights afforded to heterosexual Americans. Don’t think for a moment that these people are sitting at home licking their wounds as they watch lesbian porn. Convinced of the rightness of their beliefs and interpretations of the Bible, Evangelicals are plotting to force gays back into closets and recriminalize sodomy and other “perverse” sexual behaviors. Now that the makeup of the Supreme Court skews to the right, I have no doubt that these zealots will do their best to afford the Court another bite at the same-sex-marriage apple. Believing that the Bible condemns homosexuality, theocrats demand and work towards a Bible-based culture where the Good Book®, and not personal morality and preferences, determines who may fuck whom, when, where, and how. Failing to conjugate according to God’s Holy Word would lead to arrest and imprisonment. And if these theocrats are consistent, they will demand that “sodomites” be executed for their crimes against humanity. This, dear readers, is what a Bible-based culture looks like.
In a Bible-based culture, other sexual “sins” such as adultery and fornication would also be banned. In fact, in the Old Testament alone, there are 613 laws. Of course, no Christian has ever kept all of God’s laws. Most Christians, including those clamoring for a theocracy, regularly and with impunity ignore God-given laws. Can anyone say, HYPOCRITES?! That said, even limiting a Bible-based culture to the Ten Commandments is dangerous. In both versions of the Decalogue — yes there are two versions and they differ from one another — the Christian God demands total and absolute fealty and worship. According to numerous Bible stories, worshipping other gods was considered a capital crime punishable by death. I am quite sure that if Evangelicals ever gain the power of the state, the first people rounded up and sent to Franklin Graham Reeducation Camps will be atheists and Muslims. Fundamentalist Christians have a deep-seated hatred for the godless and worshippers of Allah. It chaps their bleached testicles that we roam free on the Internet and in public. Every time the Freedom From Religion Foundation successfully litigates a church-state issue, their email inbox is filled with vile hate mail from offended followers of Jesus. Imagine these same people having the power of the state at their disposal. In a Bible-based culture, there’s no freedom of/from religion. There’s one God — Jesus — one religion — Christianity — and one lawbook — the Bible.
The next time you hear the cacophony of Evangelicals and other conservative Christians demanding the United States adopt a Bible-based standard of behavior, ask them exactly what they mean. Peruse the list of Actions Prohibited by the Bible on RationalWiki, and then ask them if their Bible-based culture would include some or all of the listed prohibitions. I think you’ll find that few zealots really want to live by all of the laws found in the Bible. Damn, talk about a miserable life! No, most theocrats just want to legislate and criminalize the big stuff. What they want, most of all, is a return to the 1940s and 1950s — a time when women were submissive keepers of their homes, Blacks knew their place, LGBTQ people were not seen or heard, and the only fucking going on was that between monogamous heterosexual married couples. They want a culture where everyone goes to church, loves Jesus, and schoolchildren read the Bible and pray every day. In other words, Evangelicals want to roll back a hundred years of social progress. Never mind that their vision of a Mayberry-like world exists only in their Bible-sotted minds. Does anyone really believe Andy wasn’t fooling around with Helen and Gomer wasn’t smoking weed in the gas station bathroom?
Several years ago, I wrote a post detailing why Evangelicalism is dying. Let me be clear, Evangelicalism IS, most certainly, dying, but it has stage-one, not stage-four, cancer. One need only watch the machinations of Evangelical culture warriors to see that they have no intentions of going quietly into the night. There are times when I tip my cap to Christian Fundamentalists. They know what they are fighting for and are willing to metaphorically and, at times, literally, kill everyone who gets in the way of their goal of establishing God’s kingdom on earth. Far too often, liberals and progressives are way too nice and polite. We can learn something from the tactics of Christian zealots: that social progress will only be achieved by stomping the beliefs and demands of theocrats into the ground. Until we understand that we are in a battle for the soul and future of American secularism, we will continue to have our asses handed to us by those demanding King Jesus rule over us all. Way too many secularists, religious or not, sit on the sidelines shooting the breeze while Christian Fundamentalists, in White Walker fashion, wage war against our Republic.
If we don’t wage unholy war against theocrats, who will? Passivity is deadly, and if we refuse to fight, we have no one to blame but ourselves when President Billy-the-Baptist and a Christian Congress demand Americans everywhere bow and worship the one true lawgiver, Jesus.
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.
After the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade and returned the regulation of abortion to the states, many liberals and progressives thought that culture warriors would move on to other hot-button issues such as same-sex marriage, gender-affirming care for transgender people, and banning library books that offend their religious sensibilities. As someone who was an Evangelical pastor for twenty-five years, I warned my fellow progressives that Evangelicals, conservative Catholics, and Mormons were not finished on the abortion front; that their true objective is to pass total abortion bans. No exceptions for rape and incest. No exceptions for the life of the mother or fatal fetal abnormalities. From the moment the sperm fertilizes the egg — no abortion. Period.
