A Letter to an Ohio Legislator Who Is Playing With Women’s Lives
Last week, the Ohio House of Representatives held its first hearing on House Bill 351, a bill that would ban Ohio women from using insurance of any kind to cover an abortion. The bill makes no exceptions for cases of rape, incest, or when pregnancy threatens a mother’s life. It would only allow women to use insurance to end ectopic pregnancies - cases in which an embryo implants outside of the uterus. The bill would also prevent public employees or those on Medicaid from using insurance coverage to pay for certain contraceptives. And the Ohio legislator who sponsored the bill has some questionable ideas about one in particular.
So I thought I’d send him a letter to help clear things up.
Dear Ohio State Representative John Becker:
It’s me. Melissa.
Your bill broadly defines abortion to include “drugs or devices used to prevent the implantation of a fertilized ovum.” And in your testimony during last week’s hearing, you said you didn’t intend for birth control pills to be included in that definition. I’m not sure how you make the distinction because, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists-you know, actual doctors-the pill can in fact impede the fertilized egg from attaching to the uterine wall.
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