Vote no on Issue 1 to protect our democracy
There’s a lot in the news about Issue 1 and abortion rights. Some voters are deciding how to vote based just on that. But as important as it is for Ohio women to be able to choose what to do with their own bodies, Issue 1 is a lot more than that. At root, Issue 1 is about democracy versus authoritarianism and corruption. Statehouse Republicans want to make it easier for them to control us. And harder for us to do anything about it.If Issue 1 passes, it’ll be much harder for Ohioans to enact any issue guaranteeing women’s rights. But not just women’s rights, but anything the majority of Ohio’s citizens want.And − this is important − if Issue 1 passes, requiring citizens to get over a 60% hurdle when we propose things with signatures from all 88 counties, those rules won’t affect our gerrymandered legislature. Statehouse Republicans will still only need 50 percent plus 1 to pass laws regulating everything we do. If they get away with ending our rights in whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, no matter how dangerous for the would-be mother, the next goal may be to take away birth control itself. The same religious extremists who are pushing to end women’s rights in pregnancy have pushed for ending all means of birth control in other places.The folks who want to force unlimited reproduction, talk about a right to life, but what kind of life? They don’t want to pay for the health care, child care, education, and so on that come with more babies. They talk about a right to life, but they don’t oppose sending our young people off to questionable wars, they favor capital punishment which kills innocent people sometimes, and they don’t seem worried about the dangers of child birth, which kills hundreds of women every year. And they don’t differentiate between a woman choosing pregnancy, versus someone who’s raped. Apparently, pro-Issue 1 Republicans just want Ohio women to produce more kids to make sure there’s enough cheap labor for their factories, farms, and businesses.And, the backers of Issue 1, who want to make it harder for citizens to make their own laws, have got their sights set on other things we won’t be able to do besides control our own bodies. Their 60% rule would apply to anything else voters wanted to do, like support public schools, protect our parks, raise our minimum wage or un-gerrymander our State House.In reality, the Republican politicians running our state government have so distorted our legislative districts that they’ve created almost a lock on lawmaking. We wouldn’t be able to fix that either, because we’d have to get 60% of the state’s voters on our side with signatures from all 88 counties to undo any of their bad works. That includes the acts of Republican Speaker Householder and Republican Party chair Borges who gave millions to a corrupt energy company to build questionable and dangerous nuclear plants.So if the Republican statehouse politicians take away our ability to check and balance their excesses, the sky’s the limit for them. They’ll be able to use public dollars for private, religious schools, give away our public park lands for their dirty oil and gas projects, and really just have their way with our state and all of us.So don’t forget to vote no on State Issue 1. And don’t forget to take your photo I.D. when you go to vote. Republican politicians have already made it harder for Ohioans to vote, but let’s not let them take away what’s left of beautiful Ohio’s democracy.Jack Burgess is a retired history teacher and former Chief of Arbitration Services for the State of Ohio
This article originally appeared on Chillicothe Gazette: Vote no on Issue 1 to protect our democracy