Eighty-eight percent of abortions take place in the first trimester. Late-term abortions are rare, and usually the result of fatal fetal abnormalities or threats to the lives of mothers. Yet, forced-birth groups, including those in rural Northwest Ohio, almost always use gruesome photos of late-term aborted fetuses to inflame the passions of supporters. Why is that? I suspect a photo of a zygote or a four-week-old blastocyst doesn’t stir people to open their checkbooks to give money to forced birth groups as a bloody fetus does.
Currently, signatures are being collected for a ballot initiative that will legalize abortion in Ohio. Hopefully, this initiative will be on the ballot in November. Ohio Republican legislators are doing everything in their power to derail the ballot initiative, including upping vote percentage for an amendment to pass.. It is likely Republican attempts to hinder the democratic process will fail and Ohioans will be able to put an end to the religious rights frontal assault on reproductive rights.
The good news is that the majority of voters support reproductive rights. While they may want certain restrictions on post-viability abortions, most Ohioans support a woman’s right to choose. This is especially the case for younger adults who generally oppose the religious right’s culture war. If younger adults turn out to vote, that will put an end to forced birth laws.
We mustn’t underestimate the goal of Evangelicals and conservative Catholics; not only in banning abortion but also banning many forms of birth control. Their goal is to return Ohio and the United States to the good old days of the 1950s. We must not let this happen.
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.
Tim Conway, Calvinistic Pastor in San Antonio, Texas
William “BJ” Volkert, a youth pastor at Bible Baptist Church in York, Pennsylvania, recently resigned from his position as a school board member for the Northeastern School District in Manchester.
I said that sexuality should not have a place in our schools. Celebrate culture, ethnicity, etc., but leave sexual orientation out of the celebration of diversity as it is very sensitive in nature.
It was brought to my attention that if we educate students on the suicide rates of certain lifestyles, if we educate them on diseases that only come from certain activities, and if we introduce them to open biblical principles, that we as individuals of the board could be sued for violating legislation that had been passed. I cannot remove myself from the Bible. It is everything to me; it’s everything I stand on. I will, I believe by the grace of God, go the grave believing everything that it says.
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Jesus Christ is the remedy to the public school situation we are in. I did not have liberty to say this as a member of the board.
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With that in mind, I’ve been called many things. I’ve been called a male chauvinist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic and racist, just to name a few. I wanted to clear the air. I don’t hate any individual. I don’t hate any group of individuals. I don’t hate any way that people identify. … I just want to make that clear to the students, faculty and community, that I do not have one ounce of hate towards any people group, nor do I prefer any people group over the other.
Volkert is an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) Christian. He wants people to know that he doesn’t hate anyone or any group of people. He hates the “sin,” but not the “sinner.” This is his way of turning back criticisms from people who say he is a hateful bigot; a transphobe. “I don’t hate the faggot, err, I mean the LGBTQ person, I just hate their abominable, wicked, vile sexual behavior,” Evangelicals say.
I have long argued that you cannot separate a skunk from its smell. Skunks spray people and animals with a pungent, sulfur-smelling spray when threatened. I doubt that anyone who has been sprayed by a skunk or owned a dog who has been sprayed ever says “I hate the smell, but I sure do love the skunk.” No, the skunk and its smell are inseparable. So it is with Evangelicals such as Volkert. These followers of Jesus not only hate sin, but they also hate those who commit the sins. And that’s okay in God’s eyes. God hates sin and those who do it too:
God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day. (Psalm 7:11)
The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth (Psalm 11:5)
Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre. Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows (Psalm 45:6,7)
Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly; suddenly shall he be broken without remedy. These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, (Proverbs 6:15-17)
I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. (Amos 5:2)
And let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbor; and love no false oath: for all these are things that I hate, saith the LORD. (Zechariah 8:17)
I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob, And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. (Malachi 1:2,3)
As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. (Romans 9:13)
For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: (divorce) for one covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously. (Malachi 2:16)
Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate. (Revelation 2:5,6)
I wish Evangelicals would be honest and own their behavior. Instead, much like the rest of us, they want to be respected and well-thought-of by others. Their problem, of course, is that they are joined at the hip with the Bible and their peculiar theological/social beliefs. Their religion demands they condemn “sin.” So they do, as Volkert clearly did as a board member of a secular public school district. (By the way, Volkert’s children do not attend the district’s school. Instead, he sends his children to Bible Baptist Christian Academy in York. Volkert is an administrator at the school.)
I live in rural northwest Ohio. Evangelicalism and right-wing politics dominate the local landscape. The local newspaper regularly publishes letters to the editor from local Evangelicals who rail against behaviors they deem sinful. Typically their hemorrhoids are inflamed over abortion, Satanic Democrats, and anything LGBTQ. Increasingly, they show up at local school board meetings to protest Critical Race Theory (CRT), socialism, and books they think are “sinful.” Their hate for certain behaviors is palpable, yet these God-fearing folks bristle when accused of hating individuals or groups of people. They want everyone to believe that they really do love everyone. However, when asked if LGBTQ people can join their church or whether their high school daughter can date a lesbian, it becomes crystal clear that not only do they hate (some) sin, but they also hate (some) sinners. Not all sins, or all sinners, just those they personally find icky or offensive. One need only look at their response to transgender people or drag queens to see how much they really do hate some people.
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.
