Group backing Ohio ‘heartbeat bill’ to air TV ads

ANN SANNER

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — Back­ers of a ban on abor­tions at the first detectable heart­beat are rolling out bill­boards and TV and radio ads in Ohio’s major cities next week to spur state sen­a­tors to take up the proposal.

Should the so-called “heart­beat bill” become law, it would impose the nation’s most strin­gent abor­tion limit.

The mea­sure passed the Ohio House in June, but has stalled in the state Sen­ate where it has yet to be assigned to a leg­isla­tive committee.

Mem­bers of Ohio Pro­Life Action, a new statewide anti-abortion group that’s push­ing the bill, have been meet­ing with state sen­a­tors to try to address their con­cerns and get the mea­sure mov­ing through the Senate.

But with no com­mit­ment from Sen­ate lead­ers on when they plan to act, the anti-abortion group’s pres­i­dent says the orga­ni­za­tion will begin air­ing 30-second tele­vi­sion ads next week in Colum­bus, Cleve­land and Cincin­nati mar­kets. The ads fea­ture state sen­a­tors’ phone num­bers in an effort to per­suade view­ers to call the law­mak­ers. The spot has already aired in Dayton.

“While we appre­ci­ate and agree with the Senate’s desire to make this the best bill pos­si­ble, we con­tinue to urge them to send the bill to com­mit­tee where the process can be com­pleted and sent to the floor for a vote,” Linda Theis, pres­i­dent of Ohio Pro­Life Action, said in a news release Thursday.

Ohio Pro­Life Action is spend­ing “thou­sands of dol­lars” to air the ads, Theis said in an inter­view Friday.

The heart­beat leg­is­la­tion has divided Ohio’s anti-abortion com­mu­nity. Ohio Right to Life has taken issue with the pro­posal, fear­ing a legal chal­lenge could jeop­ar­dize other abor­tion lim­its in Ohio and expand access to legal abortions.

Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tom Niehaus told reporters this week it was too soon to say whether his cham­ber would vote before the end of the year on the bill.

Niehaus, a New Rich­mond Repub­li­can, has con­vened a group of law­mak­ers to research the mea­sure and vet any legal issues. He’s asked the group to report back this month.

Theis said her orga­ni­za­tion had “a good nego­ti­at­ing meet­ing” with sen­a­tors on Thurs­day. One sug­ges­tion from the sen­a­tors was to include spe­cific equip­ment doc­tors would use to detect the fetus’ heart­beat, she said. How­ever, she noted the bill’s sup­port­ers believe spec­i­fy­ing the kinds of equip­ment might cause future prob­lems with the bill should tech­nol­ogy change.

Theis said the orga­ni­za­tion was look­ing at the ideas, but added, “We’re not chang­ing any­thing major.”

She said her group respects the Senate’s thor­ough review, but is eager to dis­cuss the bill in front of a committee.

The orga­ni­za­tion plans to put up bill­boards soon in var­i­ous loca­tions around Cincin­nati. It’s also launch­ing a statewide radio cam­paign begin­ning with 30– sec­ond ads in the Colum­bus, Delaware, Lan­caster, Mans­field, Find­lay, Defi­ance, Lima, Steubenville, and south­east Ohio regions. More than 500 churches have also agreed to dis­trib­ute infor­ma­tion about the leg­is­la­tion in their church bulletins.

Posted by AP News on Nov 18 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.