Abortion

Ohio “Heartbeat Ban” Supporters Threaten Lawmakers To Pass Bill of Face Election Losses

Heartbeat ban backers want the bill off life support and back on the table.

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It’s been a long time since we’ve heard much from Faith2Action and the other anti-choice groups pushing for the “heartbeat ban,” an Ohio bill that has been stalled in the state senate for months and which would outlaw abortion from the point in which a fetal heartbeat could be discerned.

Now, they’re back.

Former Ohio National Right to Life founder and bill supporter Jack Willke is attempting to draw attention back to the dormant bill, taking a full page ad out in the Columbus Dispatch that threatens lawmakers that if they don’t pass the ban they will be voted out in 2012.  He then calls the bill’s passage his “dying wish.”

Via WLWT.com:

“Tell the Ohio GOP Senate to pass the strongest Heartbeat Bill now – or we will work to replace them with people who will,” Willke’s letter concludes. The 87-year-old Willke calls the bill’s passage his dying wish.

The ad, listing names and numbers of senators resistant to passing the bill, is to appear the first day of House and Senate sessions following lawmakers’ spring break. The effort will be accompanied by thousands of emails, and robocalls in which Willke asks abortion foes to inundate senators to get the bill passed.

Willke calls out GOP senators the anti-abortion movement helped elect, saying they have failed to deliver on their promises.

“Republican Senators who ran on a pro-life platform have been sitting on the Heartbeat Bill since it passed the Ohio House of Representatives in June of 2011,” he writes.

“They will tell you that they have passed several pro-life bills this session; that is true, and we commend them for their regulatory bills. But make no mistake, when I founded the pro-life movement it wasn’t to regulate how abortions would be done, it was to bring the abortion killing to an END.”

The bill has been stalled while anti-choice factions attempt to find a way to reconcile their differences over it.  Although Faith2Action and others support the ban, other anti-choice groups declare it goes too far and endangers their chance of getting other, less restrictive bans passed.