A recent Plain Dealer editorial attempted to bully Ohioans into opposing the new Ohio budget with the following statement, “If you care about women’s health, you have to abhor the anti-abortion restrictions inserted into the two-year, $62 billion budget bill that Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed into law.” I suppose they would say the converse is true: If you support the new laws, you oppose women’s health.
This “war on women” nonsense is so tired and such a distraction from women’s real health concerns.
As Jonah Goldberg has eloquently pointed out, “…it is bizarre to suggest that women’s health and abortion rights are interchangeable. The biggest killer of women is heart disease, followed by cancer, then stroke….”
It’s a shame that the editorial board decided to go this route after the newspaper so thoroughly dissected Rachel Maddow’s “pants-on-fire” claim that Ohio law now mandates a “vaginal probe.”
Rather than talking about real health concerns, the editorial continues its irrational line of thought by proclaiming that putting Planned Parenthood at the back of the Ohio budget would make it harder for poor women to receive basic health services. 
I think that the half a million patients who community health centers saw in 2011 would disagree. Yes, half a million. Five times the number who use Planned Parenthood annually.
Meanwhile, the editorial board lets Ed FitzGerald get away with jeopardizing a new funding stream for rape crisis centers—a funding stream that was voted for unanimously and with bipartisan support. It doesn’t mention the fact that the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence supports the new funding stream and has asserted that the funding will in fact help them serve Ohio’s victims.
The editorial rightly says, “The world would be a better place if there were fewer abortions.” However, it doesn’t elaborate. Why do so many pro-choicers know in their hearts that abortion is wrong but do nothing to confront why it is wrong?
Like the Plain Dealer editorial board, many I met in college lamented the unpleasantness of abortion, but avoided explanations, ultimately trumpeting the practice as a woman’s right instead of confronting its reality: the violent taking of another life.
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My guess is that intellectualism and morality have been bullied out of our culture by people who don’t want to be held accountable for their decisions or told that they are wrong. And of course the bullying “war on women” narrative acts as a great muzzle, suggesting that if you oppose abortion, you oppose women’s rights.
Undeniably, the Plain Dealer editorial board has clouded the facts and failed to adequately address real women’s health concerns. The editorial board makes the fatal error of hinting at the wrongness of abortion and failing to answer the grave question of the value of abortion in our society.
LifeNews Note: This originally appeared at the Ohio Right to Life blog.
