COLUMBUS, OH, May 4, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) — Pro-life laws have dropped the number of abortion facilities in Ohio by nearly 50 percent since 2011, and the number of abortions is down nine percent, the Associated Press reports in a new review.
Seven out of 16 abortion facilities have closed or stopped providing abortions since 2011. An eighth is embroiled in a legal fight, which makes the nation's seventh-largest state second only to Texas in terms of abortion clinics closed in recent years.
The reduction may be affecting the number of abortions done in Ohio, which have dropped 8.9 percent — from 25,473 in 2012 to 23,216 in 2013, according to the AP.
Since 2011, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and the GOP-controlled legislature have passed a number of pro-life measures. They include, but are not limited to, laws preventing abortion after a baby can survive outside the womb, and requiring women to listen to fetal heartbeats and have ultrasounds prior to an abortion.
Pro-life legislators in Ohio have continued to push pro-life bills, such as one that would ban abortions when heartbeats can be detected, which happens as early as six weeks.
Click “like” if you are PRO-LIFE!
The president of Ohio Right to Life says that it's not just pro-life laws that are making a difference. Women are choosing life, according to Mike Gonidakis, because of the work by pro-life groups to help them and their children. “It's a combination of a lot of things,” Gonidakis told the AP, citing access to health care for the poor and counseling at crisis pregnancy centers. “Our society's changing. More and more women are choosing life.”
“Women deserve better than abortion,” Heartbeat International president Peggy Hartshorn told LifeSiteNews. “Pregnancy centers like those we support provide the facts about a baby’s development and about the many serious physical and psychological dangers of abortion. We set the standard for true compassion and support for women because the life of a mother and her baby are worth more than the bottom line.”
The executive director of Ohio's NARAL chapter, Kellie Copeland, says women are having to drive further, sometimes out of state, to get an abortion. She told the AP that the lack of clinics often creates circumstances where women can't get abortions because they cannot get an appointment until after the state's legal limit.
Copeland also says that the difference between the number of abortion clinic closures and the drop in abortions shows women in the state want to have abortions, and that “these laws have all been about creating these false hurdles for clinics to have to jump through.”
Hartshorn, however, said comments like Copeland's are “telling.”
“The very same special-interest groups who once claimed their goal was to make abortion ‘safe, legal and rare’ are now settling for merely ‘legal,'” she said. “Abortion facilities that are closing their doors are doing so because they are putting women’s health and safety at risk. While these highly profitable abortion businesses are unable to comply with laws enacted to protect the health of women, grassroots pregnancy help organizations are offering these very same women a safe—and legal—environment where they are able to make the healthiest choice for everyone involved in an unexpected pregnancy.”
