Ohio Ballot Issue 1 Megathread (August 8)

[Person Man]

Most ballot initiatives are falsely marketed to voters, and a "yes" vote for the voter has unforseen consequences (although the consequences were not just forseen, but PLANNED by the moneyed interests that usually frame these ballot questions).

Funnily enough, this is the PERFECT description for this very initiative that you are in favor of. As for the "moneyed interests," in this case there appears to be one particular moneyed interest from outside OH who for some reason has a big stake in this -

https://twitter.com/AndrewJTobias/status/1684661078339239936?s=20

So the lack of self-awareness in writing this, in this thread, as you proclaim your support for Issue 1, is as ironic as it is astounding.

It's not astounding at all.  Moneyed interests are on both sides of the issue.  Most ballot initiatives seek to use appeals that are manipulative and dishonest, so I view a 60 percent threshold as a means of blocking some stupidity.

Your personal attack on me was rather smarmy.  I figured I'd mention it to help you with your own self-awareness level.  Welcome to the Forum.

You would think it would be the other way but fine. I’m personally more worried about people who get to vote for people who will vote for them and are only in power to be the proxies of their benefactors. The courts and legislatures don’t care about us.

[Person Man]

Anecdotally I always found that there was some silent reluctance towards the pro-life movement even in conservative evangelical circles. Not so much that these people supported abortion rights, but more so that they didn't see what the hell it had to do with Christianity which is what they were there to practice and study. They just keep silent about it because they don't want some church lady to start sobbing about how they're killing the babies again.

From a literal as possible sola scriptura perspective, it’s actually somewhat harder to make the pro-life case, because there are some verses in Exodus that read pretty ambivalent about miscarriages and there’s also never a word for word condemnation of abortion to be found.  The more you are willing to consider church tradition and associated writings, the stronger the pro-life case gets much stronger (Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas explicitly condemn it when interpreting Thou Shalt Not Kill for gentile converts).

Even the Roman Catholic Church didn't oppose abortion for most its history, at least in the early phases of pregnancy, and yes, abortions did happen before modern medicine, Ancient Rome was full of recipes for certain concoctions that would induce a miscarriage and they were still popular throughout the Middle Ages. At the time of the American Revolution, terminating a pregnancy was legal pretty much everywhere. Abortion only became controversial in 19th century once it became clear that it was a gateway to 20th century style "sexual freedom", which is when the Catholics started condemning it and most other churches followed suit.

The first ban on intentionally terminating a pregnancy in the US wasn't passed until 1827 (in New York, ironic by today's standards), and Catholic countries banned it around the same time as well. But fact is abortion was legal in the Puritan colonies that carried out the Salem witch trials and where The Scarlet Letter is set.

 I can buy that the the Church universally or nearly universally saw abortion as immoral but never was in any agreement of why it was until modern-ish times. You are correct about people wanting to eventually outlaw abortion because they saw it, and the lifestyle they thought it enabled, as negligent behavior against various "responsibilities". What probably allowed them to universally ban it for 100 years (Civil War to the 60s) was that people were becoming more interested in public health and the state's role in individual health outcomes and decided that the medical technology wasn't there to make abortions "safe". Sure, abortion has always been a thing, but it was considered riskier than actually having a child all the way until modern technology allowed for the opposite to be true. Its no coincidence that people started having adult conversations about abortion when they did.