Ohio Right to Life

When Janet Porter returned to her native Ohio to push her extreme Heartbeat Bill, which would effectively ban abortion in the vast majority of cases, she couldn’t muster the support of her former employer, the Ohio Right to Life Society. Porter, who leads Faith 2 Action, helped launch a group called Ohio ProLife Action that is dedicated to passing the radical legislation, which already passed in the State House and will soon have a hearing in the State Senate. While the fate of the Heartbeat Bill is still up in the air, it has already created huge divides among anti-choice activists in Ohio.

The Warren County and Geauga County affiliates of the Ohio Right to Life Society have disaffiliated and joined Ohio ProLife Action, and yesterday the Greater Cincinnati chapter, which claims to be “Ohio’s largest Right to Life chapter and birthplace of the Right to Life movement,” announced that is also leaving to join Porter’s new group. While Ohio Right to Life Society has argued that the Heartbeat Bill is unconstitutional, Porter has claimed that it is the best attempt to overturn Roe and return God’s blessings to America.

The Greater Cincinnati chapter said in a statement [pdf]:

Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati—Ohio’s largest Right to Life chapter and birthplace of the Right to Life movement—is formally joining the newly created state group Ohio ProLife Action, established to support House Bill 125, Ohio’s Heartbeat Bill. It is reluctantly disaffiliating from the Ohio Right to Life Society at this time.

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Along with two thirds of Ohio’s Right to Life chapters, Cincinnati Right to Life has been dismayed that Ohio Right to Life has chosen to oppose and undermine the efforts to pass this landmark bill.

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Cincinnati Right to Life extends its full support to Ohio ProLife Action, and all state legislators who courageously stand for life and support House Bill 125. Cincinnati Right to Life also, again, extends the invitation to our colleagues at Ohio Right to Life to join in this unprecedented step toward ending abortion in Ohio and beyond.

Lou Engle traveled to Columbus, Ohio last week to join Janet Porter, Wendy Wright, Jim Garlow, Bob McKeown, Dutch Sheets and other Religious Right leaders at Faith 2 Action’s rally promoting Porter’s Heartbeat Bill, which would criminalize abortion in the vast majority of cases. The legislation has passed the state House, but the Republican leadership in the Senate has been reluctant to hold a vote on the bill, which is so extreme and clearly unconstitutional that it’s even opposed by the Ohio Right to Life Society.

In a speech at the rally, Engle repeated his assertions that the Joplin tornado was God’s judgment for abortion and that President Barack Obama should issue a new “emancipation proclamation” to ban abortion. But he also told the story of how his daughter fractured her head after falling in a Walmart parking lot in Toledo: “I didn’t understand it,” Engle said while holding his daughter, “until just this moment that that’s how God feels for every baby.” He went on to discuss an email he read about a girl who said that the LIFE wristband she lost in a Walmart parking lot convinced a woman not to have an abortion. He concluded, “God has something to say to us in Walmart parking lots, prayer is moving this nation!”

Watch:

Janet Porter’s proposed “heartbeat bill” in Ohio, which would criminalize abortion in the vast majority of cases, is so extreme that the Ohio Right to Life Society refuses to back it, but for some anti-choice radicals, it does not go far enough. As we’ve previously reported, Personhood USA wants to put a personhood amendment on the Ohio ballot in 2012, and Personhood Ohio is no fan of Porter’s “heartbeat bill.”

While the personhood movement may appear to be a fringe group, since proponents oppose even draconian legislation like the “heartbeat bill,” the personhood movement is backed by Mike Huckabee, the American Family Association, Liberty Counsel and the Family Research Council. In fact, earlier this year personhood amendment advocates berated Porter on a conference call sponsored by The Oak Initiative’s Transformation Michigan, telling Porter that her bill was not anti-choice enough.

Writing today in WorldNetDaily, Personhood Ohio director Patrick Johnson condemns Porter’s bill for banning abortion in most instead of all cases, the goal of personhood amendments. Johnson is outraged that the bill has exceptions for cases where the life of the mother is at stake, which he says is “never justified,” and is angered that it doesn’t require the state to charge women with murder for having an abortion: “This bill specifically exempts the mother from prosecution. Why does the bill exempt accomplices?” Johnson writes:

The advocates of the Heartbeat Bill have proven their willingness to push one person out of the boat to try to save another. How? By way of the bill's exceptions, its inappropriate penalties, and its counterfeit moral standard.

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What is the moral standard that is invoked in the Heartbeat Bill? Is it the Constitution, which says that the government shall not deprive another of life or liberty without a trial by jury? No. Is it the law of God, which says "Do no murder" in Exodus 20 and mandates a public execution for convicted murderers? No, of course not.

In subsections H, I, and J, this bill specifically cites the federal judiciary as the standard of morality and justice. This bill prescribes into law the supremacy of the Supreme Court over both the law of God and the state and federal constitutions. This bill bows the knee to a counterfeit standard of morality at the altar of judicial tyranny. Thus, this bill is rotten to its very foundation. Its design is not to protect the preborn, not to give them justice and certainly not to please "the Father of the fatherless." God's Word is the standard for morality and justice, and His Word is supreme over the opinions of men, but the Heartbeat Bill gets on the wrong side of God's line in the sand.

Even if the Heartbeat Bill did overturn Roe v. Wade and return the issue back to the states, it would not protect preborn children in Ohio. It is our hope that the Ohio Personhood Amendment to the Ohio Constitution would protect the God-given rights of every Ohioan.

