Following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade last month, I reported on a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was forced to travel to Indiana for an abortion after being raped due to the Buckeye State’s trigger law going into effect.
Cincinnati.com reports that three days after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Indianapolis, received a call from a colleague in Ohio. The physician in the Buckeye state had a 10-year-old patient who was six weeks and three days pregnant. Continue reading “10-Year-Old Ohio Rape Victim Travels To Indiana For Help”
• NewNowNext: DC Comics has unmasked its upcoming slate of Pride Month titles, including the fan-favorite annual Pride-themed anthology, DC Pride 2022. But Pride doesn’t stop on July 1, and DC got the memo. The comics giant will be releasing a host of queer-inclusive content throughout 2022. Continue reading “News Round-Up: March 15, 2022”
Governor Mike DeWine (R) of Ohio has signed a bill that allows medical providers to refuse care to LGBTQ patients if they have an objection based on “religious” grounds.
The new language was apparently buried in last-minute amendments to the state’s two-year budget bill, which DeWine signed into law on June 30. Governor DeWine had the opportunity to line-item veto the language while signing the rest of the budget into law and refused to do so.
The new law allows any medical provider – from doctors and nurses to researchers, lab techs and insurance companies – “the freedom to decline to perform, participate in, or pay for any health care service which violates the practitioner’s, institution’s, or payer’s conscience as informed by the moral, ethical, or religious beliefs.”
Local advocates warn this rule legalizes discrimination against LGBTQ patients as well as members of other marginalized groups like drug addicts or people living with HIV or sexually transmitted diseases.
Yesterday @GovMikeDewine approved a state budget that includes language allowing medical providers to deny care to LGBTQ people.
Health care is a right. This new law is bad for Ohio, bad for Ohioans, bad for doctors and bad for medicine.
Human Rights Campaign president Alphonso David in a statement, “Today governor DeWine enshrined LGBTQ discrimination into law, threatening the medical well being of more than 380,000 LGBTQ people in Ohio, one of the largest LGBTQ populations anywhere in the country.”
“Medical practitioners in Ohio can deny care or coverage for basic, medically-necessary, and potentially life-saving care to LGBTQ people simply because of who they are,” added David.
DeWine insisted the conscience clause will change very little, and claimed that no one in Ohio will be discriminated against.
“This simply puts in statute what the practice has been anyways,” he said. “Let’s say the doctor is against abortion, the doctor is not doing abortion. If there’s other things that maybe a doctor has a conscience problem with, it gets worked out, somebody else does those things.”
Dr. Todd Kepler, southwest medical director of Equitas Health, a nonprofit health care system serving LGBTQ patients in the Midwest, told Cincinnati ABC News affiliate WCPO the ”widely broad” language in the new rule will exacerbate existing barriers to care for many marginalized groups, like drug addicts, people living with HIV, and the LGBT+ community.
“Say I happen to be a gay patient and I wanted to see a provider in my town, and there weren’t really any other providers in town,” said Kepler. “But they find that morally unacceptable, they could turn me away.”
“And the language is so broad that that could even be done at an institutional level. So, if you have a hospital that perhaps has an affiliation with a religious institution, and again, that happens to be the only institution in town, theoretically they could turn that patient away for health care.”
Edward Snodgrass, who is a Porter Township trustee, has admitted to forging his dead father’s signature on an absentee ballot and then voting again as himself, court records and other sources revealed.
Snodgrass was busted after a Delaware County election worker questioned the signature on his father’s ballot. A subsequent investigation revealed the ballot had been mailed to H. Edward Snodgrass on Oct. 6 — a day after the 78-year-old retired businessman died.
In an interview with NBC News, Snodgrass said he made “an honest error” while struggling to take care of his dying father, who had advanced Parkinson’s disease. He said he had power of attorney for several years and because his dad had broken his right arm he’d already been “signing for him.” He said his dad had requested the absentee ballot.
Snodgrass told NBC News he had been “sleep-deprived” and not thinking clearly.
The 57-year-old has apparently agreed to plea guilty to a reduced charge of falsification which comes with a $500 fine and three days in jail.
Had he fought the charges of illegal voting, a fourth-degree felony, he could have faced a prison sentence of six or more months along with a $5,000 fine.
Even though Donald Trump continues to rant and rage about “widespread voter fraud,” the fact is it didn’t happen.
In May the Washington Post did a deep dive into local news reports across the country and found “only 16 incidents in which someone has faced criminal charges stemming from their attempt to vote illegally.”
Ohio Karen really thought she was proving a point (she wasn’t)
After viewing this installment of ‘The Karen Chronicles,’ I sat back and wondered, as I often do with ‘Karens’ – “What is it these folks THINK they are accomplishing?”
Police in Brook Park, Ohio, were called to a Marc’s Deeper Discount Store as Karen (yes, her name really is Karen) was putting up a snit about having to wear a face mask while shopping in the store. The Ohio Department of Health COVID-19 pandemic guidelines currently require masks public.
As you’ll see, she really seems to think she’s going to prove some kind of a point, but instead was arrested for resisting police, trespassing, and failure to disclose information, according to cleveland.com.
Folks – for the last time, stores and restaurants have the right to refuse service to anyone if their rules aren’t followed. For years we’ve heard ‘no shoes, no shirt, no service’ due to health regulations. For now, we’re adding ‘no mask, no service.’
If a state or municipality has a public accommodations law/ordinance, that only requires that everyone be treated the same. If the ‘same’ means everyone wear a mask or leave, that’s being treated the ‘same.’
You can be removed (and arrested) for trespassing. No one has a constitutional right to shop at a grocery store.
GET OVER IT.
We’re all just trying to get through this pandemic as best we can.
Watch below as Miss Karen really puts on quite the performance.