Ohio lawmakers consider family planning bill

JULIE CARR SMYTH

AP State­house Correspondent

COLUMBUS — State law­mak­ers moved for­ward Wednes­day with a bill that would send Planned Par­ent­hood to the back of the line for pub­lic family-planning money, even as crowds of chant­ing pro­test­ers lined the State­house halls to oppose the measure.

The Health and Aging Com­mit­tee planned a vote later Wednes­day on the bill, which would then go to the House floor. The Sen­ate would take up the mea­sure after Thanks­giv­ing at the earliest.

Chair­man Lynn Wacht­mann, a Repub­li­can from Napoleon, said he expected the panel to sup­port the measure.

Pro­test­ers in pink T-shirts chanted “Hear us now!” as they packed the hall out­side the committee’s meet­ing. Some were staffers of Planned Par­ent­hood. Other pro­test­ers wore shirts read­ing “Women are Watching.”

State Sen. Nina Turner, a Cleve­land Demo­c­rat, said at a news con­fer­ence on the bill that Repub­li­cans in the State­house were ignor­ing the mes­sage sent by women with last week’s re-election of Demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­dent Barack Obama.

“It is absolutely immoral and uncon­scionable what the GOP is doing,” Turner said. “They have not learned their les­son. They are at it again, but it is our job to teach them.”

She said Planned Par­ent­hood pro­vides needed pre­ven­tive health care to low-income women that would be jeop­ar­dized by the bill.

Wacht­mann said other qual­ity providers of women’s health care have sprung up around the state and the bill would give those cen­ters a chance at gov­ern­ment funds.

“We have the poten­tial of a lot big­ger offer­ing to a lot more women,” he said. “This thought that the way every­thing is today is the best way to do it is just such an archaic thought.”

Repub­li­can Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tom Niehaus said his cau­cus is mulling the bill, as well as what action — if any — to take on another mea­sure that would ban most abor­tions after the first detectable heart­beat. The so-called heart­beat bill, which has cleared the House and is stalled in the Sen­ate, was another tar­get of the State­house pro­test­ers, many of them female, on Wednesday.

NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio direc­tor Kel­lie Copeland said if that bill passes, the protests in Colum­bus will only get big­ger and louder.

Asked what mes­sage on women’s issues he took away as a Repub­li­can from last week’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Niehaus left that to others.

“There are a lot of pun­dits talk­ing about what the elec­tion meant. What I try to stay focused on is what’s impor­tant to Ohio right now, and that’s jobs,” he said. “I mean, what are we doing to help make Ohio the right place for peo­ple to start com­pa­nies, employ peo­ple, and how do they go about get­ting jobs? That’s where I want to keep the focus in the Senate.”

Posted by AP News on Nov 14 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.