COMMENTARY: Ohio Is Destined for a Bleak Future If Roe is Overturned!

FEATURED PHOTO: OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL DAVE YOST BELIEVES ‘THERE IS NO CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION FOR ABORTION RIGHTS IN A BRIEF FILED WITH THE SUPREME COURT TO OVERTURN ROE VS. WADE ON JULY 29TH 2021

CoolCleveland.com, By Cool Cleveland Editor-Anastasia Pantsios, Posted December 14th 2021

There’s a billboard along I-94 in downtown Chicago — paid for with Ohio tax dollars — that says, “Your future in Ohio is shinier than the Bean” (the iconic silver sculpture in Chicago’s downtown Millennial Park).

Desperate to retain college graduates, the Ohio legislature is now proposing a bill to throw more money at the problem of college-educated young people leaving the state.

According to Ohio Capital Journal, [state rep. Jon] “Cross’ legislation pairs tax breaks with financial aid to ease the path from an Ohio college to an Ohio job. The first tax break goes to businesses offering paid internships or apprenticeships. Cross says they’d be able to write off about a third of those salaries at tax time. The other tax incentive goes to the workers — zero state income tax for the first three years after graduation.”

But currently, Ohio doesn’t have a climate that would attract a young, educated, entrepreneurial, or creative person — and that could get much, much worse in the near future, thanks to the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade, throwing regulation of women’s reproductive choices back to the states.

This would lead to a crippling situation for Ohio. Ohio is one of more than two dozen states poised to ban abortion outright; it’s considering even more extreme laws that would govern every aspect of a woman’s reproductive years. They escalated to attacks on contraception years ago. Former state representative John Becker presented a bill that would have banned even private insurance from paying for most effective forms of contraception, claiming (falsely) that they cause abortion. Becker prefaced his advocacy by saying “This isn’t my area of expertise.” Yet that didn’t stop his attempt to turn Ohio women into reproductive chattel.

The “But the babies” excuse doesn’t fly. It’s become a cliché to point out that the same people who want to tell women what they can do with their bodies want to do nothing to improve the status of born babies: no health care, no maternity care, no safe housing, no living wage, no safe, affordable child care, no quality schools. Ohio’s rates of child poverty and maternal and infant mortality are shameful.

Some observers are predicting that if Roe falls, there will be a stark demarcation between blue states where women have rights and where people are thriving, economically, educationally and health-wise, and red states which will become increasingly poor, undereducated and unhealthy.

Sadly, Ohio will be on the wrong side of that divide, thanks to gerrymandering. Republicans in Columbus have already passed legislative and congressional maps that make gerrymandering worse and institutionalize it: if they stand (and they are currently being challenged in the Ohio Supreme Court, with the cases to be heard starting this week), Ohio will be a one-party state, where not only will opposing opinions have no weight but the opinions of Ohio citizens will be (even more) irrelevant. Your vote literally won’t count.

One example: following the 2019 Dayton mass shooting, polls found an overwhelming majority of Ohioans strongly favored gun safety laws such as universal background checks. Instead the legislature is moving a bill to abolish licensing and training for concealed carry — something most Ohioans, including gun owners, don’t want. But given the protection of gerrymandering, they don’t care.

And no, don’t say, “vote them out.” That’s exactly what gerrymandering prevents you from being able to do: all the turnout efforts in the world can’t overcome the district lines as they’re currently drawn. This is the fourth GOP gerrymander and each gets worse: in 1990 the sophisticated computer modeling that identifies voters down to the house didn’t yet exist.

State rep. Cross pooh-poohed the idea that, according to Ohio Capital Journal, “Proposals on abortion, trans rights, firearms, COVID-19, and redistricting are all tailored toward partisans, and that might discourage people who fall outside that political camp from moving to Ohio.”

But for a young woman, or a trans or gay individual, it’s not about a “political camp” — it’s about being treated as human and enjoying the same rights as a straight white male such as Jon Cross.

Recently I was talking to a baby boomer musician I know who mentioned that in the last several years he’d been to the weddings of friends’ kids, held in Ohio because that was where they were from. But he added, not one of the couples still lived in Ohio. That stream of departures will only escalate no matter how many billboards Governor DeWine buys or tax breaks the legislature dreams up.

And in Ohio, thanks to gerrymandering, which has given us a radical legislature impervious to citizen opinion, that would be very bad — not just for women but for the entire state. It would give us a future that would be poorer, sicker, less educated and more desperate, as Chicago, with its protections for women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, people of color and others, looks increasingly attractive.