Good Morning: Ohio Governor Just Fucked Over the State's Women

Great news, everybody (not), last night Ohio Gov./terrible human John Kasich signed the state’s new two-year, $62 billion state budget. One of the heartiest and most depressing cuts? Planned Parenthood.

The bill takes about $1.4 million in federal family dollars away from Planned Parenthood by reprioritizing who can receive the money.

Under the bill, abortion clinics must have a transfer agreement with a hospital, but they are prohibited from signing one with a public hospital. The bill also requires a doctor to perform an external ultrasound prior to an abortion to search for a heartbeat, and if one is found, must inform the woman. The doctor also must tell the woman the likelihood of the fetus surviving to a full term, and it redefines a fetus as “developing from the moment of conception,” rather than when a fertilized egg has been implanted in the uterus.

Oh, so these women’s healthcare providers can only have transfer agreements with private hospitals — many of which are affiliated with religious groups and therefore won’t work with them? Oh, and you insist on ultrasounds even though the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposes all types of mandated ultrasounds? Oh, also you want to rewrite the definition of a word to serve your inane and archaic purposes?

Oh, but that’s not all, folks! If you call now, we’ll throw in even more idiocy with your first shipment of This Budget Is Fucked.

The bill also provides funding for crisis pregnancy centers, which supporters say offer women important alternatives to abortion, but critics argue provide medically inaccurate information.

Oh, now the money is being taken from the institutions that help women make sound and compassionate decisions for themselves, and is rerouted to nut jobs who provide dangerously inaccurate material and impinge upon a woman’s Constitutional right to choose?

All of this is hot on the heels of Ohio’s terrifying anti-abortion House Bill 200, which 35 House Republicans introduced on June 13th. The bill is the stuff that fuels Paul Ryan’s wet dreams — extended waiting periods for access to safe and legal abortions, ultrasounds the woman has to pay for, and requiring doctors to straight-up lie to their patients.