The Ohio State House finally voted on and passed Janet Porter’s “Heartbeat bill,” which would criminalize abortion in most cases. Conspicuously absent was a statement from the state’s leading anti-choice group, the Ohio Right to Life Society, which actually opposed the bill because it is blatantly unconstitutional. Now Porter’s prized legislation moves on to the Senate, and her group Faith2Action released a congratulatory statement:

“For every battle weary pro-lifer who didn't see how children were going to be protected in our lifetime, come see what God is doing in Ohio. Protection for babies with beating hearts is within reach for the first time since Roe stripped their rights away. I have never been more hopeful for restoring protection to babies with beating hearts than I am right now,” declared Janet (Folger) Porter, president of Ohio-based Faith2Action and a former legislative director for Ohio Right to Life.

In meetings with bill supporters, several of the state senators have expressed interest in serving as a sponsor or co-sponsor for the bill.

The bill was backed by a number of national Republican figures including presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich, and Porter even had two fetuses “testify” in favor of the bill.

When Janet Porter is involved in something, you know it is just a matter of time before it goes completely off the rails.

It happened with her 2007 Values Voter Debate where a choir sang "Why Should God Bless America? " while Religious Right leaders asked questions to empty podiums representing the Republican candidates who skipped the event.

And it happened again with her May Day prayer rally at the Lincoln Memorial which left her facing $70,000 in expenses and cost her her daily radio show.

And so it was only a matter of time before her already bizarre "Heartbeat Bill" activism in Ohio took a turn toward the surreal, with Porter announcing plans to have a fetus "testify" in favor of the legislation:

A fetus has been scheduled as a legislative witness in Ohio on a unique bill that proposes outlawing abortions after the first heartbeat can be medically detected.

Faith2Action, the anti-abortion group that has targeted Ohio to pilot the measure, called the in-utero witness the youngest to ever come before the House Health Committee at 9 weeks old.

Faith2Action president Janet Folger Porter said the intent is to show lawmakers who will be affected by the bill, which abortion rights groups oppose. Ohio Right to Life has not endorsed the measure.

An aide to committee Chairman Lynn Wachtmann said a pregnant woman will be brought before the committee and an ultrasound image of her uterus will be projected onto a screen. The heartbeat of the fetus will be visible in color.

Just allow me to remind everyone that Porter served as the co-chair of Mike Huckabee's Faith and Family Values Coalition when he ran for president. 

As we have noted in the past, the groups pushing the anti-choice "personhood" amendments all around the country have tended to operate on their own because other established anti-choice groups have refused to support the efforts because a) they are unlikely to pass and b) they are unlikely to survive court challenges.

And despite the fact that the whenever "personhood" has made it onto the ballot, it has failed miserably, organizers continue to press the issue, and are even picking up support for an effort in Mississippi from the American Family Association while Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker is introducing national "personhood" legislation in Congress.

And in Ohio, Janet Porter has resurfaced with her own "personhood"-like legislation called "The Heartbeat Bill." The legislation would ban abortions once a heartbeat is detected and, just like with the various "personhood" efforts, Porter's former colleagues at Ohio Right to Life are refusing to support her measure because it won't stand up in court: 

[T]he so-called “Heartbeat Bill” legislation, which would ban abortion as early as 18 to 24 days after conception, isn’t supported by the Ohio Right to Life Society. That organization is backing a number of other anti-abortion bills, including a ban on late-term abortions after 20 weeks except when necessary to prevent the death of the mother or the irreversible impairment of a major body function.

Mike Gonidakis, the group’s executive director, said the heartbeat legislation would not survive a court challenge. “Despite noble aspirations, there is no scenario under which the heartbeat legislation will be upheld by any court and therefore no lives will be saved by passage of this bill,” Gonidakis said in an e-mail. “Our goal is to protect the lives we can now and that is why we introduced the late-term ban.”

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Janet Porter, a key backer and a former Ohio Right to Life legislative director, said, “If we never ask, we’re never going to get it.”

Janet Porter got her start in Religious Right politics back in Ohio, serving as the Legislative Director of Ohio Right to Life.  Eventually, she was lured away to Florida by D. James Kennedy to serve as the National Director for his Center for Reclaiming America.  After a few years, Porter then struck out on her own, launching Faith 2 Action and hosting a daily radio program that went increasingly off the rails until her operation was shut down due to her increasing involvement with Dominion Theology and self-proclaimed "prophets" like Cindy Jacobs.

And now things have come full circle, as Porter has moved back to Ohio and is applying her patented "send X number of Ys in support of Z" brand of activism to a piece of anti-choice legislation called "the Heartbeat Bill": 

Representative Lynn Wachtmann, the new Chairman of the House Health Committee, has announced he will be introducing the "Heartbeat Bill" in the Ohio House which will protect unborn babies from abortion once their hearts have begun to beat.

"Science has already given us a yardstick to determine if someone is alive--a beating heart;" said Wachtmann, "We just want to see that measurement applied evenly. This bill calls for an end to discrimination and the protection of every human being with a beating heart--no matter their age!"

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Janet (Folger) Porter, former Legislative Director of Ohio Right to Life, and President of Faith2Action, has moved back to Ohio to help lead the effort. "Ohio is going to make history again," said Porter, who helped to pass the nation’s first partial-birth abortion ban in 1995. "My last conversation with my dear friend Mark Lally, Ohio Right to Life's Legal Counsel, before he passed away, was about this very bill. We're going to pass it in his honor," added Porter.

Balloons ordered now will be delivered the week of Valentine's Day, when the bill is scheduled for introduction. Orders can be placed by going to http://www.HeartBeatBill.com before February 14th. Each balloon will come with a personalized card from the sender with the message: "Have a heart, Pass the Heartbeat Bill!"